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| The calling of the church |
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By Dr J.I. Packer. This presentation is reproduced as given at the Oak Hill School of Theology on 12th May 1999, the second of Dr Packer's four lectures. It has not been edited or corrected by its author.
Introduction
What I have for you this time around, brothers and sisters, is a simple Bible study. Woe betide the theologian who gets beyond simple Bible study!
Though the first letter of Peter doesn't contain the word "church" – not, at least in the Greek – (it got into the NRSV right at the end but it's not there in the Greek), it does contain a lot of phrases which point to the Church and the whole letter is an admonition, or an encouragement rather, to the Church to brace the Lord's people in all the various churches to which Peter was writing, to stand strong, to stand straight and to stand together in the hard times that were just beginning to break. You know, of course, persecution had just started. And Peter is sure it's going to get worse before it gets better. And this is the occasion of his letter, to make sure that the Christians can cope.
The text at the end of the first line, 1 Peter 1:13 – 2:10, was intended to stand apart. It was the passage I was going to read. I wonder whether I would be wise, though to use my time simply going through the material. It's a passage which is very familiar to you, I'm sure, and the sooner I get through what I have to say, the sooner you'll be able to discuss. And as a clergyman of nearly half a century's standing, I know very well that there's nothing that we clergy like better than to hear the sound of our own voice in preaching and discussion, and I don't want to rob you of that pleasure. So, I won't read my passage, I will simply move to what I'm drawing out of 1 Peter to reinforce all that I have said to you thus far, speaking as a theologian, trying to tune in to the Bible.
You will all of you, I guess, have Bibles with you and you can all of you turn up 1 Peter, but even if you did not have a Bible with you and couldn't turn it up, I shall read every phrase that I quote so you won't get lost and you won't lose what I'm trying to say.
1. A sense of corporate identity: "What we all are"
You look at my outline headed "The Calling of the Church" and you see that I have divided what I want to say under three headings. First, I'm going to move around in 1 Peter, feeling the sense of corporate identity which is there in Peter's address to the churches to which he is writing. So the phrase "what you all are" will cover everything under this heading.
In paragraph 2, it's Peter collecting and putting together the things Peter says, at least the main things Peter says (you can squeeze more out of 1 Peter than I have here – this is just the first run through) but the main things that Peter says about what you all could do as the Lord's people to express what you are. And here you've got a cross-section of what healthy church life will always involve, and we can use this as a kind of checklist, thinking of our own congregation and asking ourselves how in fact are we doing it.
Then thirdly, on the basis of what we've seen in the first two sections, I make the point that only as we live in the Church the way that's pictured in paragraph 2 are we being the Church in any full sense, expressing our identity in a straightforward way, honouring the Lord whose name we bear and doing the work in the world which he has set us here to do. You see two phrases down there whose meaning, I trust, is plain on the face of it as you glance at them.
"Being must always precede doing in the Christian life." Of course, you must be born again before you can live as a Christian and you must appreciate your identity as Church – I shouldn't say "your", I should say "our" there – we must appreciate our identity as Church before we can properly do what the church does according to the Scriptures, what the Church is meant to be doing and what Peter is telling the churches that they must do.
And the second principle, "Togetherness sustains everyone" – that surely has a clear meaning on the face of it. It is easier to do anything if you do it in company than it is to do it on your own as a soloist. Life is like that. And support is one of the most precious and potent realities of life. In the Church, there's to be support and we are to draw support from each other as in our individual capacity we seek to do the thing that the Church does. For some of the things that the Church does will, on a temporary basis, set us in personal isolation, yes sure. Then it's very important that, as soon as we can, we go back into the fellowship for the support that the fellowship gives.
So you can see, friends, that I'm using the word "fellowship" in a much deeper sense than those who simply signify by it sharing a cup of tea and chatting about the weather. I'm talking about an opening of the heart; I'm talking about a frank sharing of problems and difficulties and pressures; I'm talking about mutual ministry – which is one of the things we shall see Peter saying we must do – mutual ministry, as each person in the church ministers to other persons in the church out of what God has given them. So we share.
There's a kind of pattern here, in fact, which I ordinarily draw from Ephesians. You can put it in the form of a string of thoughts as follows: the life of the Church is to be love, agape, and love expresses itself in diaconia, service, each serving the others, and diaconia shared, a sharing you see, of what you've got with others, produces fellowship, and fellowship produces edification. You wanted the Greek? Koinonia for fellowship and oikonome for edification or upbuilding. But the important thing here is the connection between those four nouns, for the first leads to the last by what, if the word of God is heeded, will be an inseparable, logical and human flow. And a great deal of the life of the Church has already been expressed, brothers and sisters, when I give you that set of four words: love, ministry, fellowship, upbuilding. That's Paul. You can get all that out of Ephesians. I'm with Peter now.
One of my private guesses about 1 Peter is that both Peter and Silvanus, who acted as an amanuensis, as we know, in putting it on paper, they had read Paul's letter to the Ephesians and a lot of it was in their minds as they agreed what, in Peter's name, was going to go out to the churches as the persecution began, because there's a remarkable overlap of substance between 1 Peter and Ephesians. But be that as it may, 1 Peter has its own character and its own style and its own thrust because it's fed into a different situation from that which Paul was envisaging when he wrote Ephesians and so it's 1 Peter that we dive into now.
My paragraph 1, then, headed "A Sense of Corporate Identity", bringing together the thoughts in 1 Peter that answer the question "what we all are" as the Church that becomes the focus of our attention now and if you've got four points or something you can fill in the texts as I fill them in. We simply go down the column. This is a very simple Bible study.
You are a people. In chapter 2 verses 9 and 10 Peter writes, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood a holy nation, God's own people." There it is. Then there's verse 10: "Once you were not a people but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy." And the receiving of mercy is the central reality in your new identity as God's people. God's people through God's mercy. God's people responding to God's mercy in Jesus the Lord.
The thoughts there are amplified in what comes next: "You are believers in the Christ who loved you and redeemed you." Go back to chapter 1 for that. Verses 7 to 9 of chapter 1 declare: "what's happening to you now is intended to prove the genuineness of your faith" – that's verse 7 – "so that your faith will result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed." And then verse 8: "Although you haven't seen him, you love him and even though you don't see him now you believe in him and you rejoice with indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
He has loved you, you believe in him. There's more on the same subject in verses 18 to 20 of chapter 1, where Peter focuses on what the Lord, in his love, did to save us and give us our new identity. "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ" – like that of a lamb without defect or blemish, and he was the centre of history as God planned it out because you were the centre of history as God planned it out. That's what verse 20 tells us when it says "he was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake."
Through him you have come to trust in God. Again the thought that you have faith in the one who loved you and died for you. And we might cap this exploration of the identity of God's people as believers who have been loved and redeemed by just adding to what's already been said in Peter's greeting, chapter 1 verse 2, "You, the exiles of the dispersion, have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood." There again is the reference to Calvary, the supreme occasion when God's saving love was displayed.
The Father gave the Son, the Son gave himself. Christ died; we were redeemed and now we have faith in the risen Lord who loved us and gave himself for us. And the Father of the Lord Jesus is now our Father. We are children of God in the divine family. Therefore we are heirs of God, heirs of God's glory, but that's the next thought and it's chapter 1 verse 14, where Peter says "like obedient children, don't be conformed to the desires you formerly had in your ignorance". You are children. Act as children.
Verse 17: "You invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (chapter 12 verse 3 now) has given us a new birth (verse 4) into an inheritance. The children are heirs. There is an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, God's children, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for that salvation. Yes, familiar thoughts but wonderful thoughts! We can't dwell on them and rejoice in them too often.
So, next line, the Christians who make up the Church are to see themselves as newborn. All these thoughts, remember, are filling up the sense of identity which all in the Church are to carry, the identity is shared by the Church, the community, and the identity belongs to everyone who is part of it. You are newborns. Yes, chapter 1 verse 3, "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead", and verse 23 of chapter 1 "you have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed through the living and enduring Word of God" and chapter 2 verse 2 "as newborns, long for the pure spiritual milk so that by it you may grow into salvation", that is, grow into the realising and enjoyment of your salvation. It's yours, but you must grow before you appreciate it. Well, in the human family also, children must grow into the appreciation of all that membership of the family gives them.
So, realising their nature and place as newborns and committing themselves to grow, as we shall see in paragraph 2, those who make up the Church are to become hopers (chapter 1 verse 3 again) "by his great mercy our God has given us a new birth unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead". And you have it again in chapter 1 verse 13: "set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed", and verse 21 also, "through Christ you have come to trust in God so that your faith and hope are set on God".
Christians are to be great hopers. Christians should be hopers already. You know, of course, that Bultmann began his career as a theologian by publishing the Theology of Hope, which made the excellent point that in the New Testament, hope is written on just about every page. All the theology is future-oriented and hoping is the basic attitude of the Christian identity. Faith means hope in the New Testament. Indeed, faith is defined as hope, you remember, at the beginning of Hebrews 11: "Faith is the certainty of things hoped for" – you remember those words. Well, says Peter, I take it that all you who make up the Church are hopers because you know that there is an inheritance reserved in glory for you. So we go on from there.
In my outline, two words slipped out here. I'll put them in the margin. As hopers, you are rejoicers, aren't you? Peter says you are. Chapter 1 verse 6 "you rejoice in the salvation that's waiting for you, ready to be revealed in the last time" and verse 8, even stronger, "you believe in Christ and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy". Joy that has heaven in it, that's why it's called "glorious", the Greek actually says "glorified". And it's indescribable because it's so rich, so full, so swelling, so, dare I say, ecstatic? Yes, in your eighth decade you dare anything – I will say ecstatic. Peter means ecstatic joy.
Whenever you think or meditate about the salvation that's yours already in embryo and as you grow into it, it is opening out into ever-increasing richness and will be infinitely more wonderful when you get to glory, or when Christ comes for you, that's how Peter puts it, and you know it in its fulness. So, Peter says, I assume that I am writing to great rejoicers. And I am going to assume that I am speaking to great rejoicers. This is part of the corporate identity of the Church, the joyful fellowship. And the other word, or phrase, that's left out is "lovers of Christ", which is also chapter 1 verse 8 "although you've not seen him you love him".
The Church is the community which loves the Lord and in consequence loves horizontally as one loves another. That's what you are, aren't you? says Peter, I'm assuming you are because every Christian should be and you're quenching the Spirit if you aren't.
But you are exiles, – back to my text and that's the next thought – exiles in the sense that you are not in your home country yet. In mediaeval theology this was a commonplace and I expect you know the words that were used to contrast our present condition as the Church travelling home with our future condition, as it will be when the Church arrives home.
They used to say, how's your Latin? Try it out on these simple phrases: they used to say the Church in via, which means on the road, is not yet the Church in patria, in its own home country. But I like playing with those words and with their English equivalents. Yes, you're the Church on the road. You're travelling through an alien world to which you don't belong. You haven't got to your home country yet. But you'll get there. It's promised. It's guaranteed. That's one of the things which you are hoping for. But at the moment, your sense of identity is that of a group of exiles, who are in a world, in a country where you don't really belong.
Peter says it again in chapter 1 verse 17 and again chapter 2 verse 11. You are exiles. Behave as exiles. Travellers on the way home. Don't cast anchor here. Don't suppose that the world gives you your happiness and for goodness' sake, says Peter, don't suppose that the world may properly give you your standards. At no point will the world do that. I'm sorry, I'm anticipating, but it's a proper thing to say here.
Now back to your corporate identity. You are a priesthood, a priestly people. What's a priesthood? Well, it's a community of people who have direct access to God in order to render direct service to God and direct service to others in the name of God. But when Peter introduces the thought of priesthood, he begins by talking about our worship, and that's chapter 2 verse 5. "Like living stones, in the building that is going to be God's house, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ".
There's the primacy of worship. Whatever else we may think about the charismatic renewal, none of us should hesitate to say that God has used it to remind us all of the primacy of worship. Some of us have been so concerned about witness and about learning God's truth that we haven't worshipped him as heartily as we should have done. And, says Peter, this is the first thing that God has saved you to do. You're a priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices, sacrifices of worship, as is made plain in the next reference, the next use of the priesthood idea, down in verse 9. "You're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light".
My exegesis is that that's a two-way proclamation: you proclaim it Godward in praise and gratitude, you proclaim it manward in evangelism. Peter has more to say about both before he's through. But for the moment the thought is: We are a priesthood to serve God and a priesthood to introduce others to God.
Right, that's our identity, and also, last line here, we are God's flock, that's the thought that you have introduced in chapter 2 verse 25: "You were going astray like sheep but now you have returned to the Shepherd of your souls", that's Jesus the risen Lord. And the thought's more fully spelled out in chapter 5 the first three verses, where the elders are exhorted to do a good job as under-shepherds, feeding God's flock in the name of the Chief Shepherd. Well there it is. Feed, tend, verse 2, tend the flock of God. OK, that points to the fact that the Church is to think of itself, wherever it is, as the flock of God.
I don't know whether you know anything about sheep and sheep-farming. I have a sheep-farmer friend in North Wales, so I've had the opportunity to learn a little about it. Sheep really are just as silly as they are alleged to be. They do get themselves into all sorts of scrapes and the shepherd has to be constantly on the watch and on the go, getting them out of the troubles into which they get themselves and keeping them together as they wander off into isolation, not splendid but dangerous isolation and get into trouble.
I haven't time to go into specifics but I think you can see, as I set the thought going in your mind that there's a lot of self-understanding, humbling self-understanding, that we are intended to draw from the thought that we are Christ's sheep and we the Church are the flock of God. We need our under-shepherds and we need the Chief Shepherd to keep us together as we should be, and to keep us out of danger. Well, I'll leave it to you to develop the thought and I move on.
Peter says all of this in the indicative, not the imperative. He doesn't say "Think of yourselves this way", he says "This is what you are". I assume this is not a new thought to you. This is the sense of identity that you have already as Church and I hope that all of us follow him all the way in this.
2. A guide to corporate vocation: "what you all should do (to express what you are)"
Now we go on to paragraph 2, where, in terms of the identity that we have, Peter tells us what we all should do – again, in our network of relationships which makes up the corporate reality of the Church. A string of things. People have their own formulae these days for what should be happening in the Church. Well, Peter had his formula for us and here it all is, main headings set out, how many of them are there? Twelve, I think, and there's an extra one which fell out in my drafting, which I'll ask you to put in at the appropriate moment.
Fist and basic summons: Be holy according to God's directive, he says, "I the Lord am holy, so you must be holy too". Familiar words from chapter 1 verses 15 & 16. Also chapter 4 and verse 3 where Peter makes the negative point: "You've already spent enough time doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passion, drunkenness, rebellion, carousing, lawlessness, idolatry," etc.
You are surprised that you no longer join them in all of that? But you don't, do you? You are on the holiness track, aren't you? And what does it mean to be on the holiness track? Well the next line tells you. You practise obedience to the God who calls you to be holy and you practise love in the sight of the God who calls you to be holy. And yes, of course, that word "holy" is a relational word. It means consecrated, committed to, set apart for your God, but doesn't actually carry, without help, all the moral and ethical content which Christian holiness requires. So obedience and love have to be specified and other specifics of holiness get specified also as we go down this column. But obedience is basic because God has, in fact, told us in detail, really, what are to be our moral priorities, what's to be the shape of the life we live.
Chapter 1 verse 14 is the reference to put in there. Like obedient children, don't be conformed to the desires you had in your ignorance. Obedient children will fulfil the Lord's summons to holiness and do the things he says. And as for love, love to the Lord we've already seen ("having not seen him you love him" – chapter 1 verse 8), and if you really love someone you want to please them. That again shapes your behaviour. And as for love, Christian to Christian, there's a lot about that as the letter goes on. I'll give you just one reference now, chapter 1 verse 22. "Now that you've purified your souls by your obedience to the truth, (that's the truth of the Gospel) so that you have genuine mutual love as the overflow of your responsive love for Christ, love one another deeply from the heart." And you worship and glorify God.
Yes, you're called to do that under all circumstances, never cease, and that's chapter 2 verse 5. Again this is the holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices, sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving and devotion of heart. Such sacrifices are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And in chapter 4 verse 16, he gives you another version of the same thought: Glorify God specifically because you bear the name of Christ. Glorify God out of gratitude that he's made you a Christian, even if the fact of your Christian identity gets you into trouble. If any of you suffers as a Christian, don't consider it a disgrace but glorify God because you bear this name. Praise and glorify God. This is a basic churchly task.
And as newborns, feed and grow, that's chapter 2 verse 2, like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, the milk of the Word. "Spiritual" is "logical", which points to the logos of God expressed in the rhema of proclamation. That's what you grow on, says Peter. And as you ingest the pure milk, the pure spiritual milk, for which you should be longing, then you will grow. You'll grow into salvation. If you've tasted that the Lord is good, verse 3, you'll want more.
Yes, grace is more-ish and there's something wrong with anyone in the Church who hasn't got a constant appetite for more of God's truth as expressed in his Word. When Spurgeon said that the blood of a Christian should be "bibline", that is, when you prick the Christian, out should come the Bible, it was a quaint way of expressing it but what he was expressing was absolutely right.
As those who are worshipping and loving and feeding and growing (next line), the Church is called under all circumstances to do good. It's a very general phrase and it covers a great deal. Do all the good you can, said John Wesley to his preachers. He wasn't specific but he was Petrine in saying that. Peter isn't specific either but the thought of doing good is, as you can see, a thought that expresses a tremendous amount. Doing good, said Richard Baxter, the Puritan, is the greatest joy in life. And you can see what he meant.
We who are in ministry are called to be constantly doing good in one form or another, and not just us who are in ministry, it's all who are in the fellowship, all who are in the Church. Or perhaps the better way of saying that is to say we are all in the ministry, so that the summons to do good applies to all of us equally. I'd rather say it that way. The people often called the laity are in the ministry as much as you and I who are called the clergy. Again we come to that at the end of 1 Peter chapter 4 and I'll be saying it again when we get there. But for the moment "do good". There's the message. Chapter 4 verse 19 is the text.
Let those suffering in accordance with God's will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator while continuing to do good. There it is. And I speak here of the christianising of relationships. We can't go into that in as much detail as I'd like to but there's specific teaching on the marriage relationship, husband and wife together, in the first seven verses of chapter 3, and on servants and masters, which means in modern parlance employers and employees, in chapter 2 verse 18 and following down to verse 23. Well, we are to christianise those relationships by love and respect and faithfulness. And Peter tells you all about it. But we must hurry on.
We are to embrace unity and we are to embrace humility. Embracing unity is a point which Paul often makes. Peter makes it too. We should realise that unity wasn't a big deal in the first century world. In most communities, being a person who stood out on his own was regarded as a much better thing than being in solidarity with other people. Individualism was of a more optimistic sort than is the case in our modern, post-Christian culture, where the individualism is the individualism of the Enlightenment. This was the individualism of the ancient Graeco-Roman world and it meant that people were quarrelsome. And, says Peter, you've got to get over that. It isn't an expression of your identity as the Church at all.
Embrace unity. Where does he say that? Chapter 2 verse 5. Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house. Be built, passive. What Peter was envisaging there is a work of God in the fellowship which maximises and deepens togetherness. The same point as Paul makes, you remember, at the end of Ephesians chapter 2. There are churches with a long history, where there's precious little of this growth into togetherness today. That's bad. Peter says "Let yourselves be built into a single spiritual house". He's writing to many congregations. It's a general letter. He doesn't know in how many churches it will be read. But what he's saying here is a word to them all. Let yourselves be built together.
The fellowship should always be deepening in terms of the relations between the people who make up that fellowship. Is that happening in our congregations? It should be. And we should be telling our people that it should be. And we should be checking that they are, in fact, growing closer together in mutual helpfulness so that there will be edification all around. That's the embrace of unity to which Peter calls the Church. It's to be an intentional thing, he says. Chapter 3 verse 8 says it again. "All of you have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart and a humble mind." You'll never have this kind of unity without a humble mind.
Peter keeps coming back to humility, which of course does not mean pretending that you are worse than you are. By comparison with the God who saved you, you're not at the centre of the picture, he is. You are here for his glory. People are not intended to give attention to you, they're intended to give attention to him and you must help them do that. That's Christian humility. It's the very opposite of the personality cult and the gathering of people round yourself as if you were some great one. No, it's not to be like that, says Peter. Practise humility and remember that it's the Lord who must be the focus of our attention. It's the Lord who is on the throne; it's the Lord whom we are to exalt, not each other.
And when you get to chapter 5, there's another aspect of humility that he highlights. Being humble before God in this way and trusting him to look after you as sheep in the flock must trust their shepherd because they are not competent to look after themselves, you are safe, as you've read in chapter 1, you're being kept by the power of God for the fulness of the salvation which awaits you and here, talking to people to whom he has been saying some very explicit things about the persecution, he now says, and we pick up in verse 5 halfway through: "All of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another" – that's the horizontal aspect of it – "for God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you in due time".
There are the two aspects of the blessing that humility brings. You are genuinely helpful to other people when you don't insist that they exalt you and cow-tow to you and you trust God to look after you. You humble yourself by putting yourself in his hands, and he does look after you and in the case of the persecution, well, says Peter, he's going to see you through. No one ever lost on the deal by being humble. But this isn't all. The next line says we are to evangelize, hold out the Word of Life to others. We're to do it with wisdom. We're to do it with credibility. How does he spell that?
I suggested to you when we looked at chapter 2 verse 9 that proclaiming the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light includes in its meaning, if indeed it isn't the whole of its meaning, the holding out of the word of life in evangelism. Testifying to God in order to bring other people into the enjoyment of God. And he picks it up again when he's talking about husband and wife. Don't misunderstand him in what he says here. It's chapter 3 verse 1: "Wives, accept the authority of your husbands so that even if some of them don't obey the Word, they may be won over without a word by their wives' conduct".
Now, get the sketch. They know the Word but they refuse to obey it. The wife is now called so to live as first of all to convince them that it's all true and second to show them that they all need it so that through the quality of the wife's life they will be, as the NRSV happily says, won over without the wife having to say anything at all. That's what Peter is envisaging and hoping for and that's a word which we need to share with lots of people today.
Then in the same chapter 3 and verse 14, Peter says, having said "in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord", "always be ready to make your defence" – well all right, "defence" I don't think is the perfect word but I'll come back to it – "Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you".
The situation envisaged here is that you are given a chance to explain your faith. "Defence" to my mind sounds much too defensive to catch Peter's full meaning. Apologia, certainly the Greek word that he uses, but an apologia can be a justification and so a commendation of a point of view; the dictionary will tell you that, as well as being a defence given by someone who is on the defensive about what he is being asked about. I know it's evangelism that Peter is thinking of here as opportunity is given in life situations. Be prepared to tell. Just as wisdom may guide the wife in her life situation to keep her mouth shut because he knows it already and the question is whether he is ever going to come to terms with it.
Evangelize, then, with credibility, justifying what you believe, knowing that it's the only way of wisdom and truth. Evangelize with wisdom, not casting your pearls before swine, that is, not talking about the Lord and his salvation in a way that turns the person you are talking to into a swine. That was Jesus' meaning undoubtedly. He is dissuading his followers from insensitivity, which produces a swine-ish reaction. "I don't want to hear any more of it – go and boil your head!" – that kind of thing. Well, as you know, some zealous Christians have evangelized in a way which turns the hearers into swine. There's a better way of doing it than that.
Another thought. You and I are to accept suffering as from God because Peter is telling the churches as churches that they must accept suffering as from God and there's a lot about that in the letter as we all know. I won't read any of it because it's familiar stuff but just jot in your margin chapter 1:6-7, chapter 3:17, chapter 4:1&2, chapter 4:12-14 also 16 and 19 or the whole of the second half of chapter 4.
I'll just read what Peter says by way of promise in chapter 5 and verse 10: "After you've suffered a little while", (as all Christians one way or another will do – God in his providence uses suffering as a discipline, it's everybody's discipline, it doesn't always come in the same form, but nobody has a trouble-free life) "after you've suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you". And that's as true today in relation to the pains and griefs that come our way as it was in 63 AD when Peter wrote this letter while the Church was moving into the Nero persecutions. Meantime, you will be tempted to haul down the flag because of the pressures that are on you and that you must not do.
This is the bit that I want you to insert: "Resist Satan", says Peter and that should be inserted here after Accepting Suffering as from God. The familiar words in chapter 5 verse 8 "Like a roaring lion your adversary prowls around looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith". One way or another, he will be urging you, seducing you, either to deny your faith altogether and if he can't get you to do that, to live as if it weren't true. To live, in other words, in disobedience to it. And then to play games with yourself, not recognising what you are doing. Well, resist the devil, recognise his temptations. He's fierce, he's malevolent – resist him.
Maintain every-member ministry, corporate pastoral care, that's chapter 4 verses 10 & 11, like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Our charismatic friends are right to say every-member ministry because every-member giftedness is the pattern and must ever be the pattern in the Church, the Body of Christ, where every unit helps the rest.
It wasn't left of course to the Charismatics to go heavy on that emphasis. Alan Stibbs was doing it fifty years ago before the charismatics were ever heard of. He was right then and the Charismatics are right now. Yes, the framework for our ministry as pastors of the congregation, the stated ministry that's dealt with in the next line, is the every-member ministry in the fellowship which we are to encourage and facilitate and oversee but the by-pass meadow of the pastor or clergyman, keeping all the ministry to himself, that's not to be our way, for that quenches the Spirit.
Peter goes on to say that every gift each of you has received is to be used whatever it is. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very Word of God. There'll be verbal ministry one to the other. Whoever serves must do it with the strength God supplies. There will be – shall I say – Samaritanship, loving and helpful ministry in practical things the one to the other, so that, Peter continues, God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. Only through every-member ministry will God be glorified in all things in the Church. Let's face it: this is not something we can afford to ignore or neglect just because there are other things in the charismatic ethos with which we are not too happy.
And with all of this, guard your prayer-life – yes, this is a corporate thing, although it is an individual thing as well. The New Testament envisages the Church praying together, and really praying, and one of the saddest things in our time is the death of the church prayer meeting. Nearly everywhere it has died. Thank God for those congregations where it's still alive. And let those of us in whose congregations it has died ask ourselves what we ought to be doing about that.
Chapter 3 verse 7 and chapter 4 verse 7 are the two texts here which speak of guarding your prayer-life and chapter 4 verse 19 and chapter 5 verse 6 are the texts that speak of trusting God for the future. And chapter 3 verse 6 elaborates that thought negatively by saying "Don't fear...", which is a word very much for our time because fear is there in the hearts of most people over the age of 30. Check and you'll see. And who can wonder? When you think of what the 21st century may hold for all of us. Trust God for the future. But my eye slipped over the line "appreciate stated ministers" – that's chapter 5 verses 1-5. Here I'm going to stop. |
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