To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion…
1 Peter
Imperishable
0Some people store up treasures for themselves on this earth through the church. They will put an unrighteous tax on their parishioners and make themselves rich. This is not what happened in the early church. In 1 Corinthians Paul exhorts the Corinthians to give money to the church in Jerusalem, not so that the church in Jerusalem could be rich but so that they would avoid poverty in the ancient sense. The difference between poverty then and poverty now is like the difference between poverty in the United States and poverty in India. Christ preached to the low and the church was composed of the lowest for the most part.
Persecution did not make the situation any better. At the beginning of the Nazi persecution the first step was to seize their assets and businesses. Imagine then the horror of what happened when these impoverished Christians had their lives taken away. If they had jobs they lost them. If they had unbelieving friends they were rejected. If they had unbelieving family they were rejected. This was the lot of the believer, and Peter, the author of 1 Peter, through the understanding of the Holy Spirit. This is why he begins his letter by reminding those who are being persecuted of the hope that they have in Christ for a better day.
Some Christians are so focused on the present that they lose their focus on heaven. This is easy to do in the American church because Americans have it remarkably well. We are blessed to live in a free society, which is incredibly rich and well off. Our diseases are not born of poverty they are born of wealth. We have heart disease, not small pox. Persecution is not a problem for the church in America, so when we think of heaven we are prone to think of earth.
However heaven is much better than earth. We have a limited scope because we believe we have reached a societal high in this country. We believe that we are at an apex. This was the opposite of how the early church had it. They had no great society in which to place their faith, and their faith in Christ had cost them a lot, so then why should they persevere? Why would they keep going?
The truth is that for all the graces our society has, it holds nothing to what God promises us in his word. Our pleasures will pass on, but 1 Peter 1:4 assures us that the graces God reflects to us will not. His heavens will go on forever, even when Western Civilization’s glories have all gone away. You cannot count on things that perish, you have to follow the word of God into an imperishable paradise. This is a paradise that is not earthly, and will cost you everything that you have on this earth.
Born Again to a Living Hope
0Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. – 1 Peter 1:3
There are times in our lives when what we are saved to might not be as present in our minds as the fact that we as Christians are saved. Oftentimes the beliefs that we don’t struggle with are ones that we are not confronting opposition to. There are times when our whole salvation can be called into question because of the opposition that we face. Peter opens his first letter to the church by reviewing what we are being saved to, and the rest of the book reviews the implications of that salvation. Peter solidifies the churches position on what they are born to.
Great Mercy
We are saved by mercy. Mercy is grace granted to believers. There once was a man named Jesus Christ who lived many years ago. He did not live as any other man but was instead perfect in all his ways. All men inherit a sinful nature from our forefather, Adam. Adam was a sinner as we are sinners. He was the first in a line of sinners that has gone through all of human history. Jesus was perfect. He was a spotless lamb who was sacrificed by sinners for sinners.
When Christ died he did so for sinners. However our mercy is not just found in Christ’s death. It is found in his glorious resurrection. When Christ died he did so that men could be raised. Christ was sacrificed so that sinners in the line of Adam might receive a new heart. We need only believe to be saved, because of the mercy of God.
Living Hope
When Christian’s die it is not the beginning of suffering or complete annihilation, rather we go to onto a greater life. This life with Christ is so great that the old life is put off. The greatest joys we experience on this earth are a foreshadowing of what will happen in heaven. When a Christian becomes a Christian his life is never over, simply goes through constant transformation. This transformation culminates in coming to be with God in heaven. This is a living hope.
No matter how hard life is we can trust in at least two things: the mercy of Christ and the living hope that we have in Christ. Those who come to Christ in faith have access to the great mercy of the Father and the living hope that is found in that mercy.
Elect Exiles Part 2
0Persecuted Elect Exiles
The point of the election is not to give a man a meter by which he can judge salvation. Men cannot write some off as “unelect.” Rather election is the reflection of God’s grace of freedom from worrying. One of the most comforting verses in the bible is Romans 8:28 which reads: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Paul then goes on to explain that we have not only been elected but saved. Paul starts this passage out by saying that his present sufferings are not worthy of comparison to future glory.
Election is the fact that God is calling men to future glory. The call of God is a sure thing, God does not lie and he doesn’t change his mind. (Numbers 23:19) If you are called of God it is a sure thing. The assurance is of salvation. With salvation comes the glory of God. We are not just saved to suffer, we are saved to be glorified by God. You are not just elected to be a part of the family of God, you are elected to be an heir with Christ.
As Christians we inherit both the good and the bad. We are elected to suffer as Christ suffered, and then to be glorified as Christ has been glorified.
1 Peter is a letter to those who are suffering. Peter opens up with the fact that they are elect exiles to reflect to them one of the great attributes of God, his providence. God provides for the persecuted in times when they are well off and in times when they are not. He is the constant provider. He is the refuge for the chased, the contender for the wrongly persecuted, and the God of the everlasting covenant. He elected believers to have part in the inheritance of Christ, he devotes himself to giving us relief in their time of struggle, and dedicated himself to seeing that good would be done for us for all eternity. That my friends, is the doctrine of predestination
Elect Exiles Part 1
01 Peter is wrote to the elect exiles a the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. While one could easily find those geographic locations on a map the real mystery is what Peter meant by elect exiles is much more complicated. There is a lot of controversy surrounding election and predestination. Many argue that God does not predestine those who are to be saved, that we have an element of free will to choose our eternal destiny. Others would argue that we are not free by any means, and that the will of God crushes us into conformity with him. This article will explore the idea of election, the implications of election, and who the elect exiles really are.
Elect
One of the best things about the bible is that it includes several very intimate stories about conversion. Men who were not running toward God are abruptly turned around. The question of election can be answered in part through looking at the details of these conversions. The first conversion that we will look at can be found in Genesis 12.
Abram was a man of Ur. We don’t know much about Abram’s life in Ur. We know that he had possessions and some family, and that he lived in Ur. However we do not know much else about him. Abram heard God’s call on his life and packed up and left his first life behind to chase the glory of God in the wilderness. It was in the wilderness that the Lord continued to bless Abram. We have no indication of how Abram came to hear of God. We also have no indication that Abram believed in God before he was called. Much of Abram’s life suggests that he did not know the laws of God well. However in Genesis 12 God calls to Abram.
In Luke 5, Jesus Christ called his first disciples. He did not give them a convincing gospel message. He didn’t present apologetics. God performed a miracle and they followed him. Now these men were not the smartest, most handsome, or richest men. They were the lowest of the low in many respects. They did not take a lot of time to calculate a response or consider what they should do, they simply jumped out of the boats and followed his call.
In Acts 9 we read of a man named Saul who was trying to destroy the church until he encountered a man named Jesus. This Jesus did not walk along side him but appeared to him with such a light that it blinded him for several days. Jesus called to Paul and told him to end his persecution of the church and instead turn to faith in him. Saul, who knew the Old Testament backwards and forwards required a visit of Christ, quite literally.
Exiles
Salvation is not stagnant. Salvation is gloriously invigorating. In each of these three cases the salvation of the Lord made something happen to these men that caused them to move about. Abram became Abraham and he traveled from Sumer to Egypt and eventually to Palestine. His family would spend many hundreds of years traveling from Palestine to Egypt and then back again. There they would become the nation of Israel. They were God’s people.
Those first few disciples ultimately grew to a group of twelve and traveled all over Israel ministering with Christ. Then Christ died and they scattered, only to be gathered again when Christ rose from the dead. After that they congregated in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came and they were each given different languages to speak. From their some stayed in Jerusalem, but some would go as far as India to preach Christ.
Why Are We Christians?
01 Peter was written to a church in turmoil over persecution. People were coming to Christ and facing extreme pressure because of that decision. This happens today in places like the Middle East where converts to Christianity can be stoned to death if they don’t renounce their faith and turn back to Islam. Imagine the church that you go to loosing members weekly not to sin or to moving, but to arrest and execution. I imagine that in many of the congregations we attend that would not go over well and probably lead to violence on behalf of the congregation. However what if you didn’t have the hope of attack, voting, or protesting? What if you simply had no hope but to wait. Where is your hope? Well of course your hope would be in Jesus Christ, and that is where Peter starts.
Elect Exiles
I am sure that when people came to Christ they didn’t start out thinking, “Well my family will hate me, my boss will fire me, my spouse will leave me, my boss will fire me, and I might get arrested or beat up in the streets.” While they might have had an inclination of the understanding of the persecution they faced, those kinds of realities are always hard to understand unless you are in the middle of them. In 1 Peter 1:1-2 Peter looks at why they are suffering and what it means to be a Christian. The first place that Peter goes is the faithfulness of salvation that God gives to the church and the spreading of the church through the world. God has called all believers to be believers, and it is his plan to spread us out, through persecution at times.
Foreknowledge of God the Father
Believe it or not when you were saved you did not surprise God. God knew that you were going to be saved. Not only did God know that you were going to be saved, but he orchestrated events so that you would be saved by grace. This is helpful to remember because even in the hardest times in our lives we know that God has ordained all these things to help us grow closer to him.
In the Sanctification of the Spirit
Not only did God save us and know that he was going to, he is still with us. Sanctification is the idea that God is with us, refining us to be more like him. The Spirit of God is with us in hope and truth. The Spirit guides us as we grow in faith. The Spirit is also with us when we experience persecution and pain because we are in Christ.
For the obedience of Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood
We are saved according the foreknowledge of God and we walk with the Spirit in hope and truth, growing in holiness, which is obedience to Christ. The blood of Christ is sprinkled upon us, giving us righteousness. Of course this is not a literal sprinkling of blood. It is the sprinkling of the sacrifice of Christ. In Matthew 26:26-29 Jesus tells his disciples that the wine they were drinking was representative of his blood which is poured out for them. The way that we are saved according to the foreknowledge of God, the sanctification of the Spirit, to the obedience of Christ through the sacrifice of Christ.
May grace and peace be multiplied to you
Because we have been saved according to the foreknowledge of God, and are being sanctified by the Spirit, to the obedience of Christ through the sacrifice of Christ, we can cling to grace and peace in any circumstance.
1 Peter Intro
0Chances are that if you are in church for any amount of time then you will have hard news to give to a fellow church member. Whether that is revelation of their sin, your sin, or some awful event that has happened in your life or in the life of someone who is close to their life. If you are a ministry leader then you are on the front lines of dealing with these kinds of issues. Marriage counselors minister to struggling couples, teaching pastors deal with the sin of the larger community, and children’s workers deal with the sins of the smallest parts of the church. This world is filled with hurt and pain, so we as the church must deal with the hardest things to hear during the hardest parts of people’s lives. No matter how tragic the circumstance, hurtful the sin, or revealing the insight, we must as Christians be united in grace as we work through the hardest parts of our lives.
That said, I cannot imagine what was going on in the heart of Peter as he set out to write 1 Peter. 1 Peter was written into one of the worst situations for a church leader imaginable. Peter wrote to churches that were experiencing persecution. Christians were being arrested, tortured, and killed. Families were torn apart, children were taken from parents, and Christian communities were under the attack of the Roman authorities.
For Peter this had to have been personal. Peter was one of the original 12 disciples. He had walked with Christ and he had been charged to build the church by Christ through the power of the Spirit. The Spirit had done good work and the church was growing, thanks impart to a renewed Jewish leader named Paul, but under the direction of these original disciples the mission had grown. The Romans had tolerated this growing movement called Christianity, but as they grew in size there was more and more contention between Romans and Christians. The Christians were also attacked by the Jews, which can be seen throughout Acts. The Jews found the Christians repulsive. They did not believe in Christ and thought that it was blasphemy to call Christ God, especially the same God as the God who had been with the Jews from the beginning.
What do you say to someone who has become a Christian and is facing intense persecution? This is the question that the Spirit answers through 1 Peter. Through this study we will look at the context of suffering. We will look at what it means to live for Jesus and die for Jesus. We will look at what it means to live for Christ, to serve Christ, and to love Christ.
If you are going through a hard time in your faith because of the world, 1 Peter was written for you. In his glorious vision the Father saw it right to send the Spirit to empower Peter by the sacrifice of the son, so that you would be able to read this book, apply these principles, and serve Christ well in suffering.