Transcript

ANNOUNCER: How does the salvation of the soul in 1 Peter relate to our suffering for Christ? Why should we expect it, and what is the result of suffering? Thank you, friend, for joining us today. We’re glad you’re with us here on Grace in Focus. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is FaithAlone.org. We’d love you to go there and find out about our magazine. It is a free subscription magazine. It is also titled Grace in Focus. Published six times per year every other month with great articles, great information about our free grace position. Once again, the subscription is free. You only have to pay for postage if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States. Get signed up today at faithalone.org. 

And now with our teaching today from 1 Peter, here’s Bob Wilkin along with David Renfro. 

BOB: David, we’ve come to the second half of 1 Peter, chapter 3, and we’ll be looking at 13 through 22. And that kind of breaks nicely between two parts. The first part is our suffering, right? And the second part is Christ’s suffering. And as you’ve been mentioning all through here, 1 Peter is about the salvation of the psuche, the soul, or the inner self, both in terms of fullness of life now, even in the midst of suffering, or especially in the midst of it, but also greater glory in the life to come. And so we come to the part of the letter where he’s specifically addressing the salvation of our psuche through the experience of suffering. That’s verses what, 13 through 17? 

DAVID: Correct. Yeah, if a believer is going to suffer, Peter is saying suffer for doing good for obeying the Lord, not do what the world wants you to do, or something like that. 

BOB: This isn’t talking about, for example, someone who robs a bank and goes to prison. That’s suffering for doing evil. 

DAVID: Yeah, it’s like somebody saying, I robbed a bank for Jesus or something like that. No. But if you suffer because instead of obeying somebody’s evil desire, you obey the Lord and you suffer for it, you’re rejected, you’re socially ostracized, whatever happens. If you’re going to suffer, suffer for that. 

BOB: Yeah, and we tend to think, well, we here in the United States and in many of the countries, we don’t really experience imprisonment and martyrdom, but that’s not to say we don’t suffer. We suffer a lot because as we tell people about Christ, we have people who rebuke us, call us idiots. We have people who give us the evil eye. 

DAVID: Laugh in our face. 

BOB: They laugh in our face. And on top of that, we have people who behind our backs are saying, we’re foolish because we pay our taxes or we’re foolish because we don’t get drunk with them, or we don’t do drugs with them, or we don’t laugh at their dirty jokes, or whatever it is. There’s a lot of suffering that way. And then on top of all that, we suffer because we see the fact that our world is so opposed to God and to creation and the creation mandate. And marriage as God set it forth and the idea of the importance of family and gender and all of these things are under attack today. If we’re grieved over that, well, in 2 Peter, Peter talks about Lot and he calls him righteous Lot, who so was tormented daily by the wickedness that was around him in Sodom. So there’s lots of ways we suffer, but let’s look at verse 13. 

DAVID: “And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good?” Now, keep in mind, this is, verse 13 is based upon the verse right before it. You know, it says, the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, his ears are open. Some people have made the observation, in the Old Testament, when it talks about the eyes of the Lord, it’s protection. And then the ears of the Lord are open to their prayers. That’s provision. All my studies in the Old Testament, it talks about the Lord has three major roles in Israel’s life and by extension ours, deliverance, protection, and provision. And this is doing the protection and provision. And now based upon that, we are to suffer for good. Like if we suffer for rejecting like what you just described, what the world wants us to do, we need to suffer like it says in verse 14, suffer for righteousness’ sake. If you do, you are blessed. Don’t be afraid of their threats or be trouble. Why? Because the eyes of the Lord are upon you. 

BOB: That’s good. And in that day, they did have people who would threaten them, either physically in terms of being beaten or even in prison, but also threaten their business. And lost of things. So Christians were ostracized in the first century.

DAVID: Absolutely. Think about this, that if you become a believer and you leave the pagan world and something bad happens to the area that you’re living in, the pagans that live around you could say, well, such and such a God is mad because you’re not worshiping that pagan God and we’re being, we’re suffering because of what you do. And then they make you suffer one way or another. 

BOB: And they retaliate. And notice this famous verse, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asked you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” 

DAVID: Right. In other words, that word “give a defense” is where we get the word apologetics. 

BOB: Yeah. And apologetics comes from the old meaning of apology. The old meaning of an apology was not, oh, I’m so sorry. An apology used to refer to a defense. 

DAVID: Right. We are to make a defense of our faith. In every situation we come to, even if we’re suffering, we defend our faith. And I think that’s what he’s talking about here. 

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DAVID: Also notice how he starts the verse. “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.”

BOB: Sanctify, set apart. So you’ve got the Lord set apart. And of course, where he’s going with this is more than just I’m able to talk about the deity of Christ or I’m able to talk about the inerrancy of Scripture. Instead, he goes on saying, “having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” So part of this apologetic is by us living lives that are glorifying God. “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” 

DAVID: And through all this, it’s easy for the believer going through this suffering to think that oh, God doesn’t love me anymore. And it could be that these people who were probably born out of paganism into the Christian life may have that same mentality that I’m being, you know, God’s punishing me doesn’t like me anymore just like my pagan God would do. 

BOB: But it should be the polar opposite it would. God is privileging me to be able to suffer. In fact, in Acts chapter five, when the apostles were beaten, as the Lord said, they were to go to the temple and they were to preach Christ and they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ. 

DAVID: And that’s Peter’s point here. You rejoice when you suffer for doing the right thing. 

BOB: All right. So now he shifts to talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Also his surrogate, Noah. He says, “For Christ also suffered once for sins.” This once is the one time thing. He doesn’t keep dying on the cross again and again, that’s the problem with the crucifix. 

DAVID: He did it once for all time. 

BOB: Once for all, Hebrews brings this out. “The just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, that he might be made alive by the Spirit.” In other words, he was raised from the dead. “By whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison.” 

Some people misinterpret this to say during the three days Jesus was in Sheol or Hades between his death and resurrection, he preached to the people in Sheol. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for playing, here’s a nice parting gift. No, he’s talking about people who are in prison now, but they weren’t when Noah preached to them, because notice what he says, “who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah.” How long did that longsuffering wait? 

DAVID: A very long time.

BOB: 120 years, right? And he says, “while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.” Notice, this is the salvation of the psuche from a physical standpoint. 

DAVID: Notice he does use the word psuche for soul. 

BOB: And he does use sozo for saved. And by the way, this is still used today in nautical terms when a ship goes down, how many souls were lost or when the ship is going out, how many souls are on board. And the same thing is used in the airplane industry and it says, “There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism, not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” So this is not talking about salvation from hell. This is likewise talking about the salvation of our psuche. And we’re having this fullness of life by having this right conscience before God. 

DAVID: This is yet another example in Peter’s writings and others that when you see the word “saved” or “salvation,” it does not always mean salvation from hell. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t. This is a classic example of that here, in verse 21,” the antitype which now saves us,” that has nothing to do with eternal salvation. It has something to do with some other type. “It saves us,” notice the present tense. “It saves us,” almost like it’s a continual thing. It’s the salvation of the soul just like those souls in Noah’s Ark where they were saved. 

BOB: Exactly. Hodges has a good point here in his commentary. He says that concerning the present tense, it’s probably a progressive present, which is what you were arguing, David, and then he says, meanwhile sinners are about to be swept away in judgment as were the sinners of Noah’s day, and he says, compare 4:4. 

DAVID: Right. And that makes this illustration of Noah’s Day so appropriate, even to Peter’s day and our day, because at some point, the sinners are going to be swept away at his coming. 

BOB: All right. And what about the last verse? Verse 22, Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him.” Is that basically saying that he suffered and now he’s exalted, so the implication would be, we’re suffering, we’ll be exalted? 

DAVID: Right. And he’s using Christ as the example for our suffering, Jesus suffered was tortured and killed. Well, I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does, we are to suffer well because we follow His example. And there is, and Peter pretty much says that there’s glory on the other side, just like Jesus was glorified, we will receive glory on the other side. 

BOB: Well, thanks so much, David, and thank you all, and let’s keep grace in focus. Amen. 

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And on our next episode: why is suffering in these last days especially meaningful? Please join us. In the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.