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Reformed Classicalist

Gospel Suffering: Part 1

RTS Papers / Communication 1 / Summer 2016

A sermon on 1 Peter 4:12-19


Have you ever gotten in trouble for something you didn’t do? Some of us can probably even relate to the experience of people thinking that we are constantly guilty of something when in fact we are not. Now consider the opposite. I think that all of us can say that we have been punished, or looked down on, for perfectly good reasons — because we really did deserve it. Notice the difference between how it felt in both cases. There is an obvious sense of shame in being punished or scorned for something that you really did do wrong. But there is also something like a glory — even if it is only a secret glory — in being mistreated or misunderstood. I am not talking about some kind of self-righteous martyr’s complex. Let’s face it, even our clearest conscience under bad treatment is mixed with selfish motives and disbelief. If the only thing that made mistreatment worth it was being acquitted in some human court, then we are most to be pitied among human beings! Because life isn’t going to give us a fair trial.


No one should be more familiar with this feeling than Christians. In the letter we are reading through, the Apostle Peter is addressing those who were among the first to be mistreated in this way. And Christians must be unique among the peoples of the world in the kind of mistreatment we are going to examine.


We are up to Chapter 4, verses 12 through 19. And I am going to let what Peter has already told us about the example of Jesus in the gospel inform how we understand the fiery trials of this part of the letter. What Peter demands of Christians in Chapter 4 are some hard things he has already told us Jesus experienced in Chapter 2. The suffering of the Christian is going to magnify Jesus’ suffering. But it is important to point out at the beginning that the immediate context Peter has in mind is not simply “bad things happening,” but rather persecution: mistreatment from other people, even if only with slanderous or mocking words.

The BIG IDEA is that because the Christian is given a gospel suffering, we should suffer in a way that glorifies Jesus.

From this truth, we will notice four implications that Peter gives us. Because the Christian is given a gospel suffering, we should not be surprised by it (v. 12); we should rejoice in it (vv. 13 - 14); we should never earn it (vv. 15 - 16); and we should trust God through it (vv. 17 - 19).


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(i.) Because the Christian is given a gospel suffering, we should not be surprised by it — vv. 12


What do I mean by saying that we should glorify Jesus in the gospel in our suffering? The first thing I mean is that we see it coming. Jesus saw it coming. He was not surprised by the fiery trial, as He was constantly telling the disciples, “that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed” (Mk 8:31). So Jesus became the prototype in a fiery trial. Peter uses this expression — fiery trial — which the commentators tell us is like the refining fire that purifies. This follows from the purpose that Peter had already given to our trials in 1:6-7, that they fire a faith worth more than gold.


So there is a pattern to persecution. Like Christ, so the Christian. Paul even tells the Thessalonians — like Jewish Christians, so Gentile Christians — “For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews.” Persecution is a pattern we are to expect, as several passages in the New Testament make plain: “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22); “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). Now wou and I must not be worthy of hate, but you and I must be hated, as John says: “Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” The Scriptures seem to say that we must come to know this pattern of persecution.


And so the very same application is given by Peter right here: Do not be surprised by it! But in my experience as a pastor, there is nothing quite so surprising to American Christians as this kind of suffering: from people, even from people we know. However small the persecution be. “Another member’s meeting — What now!” “The pastors are under fire again? What’d they do?” Now I will grant you that we Christians can often step in it and earn our cultural scorn, but why is our first reaction to the culture’s disapproval of the church to always blame the church? “We must not be sensitive enough to the culture!” Perhaps. But could it also be that “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Mat 10:22).


Where is the spirit of Christ in all of our surprise at the fiery trial? Christianity is a fiery trial. There are many reasons for our shock that we need to be realistic about. We modern Americans especially have attempted to created a new kind of life that is “pain free.” But before we drill too deeply in our analysis of the all-American version of “surprised by suffering,” it might be helpful not to miss the obvious here. Peter is not writing immediately to twenty-first century Americans, but to first century Jews and Roman citizens: many of whom had been slaves, all of whom lived a much poorer life than we do. And yet here is Peter anticipating their reasons for being surprised by the fiery trial. That ought to remind us that the deeper reasons for being surprised by suffering run all the way back to Eden and all the way down into the sinful heart.


Peter’s call is all about meeting that head on. And he will need something at least as strong as the curse and sin and evil and suffering as the antidote for its surprise. You see the main reason that we should not be surprised by being mistreated as Christians is that this is what Christ underwent at the very heart of the gospel story. What did Peter say earlier? “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (2:21). We have been called to follow the pattern of Jesus in exactly this way. To follow the pattern of persecution for Christ’s name is a drama of something that was necessary for our salvation. The author of Hebrews says that “It was fitting” that Jesus was “made perfect through suffering” (2:10). So this fiery trial tells one angle of the story of redemption. So we should not be surprised by such a gospel suffering.


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