INTRODUCTION

Does life ever overwhelm you? This happens to me sometimes. Jane and I will be talking about a problem one of our children is having. The more we describe the problem the more hopeless the situation seems. Sometimes all hope is drained and a great blackness settles over our entire future. We don’t know what to do. It seems there is no way out of the difficulty. Or maybe you are overcome with anxiety about your financial future. It could be sparked by your recent utility bill. It’s more than twice the bill you’ve ever received and you begin to think about the other bills that are also due and then there’s paying for the children’s education and retirement and…. In very short order you are sure that bankruptcy and homelessness is just around the corner. You are paralyzed and don’t know what to do.

There are many ways that life threatens to overwhelm us. We find ourselves enmeshed in conflicted relationships that only give us pain. We have dead-end jobs. The only relief we can see is 30 years away when we retire. We are hopelessly trapped by destructive habits. We are chronically ill and the doctors cannot help. We sink into despondency and have no idea what to do. Life seems hopelessly complex.

It is in the midst of this overwhelming complexity that the Bible lights the way out of the cave. As one of the speakers at the conference I was at this week said, "The Bible is the nightlight. It doesn’t eliminate the night but it gives us enough light so we can see our way." There is a way out of every circumstance that you might find yourself facing. It isn’t easy or without pain and risk. But God’s way out is simple, if we’ll listen and pay attention. The simple answer is always, pursue your pleasure in God. Abandon all hope of finding your joy in the things of this world and determine to be happy in God alone. You can always do that. This passage in 1 Peter is especially instructive because of the context within which it is embedded. Chapter 1 contains a description of the people to whom Peter is writing. After describing God’s saving them through Christ he says, "In this (their salvation) you greatly rejoice though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." They are Christians in the midst of severe trials. They were citizens in a totalitarian state. The whim of the emperor was the only law. At this point in Roman history the emperor was hostile to Christians and systematic persecution was the order of the day. Many of those to whom he wrote were slaves. Some had harsh masters. Many of those to whom he wrote were married. Some were in very bad marriages. From chapter 2: 11 to 3:7 he has explained how they are to live with joy in the midst of each of these circumstances. Now in v. 8 he is summing up the general principle that he has just applied to these specific situations. He says, "to sum it all up, all of you…" The variety of circumstances that we can be in is as great as the number of people in this room. So Peter wants to show us the general principle that can govern how to live with joy in the midst of whatever circumstance you might find yourself. These verses are a nightlight that won’t eliminate the darkness but they can show you the way if you’ll listen.

MAIN POINT

Whatever the complexities of your current situation, if you call yourself a Christian, here is God’s will for you. The "all of you" tells us that this passage is for every Christian at every time. This is not just for those with a certain personality type. It isn’t just for those who are super spiritual. These verses contain the way for every Christian to pursue their happiness in God through suffering love. The structure of v. 8 is hard to see in translation. In the original it is a list of 5 adjectives preceded by the command, "be". The first and the fifth literally say, "be like-minded" and "be humble-minded". The second and the 4^th literally say, "be sympathetic" and "be compassionate". That leaves "be lovers of one another like brothers and sisters" alone in the middle. Love is the root of which the other four are the fruit. The first and the fifth tell us how we are to think in relation to each other and the 2^nd and the 4^th tell us how to feel in relation to each other. It is so easy when we see a list like this to look at it like we do a greeting card verse. It sounds nice but it doesn’t really mean anything. That’s why we need to slow down and think about what these commands mean in the context of our actual, daily lives.

Before we get into the details of this text I want you to notice something here that is easy to miss. In fact, I would say that most of us miss the way the Bible argues most of the time. We look at these commands and we immediately think about behavior, not about the motives that produce behavior. These verses are telling us what to do, how to behave. But far more importantly these verses do not simply tell us what to do but they tell us why we are to do it. Our problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do. Our problem is that we do not want to do what we should do. This is the main point to which the bible speaks. If you are behaving wrong it is because you love and trust and hope in the wrong thing. There isn’t a person in this room who naturally wants to do what these verses are telling us to do. The only people who want to live like this are those who have new hearts, who are motivated by what this passage tells us to be motivated by. I’m going to describe what we are to do because that’s part of what the Bible does. But the most important thing I will say this morning is about motivation, about why we want to live like this.

First we are to be like-minded. We are to think the same things as other Christians. We are to agree with one another. What are we supposed to be in agreement about? Are we supposed to agree about politics? About parenting styles? About movies we like to watch? About the style of music we like to worship God with? I hope you know that we are not commanded to agree about everything we believe. However, we are to agree about what really matters. We are to agree about doctrine. We are to agree about the answers to the important questions. What is man? How do we know God? What is God like? What does God like and what doesn’t he like? Who is Jesus? Why did he die on the cross? How does God save his people?

This is not merely intellectual agreement. This is the kind of agreement that characterizes sports fans and connoisseurs of fine wines and avid skiers and bikers and runners and woodworkers and computer hackers. It’s what happens when you introduce two people at a party and as they engage in small talk suddenly discover that they both are intensely interested in fly fishing. You come back two hours later and they are sitting in a corner, oblivious to everyone and everything else as they talk about different flies they have tied and the fish they have caught using certain flies in certain conditions. Then you find out a month later that they’ve planned a weekend fishing trip together. They enjoy each others company because they are both delighted with the same truth. This is how we are to love one another.

I’m so tired of Christians saying that they can’t relate to other Christians because they have nothing in common. If you are a Christian you share the most important and delightful things in common. If your chief delight is in knowing God, which is what it means to be a Christian, then you have tons in common with every other Christian sitting in this room. You have more in common with a Christian living in rural Africa then you do with your brother who lives in Janesville and who loves the Packers and hunting and cheese. There is an infinite variety of subjects about which you can agree as you discuss the most beautiful of all persons, God, and the delightful ways he saves his people. To be indifferent to doctrine and call yourself a Christian is a contradiction. To form your associations in the church based merely upon similar worldly interests and/or life situations is wrong. We are to enjoy one another’s company because we all love the same person. We are to live in agreement by conversing about the things we agree on.

Now we all know that there are going to be things about which we will disagree, even about God and his ways. We are finite, sinful creatures trying to understand the revelation of God in his word and the work of God in our lives. We have a whole range of preferences that God has given no clear commands concerning. That’s why when we love Christians we are to be humble-minded. While there are doctrines that a Christian will die for and over which he must break fellowship when others disagree, yet he knows that there are many doctrines about which true Christians disagree. He knows that often, disagreements are actually only misunderstandings and so he is patient in dealing with others as he seeks to understand what others really think. As Paul says in another context, "The Lord’s bondservant must not be quarrelsome." We are to be like our Master who was "meek and humble of heart". Yet we realize that this meekness does not mean we do not fight when core truths and the honor of God and the well-being of others is in jeopardy. But we are gentle and forbearing when we are challenged and have the wisdom to not fight about everything we think is important. Christians are not fighters, especially when dealing with other Christians. A proud, quarrelsome Christian is an oxymoron. We are to remember our wickedness and the grace of God that has saved us in order that we might live humbly and meekly. A Christian is hard on herself but easy on others. A Christian regularly makes allowances for others while making none for himself.

I experienced this in the first class I took in seminary. It is one of my most embarrassing moments. The class was "The Doctrine of God" with Dr. Wayne Grudem. Dr. Grudem is a brilliant man. He wrote this systematic theology. One day in class we were discussing the person of the Holy Spirit. We had read several chapters in this theology for class. I had taken beginning Greek already. In one of the chapters we had read Dr. Grudem referred to a Greek pronoun that referred to the Holy Spirit. When I read his use of that pronoun I was sure he was wrong. So on that day, right in class, I told Dr. Grudem I thought he made a mistake. He didn’t even blink. He thanked me for pointing it out and said he would check it out and made a note to himself to do so. A year later we were discussing that exact passage in an advanced Greek class and it was obvious that I was the one who was wrong, not Dr. Grudem. I was amazed at his humility and his kindness to me. Rather than humiliating me for my ignorance and my presumption he was willing to consider that perhaps he made a mistake when it was quite obvious that he had not. People who are humble-minded don’t delight in humiliating others. They don’t delight to point out the mistakes of others. They hardly notice when others make mistakes and are very willing to admit they are the ones who may be wrong.

Not only do Christians delight in the same truth while accepting others who disagree but they also are sympathetic. This word is used two times in the book of Hebrews. First, in Heb. 4:15 we are told that, "We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin." Jesus sympathizes with us because he has endured every temptation that any of us will ever endure. We are sympathetic when we listen to the suffering of another Christian and console them by identifying with their suffering. We are able to offer this sympathy even if we have not suffered in the same way they are suffering because we know what it’s like to suffer the misery of sin. Christians don’t treat others harshly. We want to help people to escape from sin and suffering but we do not condemn people for their sin and suffering. Rather we seek to offer emotional support and then help, just like Jesus.

Later in Hebrews we are told, "You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property…" Christians were arrested and thrown in prison for being Christians. The Christians who were not thrown in prison felt the pain of those in prison as if they were there themselves. But their sympathy didn’t end with emotional pain but they actually went to visit and provide for those in prison. By doing so they exposed themselves to being identified as Christians and then suffered the loss of their own property at the hands of the authorities. They did this joyfully, not as duty or with resentment.

The seminary I went to was in Deerfield, IL but we lived in Champaign, IL, a 3 hour drive away. I left home every Sunday evening and returned every Thursday evening for 15 months. During that time we were having some conflict with one of our children. I wasn’t there to help Jane and it was a source of great anxiety to me. I shared our concern in a prayer group that was at my advisor’s house. I’ll never forget Dr. Larson coming up to me after class the next week and asking about my child and then giving me a scrap of paper with a passage written on it and then praying for me. He and his wife regularly asked how it was going and assured me of their prayers for us. I later discovered that they had gone through a very difficult situation with one of their children. They were so sympathetic because they understood the suffering we were experiencing. But they didn’t just stop with that emotion, they offered help because of their sympathy. Christians can sympathize because we are fellow-sufferers in the misery of sin.

Finally, in v. 8, Christians love one another with compassion. When we see others in trouble our first instinct is not to condemn or criticize. We don’t say things like, "Well, they are only getting what they deserve. If they’d just make better decisions they wouldn’t be in this trouble." Christians are troubled when they see others in trouble, regardless of how they got there. We treat those in trouble the way we want God to treat us in our trouble. We want his help, not his condemnation. Christians have their antennae up for people in trouble. When we discover that someone in church is suffering we want to help. It is the first inclination of the Christian. We don’t run away from those in trouble, we are drawn to those in trouble. We want to alleviate misery. We can’t bear to see people hurt when we know there is so much joy available in Christ. So we get involved in order to increase our joy in the joy of the other person discovering the greatness of Christ.

I may have told this story before but it stands out to me as a classic picture of compassion. I met a young man named Dave who was very depressed. The first time we talked he was so sad he couldn’t say a word. I would ask yes and no questions and he would nod his head or shake it. Tears ran down his face the whole time we met. He was interested in knowing Christ and being in a Bible study. Another student named Doug was going to start a Bible study and so I had Doug call Dave and invite him to come. . Dave was, quite frankly, the classic picture of a nerd. Doug was everything Dave was not. Doug was good-looking and out-going and loved by all. He was the life of the party. But Doug loved people and he had compassion on Dave. He took Dave with him wherever he went. He introduced Dave to everyone he met as his friend, Dave. He persisted in sharing the gospel with Dave and finally he trusted in Christ. The change in Dave was one of the most remarkable changes I have ever witnessed. It was the mercy of God through the compassion of Doug that was the cause of Dave’s transformation.

There are all kinds of people in trouble sitting all around you. All of us are in trouble at various times. There are people here who need your sympathy and compassion. Some day, you’ll need theirs. Don’t be afraid of the need and the trouble in each other’s lives. We can help each other if we will be like-minded about our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. If we will accept one another’s preferences and views with humility we can assist each other. If we will feel sympathy and compassion and act in accord with these emotions we can be instruments of change in one another’s lives.

Verse 8 is the positive, pro-active love of the Christian. Verse 9 is how the Christian responds to those who don’t appreciate his love. There isn’t a person in here who has not had evil done to them or has not been insulted. My guess is that every person in here feels that they have been done wrong or been insulted in the past 24 hours. The reality of your faith is not proven when you are loving those who love you back. This verse tells us that the reality of your relationship with Christ is proven when you love people and they repay you with evil and you repay them with more love. If your being kind depends upon others reciprocating kindness, then you are not a kind person. You are simply a person who knows how to respond to the kindness of others so they will continue to be kind. You truly possess kindness when you bless those who abuse you. The behavior that this verse is commanding is crazy as far as the world is concerned. What this verse is commanding you to do husband is this. When your wife is verbally assaulting you do not attack her in return. Do not defend yourself. But do not remain silent. Rather, listen to her complaints. Seek to understand them. Apologize for the ways you have disappointed her. Tell her how much you love her and agree to whatever changes she wants you to make that are within your power and resources. Pray with her for God’s grace to be poured out on you so that you can pour out love upon her. Do not ask her to do anything for you other than pray for you.

What this verse is commanding you to do child when your sibling is calling you names and telling mom and dad that the broken dish was all your fault is this. Do not call him names in return. Do not defend yourself. But do not remain silent. Listen to what he is saying and seek to understand his complaints against you. Apologize for what you have done. Tell your sibling you love him. Pray with him that God would pour out his grace on you so that you can pour out love on him. Do not ask your brother to do anything for you other than pray for you. What this verse is commanding you to do when your coworker screams at you and calls you names and reports you to the boss is this. Do not call her names in return. Do not defend yourself. But do not remain silent. Rather, listen to her complaints. Seek to understand them. Apologize for any ways that you have offended her. Tell her you will do all you can to change in a way that will make her job easier that is within your power and resources. Ask her if you can pray with her to ask God to pour out his grace on you so that you can pour out love on her. Do not ask her to do anything for you other than pray for you.

Here are the million dollar questions. Why should you live like this? How can you live like this? The answer is in the last half of verse 9, "because to this you were called so that you might inherit a blessing." What does the "this" refer to? It refers to vv. 8-9. When God called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9) and when he called you into his eternal glory in Christ (1 Peter 5:10) he also called you into a life of suffering love. If it is true that you are a Christian, that God put all your sins on Christ and then killed Jesus in your place so that you do not have to spend eternity in hell. If it is true that God has placed all of Christ’s righteousness on you so that he views you as if you have always obeyed all of his laws because he considers Jesus’ obedience as your obedience. If it is true that he has sent his Holy Spirit to you and caused you to be born again and placed his life in you so that you love and trust him. If all this is true then it is also true that he has called you to live this kind of life. When you became a Christian this is the life you signed up for. You volunteered to repay those who mistreat you with blessing, the same way God blessed you with salvation when you mistreated him. Look at that verb, "were called". It is a divine passive. You didn’t invite yourself into this life. God reached down and took you out of your misery and sin and gave you this life of glory and light and forgiveness and suffering love. Now if you are unwilling to live this way then you are merely proving that you don’t want the rest of God’s call either. To repay evil with evil and insult with insult and to not be like-minded or sympathetic or compassionate or humble is to say you want nothing to do with Christ and his salvation.

It’s like this. Let’s say I invite you over to my house. I tell you we’re going to have lasagna for dinner and then we’re going to play euchre and eat popcorn. I’m inviting a few other people over from the church as well. The party is Friday night. If you say to me, "Well I’d love to come over but I can’t come Friday. How about if I come over on Saturday night?" I say to you, "No, the party is Friday night. There isn’t going to be a party on Saturday night." You can only come to the party if you come on Friday night. It’s a package deal. You don’t get to decide when the party is happening or what we’re doing at it. It’s my party. Or its like joining the army. You don’t get to tell the drill sergeant when you get to boot camp, "Listen, I signed up for the army because I’m planning on going to college and I want the army to pay my way. But I’m not really into this boot-camp thing so if it’s all the same to you, I won’t be joining the squad until it’s all over." You don’t get to make that choice. It’s part of what being in the army is all about. It is the life you volunteered for.

The difference between these illustrations and what we experience as Christians is that living this kind of a life isn’t a bad thing for us. Rather, we love to love people and we love to love those who harm us because this shows off the greatness of Jesus. We discover more of his love for us in the process. The Christian, unlike the reluctant recruit who doesn’t like boot-camp, wants to love those who harm him. It is a joy to do so because of the new life that God has put in us when he called us. Consider the last clause in v. 9, "in order that you might inherit a blessing." Peter is not teaching that you earn heaven by suffering love. Rather he is simply saying that a life of suffering love always ends in the blessing of heaven, of living in God’s presence forever. It is the hope of living in God’s presence forever that sustains us in the suffering love. I can love you even when you harm me because my hope for happiness isn’t dependent upon you loving me. My hope for happiness is firmly fixed in Christ and his promises.

I’m only going to say two things about these verses. First, notice the behavior that is commanded with five imperative verbs. "Keep your tongue from evil. Keep your lips from lying. Turn from evil. Do good. Seek peace. Pursue peace." Notice there are no exceptions to the commands. It doesn’t say, "Keep your tongue from evil except when your husband is calling you names." Or, "except when the guy driving in front of you slams on his brakes." All this is an OT way of saying vv. 8-9. Second, the main thing I want you to see is the reason to live like this. You live this way because you want God and what he offers more than anything else in the whole universe. You want the good life that God gives. You want to know that God’s eyes are on you for your good. You want to know that God is concerned for you and listening to your prayers. You fear having God as an enemy. So, because you desire God above all things you fight against the misuse of your tongue and you turn from evil and you pursue peace with others with all your might. Peter is not saying you can earn your way into heaven. He is saying that everyone who loves heaven loves to live like this. If you don’t love to live like this then you don’t really love heaven because this is what life in heaven is like.

Listen carefully to me. If you are not living like this the reason you are not is because you don’t want God and the life he offers. You want something else. Our repentance over sin is going to have no effect on our lives if all we ever do is say we’re sorry about how we act. We need to go to the root of our sin which is contempt for God and his work in Christ. We need to recognize that we believe other things are more able to satisfy us then the God who made the world, sustains the world and killed his son for the sins of the world.

"Helen Roseveare is a short, no-nonsense Irish doctor, with steely blue eyes and a wry wit. When I met her in 1994, she was a spry seventy and reminded me of a favorite elderly aunt or a grandmother. Just looking at her, one would not guess that she had spent the better part of her life serving Christ as a medical missionary in Zaire—or that she had been beaten and raped repeatedly by rebels during the Simba Rebellion of the early ‘60’s. Despite her incredible suffering and subsequent emotional breakdown, she managed to come back to her work and accomplish amazing things for Christ in the jungles of that land.

I was in Kenya interviewing her for a radio program. As she spoke of her horrible experience with the rebels, a thunderstorm passed overhead and rain pounded on the tin roof of the cottage. When she was finished, she said, "I’ll have nightmares tonight from this."

I said, ‘I would never have asked you for an interview if I had known it would have this effect on you.’ She dismissed my remark with a short wave of her hand, ‘No, no. The Lord told me that if I’m going to tell this story, I can’t be like a phonograph record. I’ll have to feel it each time I tell it.’

Then she said something incredible, ‘People would ask me, "Was it worth all the suffering –what you accomplished there?" And I’d tell them, no, it’s been too costly. All I got done doesn’t offset what I paid for personally. But then the Lord spoke to me. He said, "Helen, that’s the wrong question. The question is not, Was it worth it?" The question is, Am I worthy?" And I said, "Of course you are Lord. You are worthy."’"

Reported by Rev. Ben Patterson in his book, "Deepening Your Conversation with God."

We don’t live lives of suffering love because we like to suffer. We make it our ambition to love people, even when they hurt us because the Lord Jesus is worth it. We are convinced that in the loving we will know more of his love for us. We are sure that what we need is God, not a comfortable life on planet earth. We live in the hope that any suffering we endure here for the sake of Jesus will be as nothing compared to the joy that will be ours in the presence of God forever.

© Copyright 2001 John Swanson.
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