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. 

Prophets Are Not Just God’s Gramophone (Old Record Players)

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.

The work was done by the prophets.  Peter is not preaching something new or different.  He is not diverting from the faith of their fathers and mothers.  That is the argument he is making for the Diaspora Jews.  What is this careful search and inquiry?

My mind jumps to the prophet Isaiah about this.  A lot of the prophetic passages tying into the life of Jesus are drawn from there.  I think of Christmas, Jesus as Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  I think of the passage of the Suffering Servant “by his stripes (whipped stripes) we are healed.”

This goes to the nature of prophesy.  The Old Testament prophets were not simply the mouth-pieces of God, serving as divine gramophones of whatever God wanted the people to hear.  No, their role was to interpret and present God’s message to the people at the various times of their faith.  Sometimes they presented tragedy (Lamentations of Jeremiah), sometimes judgment (Nathan to King David), sometimes they presented their own stories of mistrust and avoidance of God (Jonah). 

One thing they had in common was a concern for the Hebrews, God’s Chosen People, and what was needed for their continued blessing and grace from their God.  Such is the reason behind the New Testament as well.  We don’t simply call them prophets because they were not carrying God’s message, but rather they demonstrating God’s greatest message, Jesus, to the world, interpreting Jesus and his ministry for the needs of the world.

And each one, in their own time and circumstances, carried God's message to the people in the language and culture of their time and place.  It is from there, that Peter looks back on their work that points to the Risen Lord.

Of Prophets Predicting Grace to be Ours

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.

It isn’t new.  Salvation is not new.  The prophets prophesied of the grace that was to come to the Jews of the Diaspora.  Note specifically what has been prophesied, “grace”.  Something to consider in personal bible study, the use of words by the biblical authors.  This grace for Peter’s audience has been prophesied about. 

What does Peter mean by grace?

“Grace” has only occurred one other time in Peter’s letter to date, at the very opening, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”  Go back over that last paragraph, the laying out of salvation and the gifts of God, and you will see the grace to which Peter refers.  So ‘grace’ is not something isolated in the prophets.  It is a whole package, “concerning salvation”.  It is all grace, grace from God, given, not earned, a gift from the Creator of the Universe.

Now, there isn’t the time in this blog to lay out the proofs of the Old Testament of the work, nature, and power of Jesus.  And this is not something Peter went and looked up for himself.  Searching out the prophets is a lesson from Jesus himself, before he went to heaven. 

From Luke 24: 44 Then he (Jesus) said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah^* is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses^* of these things.

And this is the thing that Peter is passing along in turn to the Jews of the Diaspora.

Answering Those Who Would Cut Jesus off from the Jewish Faith

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.

“Concerning this salvation…”  In the last paragraph, Peter laid out the triumphant gifts of God, given through His mercy for the salvation of His people.  He spoke of the Jesus he knew, now gone up to heaven, but returning in triumph once again.  His argument is that the difficulties that the Diaspora Jews have endured by faith in Jesus will be well worth the reward of faithfulness in the time to come.

But now Peter is moving forward in his letter, unfolding the next logical step in his discussions of salvation.  What he has presented as ‘salvation’ is not a new teaching, according to Peter.  Rather, it can be tied back into the faith that the Jews come out of, the faith of what Christians label ‘the Old Testament’.  We will develop that in the coming days.

One very interesting thing about reading the epistles, the personal letters of faith, mostly by Paul, but also by Peter, James, John, and Jude, is to consider who each is replying to.  What do I mean?  This is a personal piece of correspondence.  It is a personal letter.  It is written for a purpose, to exhort and lift the spirits of the Jews in the regions that are mentioned at the beginning.  This presupposes that their spirits need lifting, that something is going on that is threatening to undermine their faith.

First, Peter goes through again the gifts of God for the people of God embodied in Jesus, grace, love, and salvation, among others.  So it is fair to assume opponents of the faith were questioning that Jesus was indeed sent by God.  But a second challenge here seems to be that Peter is not connected to the Jewish faith, but is, in fact, bringing something new, something different, changing what the Jews have from God.  If they can cut the roots of Peter’s teachings from the Jewish faith, these unnamed opponents could force this faith in Jesus to wither and die.

But Peter is going to deal with that.

 

Jesus is the Apex of God’s Plan

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

Peter has laid out for the faithful what happened to Jesus.  He has placed it into the grand plan of God for our salvation.  He has set down its value, giving the Jews of the Diaspora the hope of the salvation which was preached to them.  Now, he is turning a corner, building on the foundation of God’s great plan of mercy and salvation by appealing to the “Bible”, the Holy Scriptures that the Jews have, as the proof that Jesus has always been the intended apex of God’s work.

Concerning this salvation,:  Peter is looking now to build on the concept of “salvation”, just outlined in the previous sentences.

the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours:  Now he looks back, to what we call the Old Testament, connecting what is happening now with what came before

made careful search and inquiry,: This is a citation of their care and authority in carrying out the work they wrote of.

inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated,: The Spirit has come upon this new generation at Pentecost.  Peter is looking to the Spirit that was on previous generations of faith.

when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ: Peter is placing a historic context for the suffering of Jesus, placing it in the Plan of God as revealed  in God’s work.

and the subsequent glory.: But the suffering of Jesus is not where the story ends.  The glory of Christ is part of the same prophetic story.