Standing in the Thunderstorm, Praising God!

“Although you have not seen^* him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”  Vss. 8-9

Crap, crap, crap.  This voice, from two thousand years ago, is reaching out and grabbing me by the throat and reminding me of how freaking wonderful my faith is.  Personal epiphany and reminder of this faith I hold dear!  How does one share in a blog post that being reminded of the obvious can make the faith fun?

Part 2 of the couplet that started with ‘you have not seen him’.  Yes, Jesus has risen to the Father by the time of this writing.  He’s been gone anywhere from 3 to 30 years at this point.  “You do not see him now”.  Past to present, Jesus not in either.  The promise, however, is that we will see him in the future.

We believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy because we have the future promise of seeing him once more.  He came once, he’ll come again. 

Peter is naming the reality.  This is not salvation history, this is not the future of revelation of God’s plan, this is not some tricky theological discussion. 

Go back and watch the “Shawshank Redemption”, this is the moment when Tim Robbins is standing outside the prison walls, hands raised to the cleansing of the thunderstorm, knowing he is free.  This is Lt. Dan in “Forrest Gump”, the day after he was up on the mast of the shrimping boat, challenging God for all he was worth, and finding faith once again.

How do you describe what is indescribable?  How do you truly define ‘glorious’?  I can’t.  I only know that my faith resonates with what Peter is saying.  Does yours?

Dear Jesus, We Are Taking The Word of A Guy About You!

“Although you have not seen^* him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”  Vss. 8-9

Well, there is a wonderful mystery of the faith.  What Peter says is right, for me at least.  I haven’t seen Jesus, but I love him.  Peter is assuming the same thing of his audience.  I would think that is a reasonable assumption.  If they didn’t, why would they read his letter?

Yes, “he” and “him” throughout this sentence refer to Jesus.  Pronouns can be funny things in Bible verses sometimes. 

Peter assumes his audience loves Jesus because their faith has been tested, because they have come through the fire.  Praise, glory, and honor in Jesus are the result of their faithfulness, as we have seen in the last sentence. 

And the testing of their faith results in the genuineness being revealed, because their faith is built upon the promise and plan that God has put into effect.  Thus they can love this Jesus who they’ve never seen.

Such is a grand testing of faith.  This guy-Peter-comes in and starts preaching about someone who showed up, died, and rose again back in the motherland.  There is only the whole ‘grand plan of God’ to explain it.  He doesn’t have the YouTube feed of Jesus walking on water, photobombs of Jesus and the feasting 5000, even network news to back him up with reports of a strange, new Judean phenom.

For two thousand years, all we’ve had is someone who told someone else about Jesus, and wrote it down for us to have now.   I am having a ‘mind blown’ moment about the power of faith.  I have never seen the guy and I love Jesus.  Wow.

More Blessed Than Peter; Those Who Have Never Seen Jesus

“Although you have not seen^* him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”  Vss. 8-9

It is a fascinating thing to consider.  The Jews Peter is preaching to only have his word for what happened.  None of them were there to witness what happened to Jesus.  And yet they believe.  Of course, that is also our experience.  Maybe the fascinating thing to consider is the flip of this situation.  Consider that Peter walked with (on land and water), talked with (and argued and denied), and was chosen by Jesus to carry the keys to the kingdom.  He is someone who KNEW Jesus!

This next sentence carries forward to those in Peter’s audience who have carried through the trials endured for the faith.  It is not simply looking forward to the end for praise, honor and glory.  This is the paradigm of their current faith.

“Although you have not seen^* him, you love him; We hold that in common with Peter’s audience.  At least I hope we do.  Peter began by explaining why we should love Jesus, then placing a context around the trials they have undertaken.  Here, he speaks to the result of all that.

and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, This is a couplet with the first phrase, repeating the heart of the phrase, but with a slight variation.  They did not see Jesus when he was on earth, they do not see him now, but the implicit promise is that they WILL see him in the future.  And Peter does not consider the results of believing in him to be a disappointment.

for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, We have faith for a reason.  Such is what Peter started explaining his letter with, the plan of God and the outcome that it will bring to the lives of believers.

the salvation of your souls. Salvation history was summed up in less than a hundred words.  Here is the explicit tying in of that history to the lives of the believers to whom Peter writes.

Another shift to note in this sentence, God is no longer explicitly defined.  That context has been set, Peter is now exploring the relationship between his audience and Jesus.

 

“K, is it worth it? Yes, if you are strong enough.” Quoted from Men in Black

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  1 Peter 1: 6-7 

The Jews of the Diaspora are called upon to rejoice in the fulfillment of the promise of the Messiah by God.  It is the first ‘hands on’ work from God for almost two centuries.  That is the time of silence from the last prophet, Malachi, to the coming of Jesus.  The death and resurrection of Jesus, and what that means, it is all set in the context of God the Father, God the Creator, the God that Christians and Jews continue to share (but we might do a better job of it!).

Peter is seeking to create a context for the trials they have suffered.  The context is that of refinement by fire.  They have been challenged, we do not know exactly what they went through.  But in the end, they are stronger for it.  It is the exposure of the genuineness of their faith.  It would have been easiest to simply drop all the “Jesus-talk” and slid back to what they believed before.

But Peter would have no reason to write to those people.

This audience is standing firm.  And Peter is seeking to support them in their faith, looking to what they have to look forward to.  It is reassurance that what they are suffering is, in fact, worth the trouble.

               

Praise and Glory and Honor, the Things of God for Us?

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  vvs. 6-7 

The result of the testing by fire of our faith is praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.   When is Jesus Christ going to be revealed?  Peter’s writing seems to imply that it will be imminent.   Jesus has gone within this generation, the expectation that he will return within this generation.  This was never made explicit-in fact, Jesus went out of his way to make sure that the day of his return was NOT explicit, that it was the Father’s choice, and a choice he was not a part of.

But praise and glory and honor are the result.  Are these simply synonyms, a triplet of the same idea intended for effect?  In the bible, these words are usually reserved for God.  They are words of high worship, of what is given to, what is deserved by God.  In this phrase, it is not clear whether these are meant for God, coming from the genuineness of our faith, or they fall upon us, because our faith has been tested by fire, or the result is for both.

Praise is the lifting of voices in words of positive affirmation to another.  Glory is the provision of positive affirmation lifted up to another.  Honor is positive affirmation given in fealty, in service, to another.  “Positive affirmation” drains each term of the full measure of intensity implied.  “Intense positive affirmation” begins to sound silly.  Most importantly, we see here the results of being faithful even when having undergone trials.

And because we are gathered unto God in that which we have received, I believe that the whole of the faithful, God and ourselves, will receive the result when Jesus is revealed.

The More We Defend It, the More It Means To Us.

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  vvs. 6-7 

Their faith is more precious than gold.  It’s genuineness (awkward word) is being tested by the trials that they undergo.  It is easy to claim faith unchallenged.  Speaking the right words, making sure they sound good to the right ears, that is a simple way of pretending the faith. 

But these people are not pretending the faith.  Their faith is being tested by fire.  In the last posting, I speculated that this is not the “Christians versus Lions” that will come later in the history of the church, but there is still something seriously challenging these people, enough for Peter to take notice.

How does something test the genuineness of your faith?  It pushes on you to defend that faith when doing so is uncomfortable.  When we are challenged about Jesus, it is easier to keep our mouths shut.  Easier still is to have never opened our mouths about Jesus in the first place, never put ourselves in a place where we might even be challenged.

Our faith is perishable, more precious than gold, but perishable when undergoing trials.  It seems that some of Peter’s audience have found their faith perishable, that they have given it up under the trials they have undertaken.  But to endure gives us something far more precious, something well worth it.

Not Quite Time for “Christians vs. Lions”

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  vvs. 6-7 

Reality.

Those coming to believe in the message preached by Peter, by Paul, by the other disciples, they are suffering trials for their faith.  This is not the full blown persecution that Christianity is going to suffer in the next generations of the church under the Romans.  This is not yet time for that videogame “Christians vs. Lions”.  That will come.

Peter is writing to Jews, in the synagogues of the Roman Empire.  He is preaching Jesus as the embodiment of the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament.  The Church and Synagogue have not yet formally broken apart.  But it is coming.

In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, we see the conflicts that are beginning to arise within the Jewish faith concerning the Jesus-Preachers.  Read Acts 4: 1-22, 5:12-42, and 12: 1-19 and you can follow the evolution of the divisions within the Jewish faith caused by the sharing of the gospel message.

It is against this backdrop that the Jews of the Diaspora are receiving the gospel preached to them.  Peter is acknowledging their struggles-he has had his own-and seeking to put them in the context of the greater power of God.

Cosmic Joy to Overcome Earthly Trials

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  vvs. 6-7 

Peter’s audience rejoices in what they have received by the mercy of God.  What they have received is a cosmic-level change of life and circumstance.  It is nothing less than God providing to them a covenant that cannot fail, God setting up a system that is not dependent on how the people act.  It is not an excuse to live lives of sin and evil, simply assuming God covers all the bad we do.  But God knows and judges the heart.  It is a cosmic-level knowledge that God knows the true intention of our hearts even in the midst of human failure.

They can rejoice because the new birth, the living hope, these were accomplished through the resurrection of Jesus.  A real, permanent event took place to solidify the promise of God.  Understand what took place before, temporary sacrifices of animals to take the place of the sinner, taking on the punishment of death that is judgment for sin.  Those sacrifices could not end, for sin did not end.

To the Jews who lived with easy access to Jerusalem, the sacrifices could be brought with relative ease to the temple.  But these are Jews of the Diaspora, scattered across the Roman Empire.  They returned to Jerusalem as they were able, maybe once a year, maybe not, maybe never.  What Peter is preaching is freedom from the geographic binding they have to the Promised Land.

This did not mean they could not return, it simply meant that they could return from a desire, not an obligation.  It was liberating. 

But in opposition to the rejoicing taking place at a cosmic level, there are trials because of the faith going on in their daily lives.  Peter starts with reminding them of the joy they have as a foundation to deal with those trials.

Which we will look at more tomorrow.

Peter is Writing to People Experiencing Who Are Experiencing Trials for Their Faith.

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  vvs. 6-7 

To sum things up to date, Peter is greeting the Jewish believers in the section of modern-day Turkey that seems to be his area of missionary responsibility.  He leads with God, not Jesus, supporting the idea of a Jewish audience, using God as the entry point into their religious thinking.  From there, Peter lays out what the promise of salvation is, through the last sentence.

 But it seems that the actual experience of Peter’s readers is not as positive.  Peter is seeking to give interpretation to the suffering that they have undergone, looking from a present to a future view.

In this you rejoice,  They rejoice in the promise of God’s new birth into a living hope as outlined in the last sentence.

even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials,  This line seems to get at the reason for Peter’s letter, a letter of support and interpretation of the persecution they are receiving for their faith.

so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—  Persecution, Peter is arguing, makes their faith more real-not something of convenience, but a refined commodity of great value.

may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  The readers are being assured of the reward for their faithfulness, looking forward to when it shall be revealed.

 

This letter was written before the Fall of Jerusalem, before the faithful were scattered to the four winds of the Empire.  This sentence and the last carry an immediacy about the end times, when ‘it shall be revealed’.  Jesus was very clear that the date of His return was not known on earth, but the expectation of Jesus’ return is very strong in this writing.

Peter Wrote Before the Separation of Christian and Jew

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1: 3-5

Going back to the beginning of the letter, Peter is writing to the Jewish Diaspora.  If he were writing to Gentiles-to us-as Paul did, his introduction would have put Jesus in the center stage.  Consider, for example, Romans 1:

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the glory of God…”

For Peter, God “chose and destined”, God be “blessed” as the Father of Jesus, by God’s great mercy, God has given us a new birth… 

Why is this so important?  Because Peter is seeking a seamless intersection of the Jewish faith with the coming and presence of Jesus.  The division of church and synagogue will not come until later.  The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an expansion of the Messianic expectation found in the Old Testament.  God is sending somebody, someone the Jewish faith is expecting.  Peter says this person is Jesus.

But God is the author, the protector, and the preserver of all that has come about.  The inheritance is in heaven, protected by God, accessed through our faith, but preserved to the final salvation at the end of time.  All of this is from God, because…

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  1 Peter 1: 6-7 

These words we will consider next.

We Are Working Up To The Final Reveal!

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Herein is the final part of the promise, its ultimate fulfillment.  This is about the end of time.  It does not contain the complex imagery or final battles described in the book of Revelation.  The new birth, the living hope, the inheritance kept in heaven, protected by the power of God through faith, these are the elements of ‘salvation’. 

Being saved, being born again, gaining our salvation, having new life in Christ, however we want to say it, Peter has brought together all the elements in one sentence.  In bringing about our salvation, it begins in the mercy of God.

It is ready to be revealed in the last time.  Not now, then, sometime…we are still waiting.  This is the stuff of the Second Coming, of Jesus’ final return.  Then, everything will be fulfilled. 

In the present, we are building toward that.  The resurrection of Jesus has happened, the mercy of God is ours, a new birth to a living hope, they are promised.  The work of today is to prepare for the final revealing.  This is the reason for Peter's letter.  The work to that final achievement is going forward.  This letter is a step along the way.

 

God is in Charge of the Prenup.

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The new birth and the inheritance are being protected by the power of God.  Peter has seen it, living through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, living under the blessing.  The new birth is a new life in Christ.  The inheritance is the eternity of that new life.  

The power of God protects them, but the mercy of God is what granted them in the first place.  They may be understood as something being kept in heaven until some future point in time, protected by the power of God, but through faith.  Faith is our part of the bargain. 

This is the change.  In previous relationship agreements-kind of "divine-human prenuptial agreements"; in bible-lingo the term is ‘covenant’-in previous covenant agreements between God and humanity, our end of the bargain was dependent on our behavior.  Do good, get blessed.  Screw up, get cursed.  It works very nicely with the geography of Israel, because the land of Israel is dependent on rainfall. 

There is imagery throughout the Old Testament of God sending the blessing of rain when they behaved, and turning off the tap when they didn’t.

But that didn’t work.  Such covenants linked faith with actions, doing and believing the right thing, and blessings followed.  But people began to assume their actions gave the blessings, they turned faith upon themselves.  Comfort carried them away from the God who cared for them.  So punishment would come, the people would get their acts together, realize the true giver of their blessings, and there would be another round of covenant, until that too slipped away.

This time, the prenup is in God’s power, by the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  It begins with faith, a faith in the reality that Jesus died so we don’t have to.  And actions, instead of being required first, now follow from the faith, actions of gratitude so that we will never forget where the blessings came from.  Thank you Lord for straightening us out.

Our Inheritance: God is Keeping Our Grubby Hands Off-For Now

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The inheritance is kept in heaven.  Great, so what use is it to us down here?  Well, we are given a new birth into a living hope.  The hope is what will come to us in time.  The Promise of God's mercy is fulfilled at the end of time.  Given that the inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, why would we keep it down here on the earth?

Taken by itself, I might ask what are we supposed to do in the here and now? 

But that will come.  Peter is not telling us the inheritance being kept in heaven is because we are somehow unworthy of it until we get there.  No, it is in heaven, backed by the full faith and credit of our Father who art in Heaven. 

This is a new relationship between God and humanity.  Relationships were reestablished with Abraham, with Moses, with David, but all ended in failure-because of humanity.  This relationship, this is a promise that God is making to humanity that will not fail.  

And it will not fail because we have nothing to do with it.  It was by God’s mercy that we are offered a new birth.  It was by the death and resurrection of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that it took place-not by anything we were supposed to do.  And God preserves this gift for us until its final fulfillment up in heaven.  God is keeping our grubby hands off of it so it cannot fail. 

Fort Knox, the Bank of England, whatever earthly place of security that we can imagine, has nothing on the security of heaven.  Thank you Lord.

Finally, Inheriting what Adam and Eve Bungled

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

“imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”, these sound to me like they are attributes of God., to use an expression from classic systematic theology.  Systematic Theology, the systematic approach to Scripture with the purpose of drawing out universal theological subjects and themes.  An example are the divine ‘omni’s’;  God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient-all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing.

So, our inheritance...

Imperishable: the inheritance cannot perish, it cannot be destroyed, it cannot rot.  Undefiled: the inheritance cannot be tainted by the effects of sin and evil in the world (because it ain’t in the world).  Unfading: the inheritance will never lose its luster, but is as amazing and powerful on the  day we accepted it until the day when it comes into our hands.

The inheritance comes from God’s great mercy.  It is a new birth into a living hope.  It comes through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  What we have inherited is what God already has, eternal (imperishable) life, in the realm of perfection (undefiled), that is everlasting (unfading).  It is what we were created to achieve in the Garden of Eden until Adam and Eve bungled it (and each person has bungled it in turn since that day). 

From the dredges of high school or college literature, I have a memory of a Greek myth concerning someone who had eternal life, but not eternal youth or vitality.  A wikipedia search later revealed the name of Tithonus, half blessed by Zeus-Tithonus aging forever but never dying.  I wonder if Peter knew that myth.  Because we are certainly getting a much better deal.

This inheritance is what Jesus died for in our place, accepting punishment in our place.  This inheritance is what he was raised for, brought to the new birth everyone can in turn receive.