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.