Plymothian

¹³ Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, ¹⁴ or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. ¹⁵ For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. ¹⁶ Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. ¹⁷ Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

Respect for Authority

What does it mean to be respected or to give respect?  I often think of it as related to a talent – someone is good at something so we give them praise because they are competent.  In this case, though, Peter is asking for the Christians to show respect for someone who is corrupt and an enemy of Christians.  On what basis can a person be respected?  In this case it is by virtue of their position.  Even though Christians are free from an identity primarily dictated by their social status, they can use their freedom to create a good name for Christians.  They can submit to the authorities and be model citizens.

Americans are known for rebellion.  Questioning authority often is a way of describing a disrespect for authority.  We look to undermine the authority of a position.  In movies the policemen are shown as corrupt, parents are shown as foolish, and teachers are shown as immoral.  This does reflect a portion of society, but our fascination with exceptions can become a stereotype that leads us to rebel against societal structures and community organisation.  Christians need to uphold law and order as much as possible.  They need to use their freedom to keep others free from chaos and disorder.

Prayer

We want to be our own bosses and sometimes submission to authorities is distasteful to us.  Soften our hearts to rulers, parents, and teachers.  Reestablish the fabric of society so that it functions peacefully.  Let us be the ones to lead the way.

Questions

1. What should be a Christian stance toward authority?
2. Why did Christians in Asia Minor have to hear a message of respect for authority?
3. How is the image of slavery used?
4. How do you respect the authorities of your school, government, or household?
5. How can you encourage others to both question and submit to authority?

¹¹ Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. ¹² Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

The Outworking of Character

When we become more aware of our true selves and eliminate aspects of our false selves, a new life breaks out.  We often talk about new life in Jesus Christ, but do we really embrace it; do we really experience it?  Are we really exiles from the culture around us?  What do we think we should have for all our hard work?  We want a comfortable house which requires little maintenance.  We want our privacy.  We want freedom from family pressures and responsibilities.  We want freedom from stress.  We want a secure future with a healthy 401k and maybe a place in the sun.  We want obedient children who turn out better than we have.  We want security and significance.

Is what we want in line with what God wants for us?  Some of the things above are compatible with our identity as exiles in the land.  However, we can not pursue these things too passionately, because many of them will be left behind.  Many of them will be left to people who are foolish with what we have built up for them.  In fact Ecclesiastes reminds us that any pursuit of gain is folly because life is so fleeting.  Our eternal destiny is both our hope and our home.  With eyes fixed on our identity in God, the false identity will fall away.

The result of a heavenly focus is a contentedness and peace that we rarely see in this world.  I saw people on the way to work in Chicago who looked busy and focused as if their time here was about getting to work and accumulating wealth for an early retirement.  I didn’t see anyone who had a face of redeemed joy.  We might do well to learn from Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins who ultimately chooses his family over his career in the bank.  It is in living a joyful, peaceful life, that people who are attached to this world and its stress, business, and emptiness will marvel.  The question is whether you are digging deeply into the daily relationship with God to which he has called you, or whether you feed the false self that obscures the joy and relationship that we have.

Prayer

God, my father, I am not my stress.  I am not my anxiety.  I am not my sadness.  I am just passing through this world and my true identity is in heaven.  I am hidden in Christ, who knew sorrow and embodied joy.  May I rejoice and be law-abiding.  May all who follow you be model citizens for the good.

Questions

1. What desires might have waged war against a Christian’s true identity?
2. When you let go of false desires, what stops the craving?
3. What good might the ancients have done that would cause their neighbours to praise them?
4. What do you want?
5. How might living as an exile and embracing your true personality bring about praise for God?

Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. ² Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, ³ now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴ As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— ⁵ you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house^[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ For in Scripture it says:

⁷ Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

⁸ and,

They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Stone

The recipients of the letter are feeling disenfranchised and set aside.  As they have accepted that Jesus is the Messiah, they have been further pushed to the fringes of society.  Peter assures them that their experience parallels that of Jesus.  However, the reality of who Jesus is assures that just like he was ultimately significant, so they too will find their significance in their relationship with Jesus.  The ultimate reality of the spiritual perspective sees them as unified and centered on Jesus.  Whilst Jesus holds his followers together, ultimately he proves that those who reject Jesus and his followers are insecure.

Even though we may feel insecure and ostracized, our true identity is that we are secure and cared for.  In contrast, even though unbelievers may seem ‘together’ and hold power, ultimately they will fall and be crushed.  Since Jesus is the source of our true identity and security, we should long to be fed by him in ways that are truly nourishing.  If this strength and togetherness is to be our real experience, we must pursue Jesus to help us realize it.

Prayer

You were despised and rejected, Jesus.  You were cast aside like broken rubble.  However, the plan of the Father was to raise you to the key position in the Kingdom that he built.  Help me to realize the significance that I share by the connection to you.  I want to pursue you with constancy so that I may be secure and find my place in the building that lasts eternally.

Questions

1. Describe what the description of Jesus as a stone teaches us about him.
2. Why would persecuted outsiders in Asia Minor need to see Jesus this way?
3. What identity do faithful believers have as a church?
4. How does your church perceive itself?
5. How do you see yourself as a stone in a building centered on Christ?

¹³ Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. ¹⁴ As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. ¹⁵ But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; ¹⁶ for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”^[a]

¹⁷ Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. ¹⁸ For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, ¹⁹ but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. ²⁰ He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. ²¹ Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

²² Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.^{[b] 23} For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. ²⁴ For,

And this is the word that was preached to you.

Holy

Holy has two meanings of which I am aware.  One is set apart for God and the other is the ‘otherness’ of God.  Both are true for the Christian.  We are set apart by God and for God.  We are also changed so that our character becomes more godly.  As we focus on God our true self comes through and this results in more righteous work.  However, these acts that God calls us toward are not something which we can boast about because they are only possible because God is at work in us.

we are purified by obeying the truth.  The truth that the Christian obeys is to live life the way that it was designed to be lived.  Since the fall, things are messed up.  It is for the Christian to align the world once more with the way that God wanted it to be.

Prayer

Help us to remember that we are called to a different quality of life.  Help us to be holy as you are holy.  We are not to be as we once were.  help us to embrace change.

Questions

1. What does an alert and fully sober mind do?
2. What is the rationale for being holy?
3. How does one purify oneself?
4. Why might someone object to being pure and holy?
5. What is your next step in embracing holiness?

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

Things Into Which Angels Wish To Look

The salvation that rests upon us, covering us with God’s grace and cleaning our lives as we allow it to do its work, is something prophets preached about and angels marvel at.  We so often sell such a marvel cheaply at a teen camp or simplify its implications for our children.  However, adults who marvel in psychology at the complexity of humanity ought to marvel at the salvation that plumbs those depths and removes the dysfunction, anxiety, grief, and neuroses.  We feel things deeply and the depth of our feelings betrays deep issues working their way to the surface from subconscious caverns we don’t know how to explore.  We think profound thoughts and we make connections that surprise even us.  The work of salvation redeems the whole person, the heart and the mind.  It is a lifelong process.  However, we can detach and lose sight of feeling and thinking – in so doing the salvation of God is blocked by us – or maybe in the true sense it never really started.

To be saved a mind has to be inquiring and open.  To be saved the heart has to be transparent and shared.  It is painful to take such a stance when we would rather hide ourselves.  But no-one saves themselves by running into the darkness.  God saves us as we understand the message of the prophets and read the words of Scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit.  As we allow our true selves to engage with the text we are transformed.  This is no easy drill in biblical knowledge that many of us experienced in Sunday School.  A mere repetition of basic facts leads to boredom and business as usual.  We must understand what is said and look to its application.  We must break down the complexity of passages and break ourselves down as we come to read.  We must assess ourselves and have a true picture of how we are falling short of the life God has for us.  Then we must bring our lives, the word of God, the work of the Spirit, and the cross of Jesus together in glorious synthesis.  At that point changes break out that we are astounded by.  Attitudes toward the world are changed.  Relationships are healed.  In short – we are saved.  It is in that transformation that angels look at in wonder.  How can beings who fell so far from grace be renewed each day with such transformative power.  Satan snarls in a corner as those who seemed hardened like him are redeemed.

Prayer

Oh God, I don’t want to be saved and yet it is my heart’s deepest desire.  My ‘old self’ wishes to use its strategies to bring relief and deadness so that I sleep a pleasant sleep in this life.  I want to embrace the life you have called me to, yet I fear the path that it may lead.  The way of faith is marked by both preachers and martyrs.  The testimony of the saints is one of joy and pain.  However, they were alive.  They were more alive for the breadth of thought and emotion they could endure.  They were more alive because they were persistent and open.  Let us be the same.

Questions

1. What connection did the prophets have to salvation?
2. Who did the Old Testament prophets serve?
3. Into what do angels wish to look?
4. How open are you to the words of the prophets transforming you?
5. What is your reaction to the idea that angels look on the fact of salvation with wonder?

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, ² who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Education Exile

Scot McKnight, in his commentary on 1 Peter 1:1,2 thinks of ways that Christians have become exiles in North America and he brings up the topic of education.  I resonate with his analysis.  He outlines how, in the church, there were those who entertained higher criticism and questioned biblical authority and emphasized social justice.  Opposed to them was a group that emphasized biblical inerrancy, and the fundamentals of the faith, but in their focus on the spiritual they left the physical aspects of living unaddressed.  The former group engaged society in universities, the latter group withdrew and founded their own Bible colleges, like the one I teach at.  As a result, the biblical Christian voice has become marginal and disrespected in universities and colleges around the country.  It is seen as a quirky, private way to view life.  Public life is free from religion and free from the strife it brings.  Christian views are attacked openly at the college level, often with open prejudice and little academic rigour.  I know this from first hand experience where I was attacked repeatedly because I differed from the Marxist Christianity my undergraduate professor espoused.

This seeps down into our schooling.  Many Christian parents try and read the Bible with their children at home, especially when they are little.  However, God has no part in most Americans’ schooling and media consumption.  Then I began to think about my identity.  I know that the commentator I read today sees this, but am I a prophet?  It sounds arrogant and presumptuous, but the prophets of old just spoke the truth into their times.  Are we to own a title like ‘prophet’?  It does not fit with the identity that I see within me.  I see ‘fool’, ‘jester’, and ‘worthless’.  However, my vision may be skewed by the lies whispered from the darkness in moments of weakness.  In God’s strength we may own those titles the Bible gives to us.  We are priests, we are prophets and we are princes and princesses in the Kingdom of God.  Such titles awaken in me a longing to live out the calling that God issues.  However, I shrink back as voices from the past attack me and tear me down.  I think, though, that as I develop the voice that God declares is mine, I will warn anyone who will listen that the education we have chosen because it is public and ‘free’, has a cost that is pervasive and profound.  When we teach in any venue and God is not central and the scriptures do not inform our teaching, we must expect results where biblical thinking is absent and God is not glorified.  Indeed, that is the exodus from principled living that we are seeing.  Surely somewhere someone must stand up and question why those who want to preach Jesus in the classroom are exiled and who want to disciple children can only be sojourners in public education.  This earth is not our home.  However, can we take on the task of education so that we are teachers whose children are shaped by eternal truth and timeless principles?

Prayer

Father, I do not think it is for us to declare that we are a prophet.  However, I do think that we must stand for truth in an age that silences God in education, media, and commerce.  May we speak up for the God who defines us.  May our identity be in you.  If we find ourselves on the fringes, may we remember that it was ever so.  May we be encouraged by our brother Peter, who after writing this book make a stand to the point of death.

Questions

1. How are Christians aliens today in the media?
2. How are Christians aliens today in the education system?
3. How are Christians aliens in commerce?
4. Are there ways that you do not quite fit in because you are following Jesus?
5. What message has Jesus uniquely prepared you to share?

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,² who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Who Are we?

As we sat in small group tonight it became a sobering realisation:  Most of us see that we have an identity in Christ that we do not live out.  We see ourselves as athletes and performers at best, but do we see ourselves as Jesus sees us?  We have:

1. A new birth into a living hope.
2. We have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.
3. We are shielded by God’s power.
4. We love him and believe in him.
5. We have an inexplicable joy which causes us to rejoice.

We want these things to be true, but in practice something rang hollow for some of us.  Circumstances leave us somewhere short of rejoicing.  We do not see ourselves in a new life of expectancy looking forward to heaven.  We have not cultivated a stance where we look to heaven each morning and set our bearings with the beauty of heaven in our view.  However, if we can see the futility of our money, our possessions, and our status we would be more motivated to throw off the things that entangle us and press on to heaven.

Fear of rejection, fear for our safety, and fear of losing control occupy us.  If we accepted that we are secure and accepted,  shielded by his power, we would not be robbed of our joy by various fears.  I am in the process of releasing my fears to God and gradually watching the tide turn as I accept these truths which lie obscured beneath.  We have an inexplicable joy that is available to us.  I have experienced it recently, but I have allowed circumstances to cause me to forget.  This is why Peter wrote this letter to remind people.  This is who you are.  Speak it to each other.  God has your back.

Prayer

This identity seems hard to grasp.  However, it is what we are born into.  This reality is mine for the taking, but I have not realised it as a daily reality.  How did the exiles receiving the letter change their perspective.  Teach me to fret less and redefine my identity.

Questions

1. How does Peter identify himself?
2. How does Peter identify his recipients?
3. Why did his recipients need to hear this?
4. How do you identify yourself?  How does this change how you feel?
5. How can you change your view to how God sees you?