One Tale, One Spirit, One Authority from Old Testament to New

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

This is the progress of the revelation.  “Revelation”, not the last book of the Bible where God and the Devil engage in the final “Wrestlemania”, but revelation, “revealed”, shown to us, given to us, laid out for us.  What Peter is talking about is how the God’s promises have been revealed to his audience and, by extension, to us.

The revelation began with the prophets of the Old Testament.  They had the Word of God for their time, and they had the Word of God for the future.  They predicted, and were aware that they were making predictions of Jesus for the future. 

But in this phrase, Peter is expanding the deliverers of God’s revelation.  It was not simply the prophets of old.  “The things that have been announced” have been announced by Peter himself and the rest of the apostles.  Their credentials are that they brought Good News “by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven”. 

It is “Pentecostal” authority…and no, I do not mean they are connected to the Pentecostal Churches of today.  Rather, the apostles received their authority at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit sent from heaven came upon them.  The churches that self-identify as “Pentecostal” today are identifying with that same authority, that same Spirit sent from heaven.

In the previous sentence, vss. 10 and 11, Peter identifies the “Spirit of Christ” working with the prophets of Old, the same Holy Spirit sent from heaven working with the apostles of the present.  What is constant is the presence of God, through God’s Spirit.  The Holy Spirit=the Spirit of Christ, the “third person” of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Why does it matter?  It matters because Peter is here equating his authority with what they, the Jews, have invested in the ‘Old Testament’, that same authority is to be found in the work and words of the prophets and the apostles.  The story of God’s revelation began back with the prophets, but it continues with the apostles.  It is one tale to be found and continued from Old Testament to New.  One tale, one spirit, one authority given by God for the salvation of humanity.

Our Faith-Gentile Faith, is founded upon the Jewish Faith

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

The prophets of the Old Testament knew they were serving future generations, not just themselves.  So Peter leads in.  But there is a focus on what they are revealing.  Not everything spoken then has the same relevance today.  That makes sense.  Prophecy from the Old Testament was God’s revelation to the people at that time.  Not all would have relevance to us today.

It is “in regard to the things that have now been announced to you” that the prophets had some sense of future service.  That makes sense.  Isaiah’s passages on the Suffering Servant, from which we see the final hours of Jesus predicted, that was for a future, for the restoration of Israel. 

The things that have been announced, this is the content of the previous eleven verses, the promise and fulfillment of salvation, the plan of God to give us Jesus, the renewed way of faith and practice that Peter is preaching, connected to but growing forward from the faith practices of the Jews into what become the practices of Christianity.

This letter continually reminds me that the earliest development of the faith was not into the world of the Gentiles, but that it was a fulfillment and development of the Jewish faith, presented by Jewish apostles to the Jewish communities that extended across the Roman Empire.  Built into that Jewish faith-renewal are promises made to Abraham that through him “the whole world will be blessed”.

We are blessed, as Gentiles, through the Jewish faith of our Savior.  The things Peter announces to them have, in turn, been announced to us.  May we never forget our foundation.

Called Across Time

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

This is one of those multi-pronoun sentences that drive English teachers a little batty.  Who is what and whom in a sentence like this?  “Them”, “they”, and “themselves” refer back to the prophets from the last sentence, those who had done careful searches and inquiries after the person and work of Jesus. 

They were not serving themselves.  I think that means that they were not simply writing what was given them to prophets for their own benefit and the benefit of the moment, but that their writings were going to have an impact in the future.  It talks about how the Spirit of Christ was at work in them.  I believe Peter is telling us that the prophets knew they were writing things down that were going to be for the future audience after the person and work of Jesus had come to pass.

Now, they did not know the specifics.  The various prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament do not lay out the days and weeks of his life, but they lay out themes, they lay out direction, they lay out patterns in the life of Jesus as the Messiah.  I think Peter is trying to tell us that the prophets were conscious of the fact that their words were forward-looking and would affect the lives and views of future generations.

Why does it matter?  It matters to the Jews of the Diaspora, to Peter’s audience, because the message of Jesus is personal for them.  It is coming to THEM.  It went to others as well, we have only to read the other letters of the New Testament, but there is an expectation that the prophets were reaching out to Jews who were exiled and living out and beyond the land of Israel.

Being outside the land of Israel did not condemn them to a second-class citizenship, where they had to pilgrimage back to the Holy Land to maintain some faith connection.  There is a broad liberation in the word and work of Jesus that Peter is presenting.  It is a gift meant for them from the mouths of the prophets themselves.

From Prophets to Apostles to Us

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)

 

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you,

“It”, the salvation message, “them”, the prophets, they were not serving themselves, they were serving the Jews to whom Peter is writing (and by extension, us).  The prophetic messages have a reach across from the time they were written to the current time.

in regard to the things that have now been announced to you

It may not be a 100% transfer of data.  The things that the prophets spoke of that have NOW been announced to the Jews of the Diaspora, the things that are currently being preached about, the things that Peter is sharing in his letter, they are the prophetic pieces that have reached across.

through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-

This speaks to the apostles, including Peter, and the gift of the Holy Spirit received from heaven, from God, on Pentecost.  There is a divine screener of information.  It was from that moment that the apostles started dancing in the streets and going out with a boldness that was unstoppable.  This is the boldness that Peter brings to his writing.

things into which angels long to look!

Point taken!  We have been given the gift of this salvation, as mentioned, this good news by the Holy Spirit, something that angels themselves wish to see.  I think this is the basis of many Hollywood portrayals of angels making them jealous of us poorly humans.

Jesus, New-But Not New

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. (vss.10-11)

It’s new, but it’s not new.  It is different, but it is rooted in what came before.  Peter is focusing the message of salvation, as presented up to now, in the Old Testament, in the Bible of his audience.  Drawing out the prophesies of Jesus from the Old Testament, Peter is saying that the Spirit of Christ is what guided their hands and hearts, their searches and inquiries.

It is not simply some vague search into the past for predictions of Jesus, it is not something so general as to be useless, but it rather focused, this inquiry.  With a broad enough set of predictions about some Messiah in the future, one could make the argument that it was not Jesus, but somebody else that was being predicted.  This testimony, in advance, is of the sufferings that Christ would undertake, and the glory that will come, focused details from the life and ministry of Jesus that cannot be so easily denied.

The focus on the sufferings, and then the glory of Jesus dispel another misconception about Jesus coming into the world.  Many in the land of Judea were looking for a warrior-king, which Jesus was not.  The paradigm of the Messiah was the New David, not the Suffering Servant.  Jesus not filling that role could be argument to reject him altogether.

Peter is laying out a bigger argument, arguing that God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, what in the Trinity is the Holy Spirit, is the divine guide to what the prophets brought from the words of God, what the prophets brought as the message fulfilled in Jesus, what the prophets brought from their careful search and inquiry to reveal the grace, to reveal ‘this salvation’ that comes through Jesus.

Even in the midst of Good, Evil Reinfects

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.   1 Peter 1: 10-11

This is the Easter Morning to the Good Friday.  It is like the sufferings destined for Christ piled up from the moment that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and gained the knowledge of good and evil.  Then, from the moment of his resurrection on Easter morning, the subsequent glory began, to be fulfilled on the day of Jesus’ Second Coming.

This is the parallel I see in the prophets speaking of suffering and glory.  It is what I see in the progression of Holy Week.  It is what I see from the very beginning of the Bible, in its explanation of Original Sin.  We gained the knowledge of Good and Evil, just like God has.  And since then, one cannot exist without the other.  Evil happens but Good rises up to overcome it.  Look at 9/11 and its aftermath, or the recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy. 

Yet, even in the midst of the Good, Evil reinfects.  Consider the battles, to this day, over health care and recompense for responders and victims of 9/11.  Consider that now, two and half years later, there are still houses to be built following the Superstorm.  Those are the big examples from life.  Taking our own lives day by day, can we not see the suffering and the glory of living intermixed?

I am proud when there are people doing amazing things to overcome the effects of evil.  I am proud to work with police and fire fighters, with the Office of Emergency Management and Preparedness, to be active myself.  But what pulls me down is then to see the complacency sneak back in.  I want to know this is the subsequent glory that Jesus will bring, the ability for us to do Great Good and know that feeling, know that wonder, without fading, without getting complacent, without returning to the questions of serving the self instead of serving others.

The Good Friday Portion of Peter’s Letter

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

I stepped away from this for Easter, but, reading this next sentence in the light of Holy Week, it gives me shivers.  What is “it” that testified?  Peter was speaking of the prophets.  He still is, of their collected writings.  “It” is the volume of those writings, preserved since the earliest times of the Israelite nation. 

“It testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ.”  I am flashing back to our Tenebrae service on Good Friday, where we read the story of Jesus descending to his death upon the cross.  The conclusion of that service is a reading from Isaiah 53: 4 and following.  I see Peter looking up from those scrolls, these readings in Isaiah, as he pens these words.  Direct connection of the suffering servant to the person of Jesus Christ. 

This returns to the theme that we are not looking at some new, we are looking at something renewed.  Did Isaiah have Jesus in mind when he wrote his prophecy?  Did any of the prophets know, looking forward in some crystal ball, how their writings would become the foundation of the work and person of Jesus in the minds and hearts of their fellow Jews?  How could they?  God's revelation comes in unexpected ways, faithful to the old, but different in its present place.

These are sufferings ‘destined’ for Christ.  Why did Christ have this destiny?  Why was he destined to suffer?  That goes to a very mystery of the faith.  But it repeats a pattern that we’ve experienced through our history, suffering than glory.  A bad thing leads to a marvelous thing.  In Peter’s case, the suffering leads to the Glory of Christ, to be accomplished at the end of time.

At Eastertime, the suffering of Good Friday leads to the Glory of Easter morning.

In our lives, the suffering of disaster, for me, most recently, reflections on Hurricane Sandy, they lead to the glory of a response and a recovery that overcomes the suffering of the storm.