Resurrection Life in a World of Suffering: 1 Peter

by D. A. Carson (Editor), Kathleen Nielson (Editor), Nancy Guthrie (Contribution by), John Piper (Contribution by), Juan Sanchez (Contribution by)

Overview

"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

The book of 1 Peter offers a gospel perspective on our short lives. Originally written to Christians facing intense suffering, Peter's message is one of hope and grace—all centered on the resurrected Christ. Featuring contributions from six popular Bible teachers, this volume will help you better understand the hope-filled message of the book of 1 Peter and experience the resurrection life Jesus offers us today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433557033
Publisher:	Crossway
Publication date:	09/20/2018
Series:	The Gospel Coalition
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	886 KB

About the Author

D. A. Carson (PhD, Cambridge University) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a cofounder and theologian-at-large of the Gospel Coalition and has written and edited nearly two hundred books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.

D. A. Carson (PhD, Cambridge University) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a cofounder and theologian-at-large of the Gospel Coalition and has written and edited nearly two hundred books. He and his wife, Joy, have two children and live in the north suburbs of Chicago.

Kathleen Nielson (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is an author and speaker who loves working with women in studying the Scriptures. After directing the Gospel Coalition’s women’s initiatives from 2010–2017, she now serves as senior adviser and book editor for TGC. She and her husband, Niel, make their home partly in Wheaton, Illinois, and partly in Jakarta, Indonesia. They have three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five granddaughters.

Nancy Guthrie teaches the Bible at her home church, Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as at conferences around the country and internationally, including her Biblical Theology Workshop for Women. She is the author of numerous books and the host of the Help Me Teach the Bible podcast with the Gospel Coalition. She and her husband founded Respite Retreats for couples who have faced the death of a child, and they are cohosts of the GriefShare video series. 

John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.

Jen Wilkin is a Bible teacher from Dallas, Texas. An advocate for Bible literacy, she has organized and led studies for women in home, church, and parachurch contexts. She has authored multiple Bible studies and books, including the best seller Women of the Word. You can find her at JenWilkin.net.

Mary Willson Hannah (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) presently serves as the director of women in ministry for Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee, and as professor of Old Testament at Memphis City Seminary. 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Born Again to a Living Hope

1 Peter 1:1–12

Kathleen Nielson

Let's start out by affirming that it is God's Word, God's breathed-out revelation of himself, we're dealing with in this volume. You'll hear a variety of voices in these chapters, but each is the voice of one who knows the truth of those words Peter quotes at the end of chapter 1:

All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.
This is why we lean in to listen to the Scriptures: we are flowers that fall, and we need a word that doesn't. Like every human being, we need this eternal Word breathed out to us by the Lord of the universe. This Word is the good news received by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died, who rose from the dead, and who is coming again soon.

This is good news indeed — but the biblical book we're expounding has rather a sober theme. The conference in which these talks were originally given was titled "Resurrection Life in a World of Suffering." It's clear to all of us these days that we must be sober about what kind of world we're living in. It is a world full of suffering — and for Christians, even distinct kinds of suffering. If you are reading this and you are not in the midst of suffering personally right now, praise God! But you almost certainly will suffer, and so will the generations of believers coming after you. And of course we must think of the brothers and sisters with whom we share this world and who suffer right now in all sorts of ways.

We do well to look suffering in the face and learn how to talk about it biblically. We come to God's Word not to forget about suffering for a little while; we come because we know that the good news we believe speaks right into the suffering, with the greatest hope. How does that happen? How is it that we believers can be at the same time the most unabashedly joyful and the most painfully sober people on the planet? The book of 1 Peter helps us with this question. Peter helps us grasp the hope of resurrection life in a world of suffering.

We begin with a big, weighty chunk of Scripture. In the first twelve verses that open his epistle Peter is purposefully doing something big. He's giving a panoramic view of the landscape before zooming in more closely. Peter begins by setting forth a big perspective of gospel hope. He wastes no time; we are not led gently into his letter. He does not prepare us for this panoramic view. He just lays it out there for us — and it might take our breath away! Just in the first two lines we encounter election, dispersion, foreknowledge, and sanctification. This first section indeed sets forth a big perspective of gospel hope.

Seeing the shape of this passage helps us take in the bigness. The gospel hope Peter will unfold is based on two main truths for believers in Jesus Christ: first, who we are in God's eyes (vv. 1–2), and, second, where we are in God's story (vv. 3–12). These truths are like our spiritual name and address, our identification that we must carry with us at all times. We need these truths to identify ourselves and to find our way home. Without these truths we won't grasp the hope of resurrection life. The suffering might threaten to overwhelm us. But Peter opens his book by pulling us up to get this big perspective, with these two truths shining out — and shining their light over the whole rest of the book.

I. Who We Are in God's Eyes (1:1–2)

Identities in Biblical Context

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To get identity straight feels natural at the start of an epistle, because that's what you do at the start of any letter: you identify who's writing, and to whom you're writing. It's actually lovely that we get to grapple with this sober subject of suffering through a personal letter. A letter is different and often more comforting than, for example, a theological treatise on suffering, which, if you're right in the thick of suffering, you might not be able to digest. But a personal voice from a brother in the faith right to you — that's different.

Of course this letter isn't from just any brother. Peter identifies himself right at the start, in verse 1: "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ." His identification is simple and straightforward and carries a weight of authority that the early church clearly understood. An apostle was one who had been with Jesus and who had the authority to teach his truth. Peter was one of the disciples called out by Jesus, close to Jesus, loved by Jesus, severely rebuked by Jesus, and even failing miserably to follow Jesus — but finally forgiven, restored, and personally commissioned by Jesus, sent out to feed his sheep (cf. John 21:15–17).

In this epistle Peter is doing some substantive feeding of some really needy sheep. Most scholars believe Peter wrote this letter from Rome during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, probably just a few years before the dramatic persecution of Christians that would take place under that same emperor. Peter himself would be martyred in those persecutions. But in this letter there's the sense of persecution threatening, arising on all sides, about to erupt.

What was the identity of those to whom Peter wrote? Verse 1 locates Peter's audience in "Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." These place names all refer to Roman provinces in Asia Minor, which is now modern-day Turkey; many think the provinces are listed in the order of places along the route the letter would have been delivered. Mentioning Turkey actually should make us stop and consider how many centuries Christians have lived in that part of the world and endured persecution in that part of the world.

Peter names these believers with three weighty words: "elect exiles of the Dispersion." Each of these words is bursting with Old Testament history. The noun exiles first makes us think back to Israel and Judah being conquered and carried away into exile, first by the Assyrians and finally by the Babylonians. God's people were dispersed or spread out in lands not their own. That was called the "Jewish diaspora" — and so here we have "exiles of the Dispersion." But this raises a question: Is Peter here referring literally to exiled and dispersed Jews? Is he addressing only Jewish people in this letter? Probably not.

The context of the whole New Testament helps us here, with its various references to God's people as exiles. Hebrews 11, for example, sets up sort of an Old Testament "Hall of Faith" filled with exiles: Abraham, for example, sent out from his own country not knowing where he was going; or Moses, wandering in the wilderness. All these, Hebrews 11:13 says, "died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth." They were looking for "a better country, that is, a heavenly one" (Heb. 11:16). God's people were often physical exiles, far from their land, but the main point seems to be that they were spiritual exiles, longing for their true land in heaven.

The Bible shows exile as a continuing picture of the life of faith. Exile works as a metaphor, a picture of God's people as citizens of heaven and not completely at home in the societies where we live. It makes sense, then, that Peter is writing not just to Jews but to Gentiles, or non-Jews, as well. He's addressing all God's people who lived in these Roman provinces but who had by faith become citizens of heaven. The churches in those areas actually included many Gentiles; he's probably referring to these Gentiles later in this chapter (vv. 14, 18) when he talks about their "former ignorance" and "the futile ways inherited from [their] forefathers." They hadn't been raised knowing about the one true God.

But let's not forget that adjective elect ("elect exiles of the Dispersion") — because that word elect means "chosen," and everybody knew that God's "chosen people" were the Jews. But Peter is speaking now to people of all nations who follow Jesus, and they are all elected, or chosen by God from the beginning. How incredibly comforting and clarifying that must have been to the believers from different backgrounds who were coming to faith through the missionary efforts of those early disciples! They were now part of a stream of God's chosen people, all sharing this experience of heading for a heavenly country and so not being fully at home in their earthly one.

Peter clinches this picture at the very end of the book, as he addresses these scattered believers: "She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings" (5:13). Writing probably from Rome, Peter pictures Rome here as Babylon — Babylon being the historical enemy of God's people who took them into exile. In the New Testament, Babylon becomes a symbol of opposition to God's people, all the way through to the book of Revelation. So "she who is at Babylon" is symbolic code for "the church in Rome," who sends greetings to these other churches dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. And they're all chosen by God. They're all elect exiles.

Do you feel this letter from Peter reaching out to you? This picture language of believers as exiles stretches out to include us, now, as followers of Jesus; we are all elect exiles. We also join this centuries-long stream of God's people scattered throughout the nations, carrying deep in us the longing for our true home. It feels like the deepest kind of homesickness. The world would tell us to snuff out this longing by making ourselves at home here. But Peter helps us name that longing — and actually see it as part of our identity. Do you think of being an exile as part of your identity?

So many of you readers could tell about this experience of exile, in your various contexts. Some of you are teachers or administrators; that's a context where Christians sometimes feel a bit like foreigners these days. Educators who are Christ followers learn to tread with care and love and often great tension in order to live out their faith: managing curricula, dealing with rules and regulations, discerning when and how to give witness to the Lord Jesus. The needs are much deeper than dealing with mixed-gender bathrooms; we're traveling a road far from home — where we'll meet so many who are lost and who need help finding the way home.

Or there's the experience of students. What about those who experience same-sex attraction and who have chosen to live celibate lifestyles because they believe that's what Christ calls them to do? What about any young people who believe the Bible teaches God's design of marriage to be for one man and one woman? They all know certain kinds of exile, especially on university campuses. What about family contexts? I think of a young husband and wife who are called to take the gospel to another country but whose parents are up in arms against their children's throwing away all the time and money invested in a good education that should be getting them good jobs with salaries, right close to home. They're exiled at home.

How about contexts farther away? My husband and I regularly spend time in Indonesia; I'm thinking of a number of young Indonesian teachers at Christian schools in that country, and picturing their faces around dinner tables telling about their conversion or their families' conversion to Christianity. Some of them are cut off now from familiar contexts and homes, and some of them still hail from areas where Christians are not welcome. In one way or another many of them are exiles, and they are some of the most joyful exiles I've ever met. And we must keep looking farther, of course, to take in the growing numbers in our world who are exiles in every sense of the word — the hundreds of thousands of Christians who have fled Iraq and Syria, for example. Oh, how much we have to learn about exile, about suffering as aliens in one place while our true citizenship lies in another.

Identities Defined by God

But let's go on: this opening sentence is not finished! In verse 2 Peter adds three phrases that describe these elect exiles. We mustn't miss this, because it is so beautiful. Look at the three phrases in verse 2 and see there the three persons of the Godhead together defining what it means to be an elect exile. You don't get to define exile by yourself. We could all write our own descriptions of what it feels like to be an exile. But here's God's definition, in terms of himself. This is what an exile looks like from God's eyes. Oh, if we could see it this way — and see ourselves this way.

First, as believers we are elect exiles according to the foreknowledge of God the Father (v. 2). Peter is following up on "elect" here, explaining God's sovereign choice in terms of his "foreknowledge." This word "foreknowledge" expresses a kind of knowing that is so personal and powerful it can also be used for God's foreknowing of Jesus, who was "foreknown before the foundation of the world" (v. 20). If you are a believer, God has known you that deeply forever. We do not have to create our own identity; we are known. Eternally known. Our placing in this world as we are is no random swirl of the universe. Your hearing the gospel is no accident. Peter is telling you as a believer that God sovereignly planned for you to be a citizen of heaven — and for you to long for heaven. He even planned for you to wander in whatever hard place you're wandering and feeling like an exile for a little while; this is all according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Peter helps us experience our exile not as lost orphans but rather as chosen children heading home.

Second, continuing in verse 2, we are elect exiles in the sanctification of the Spirit. This means we've been set apart as God's holy people through the work of his Holy Spirit. Again, we cannot make this happen ourselves. Now, sanctification often refers to the whole process of becoming holy and conformed to the image of Christ, but it can also refer to the initial setting apart as holy that happens when the Spirit brings new life to a dead soul — what Paul calls "the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). It's through this initial work of the Holy Spirit that we actually become exiles. Set apart for God, we have a new citizenship, and we're given a new inheritance in heaven. Our whole relationship to this world is changed.

We have a who, a how, and a why here. Who determines that we'll be elect exiles? God the Father. How do we become elect exiles? Through the Spirit. And, finally, why do we become elect exiles? The third phrase in verse 2 has two matching parts to it, and they're both all about Jesus: "for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood." Why are we made exiles? To obey the Lord Jesus.

But what's this "sprinkling with his blood"? Let's put obedience together with the blood here. Peter is connecting again to the Old Testament, most likely to a scene in Exodus 24:1–8, where, after the exodus from Egypt, all the Israelites gather at Mount Sinai. It's an awesome scene. The mountain shakes. Moses builds a huge altar and offers sacrifices, and there are basins full of oxen blood. Half the blood is thrown against the altar and the other half on the people as Moses reads the words from the Lord and the people vow to obey. In that scene the Lord covenants with his people, and they are made the people of God.

But those to whom Peter writes had been made the people of God through a new covenant, the covenant in Christ's blood. First Peter 1:18–19 tells us they were ransomed "not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." Their obedience to Jesus Christ is first and foremost the obedience of faith in that blood. Of course obedience is a lifelong call, but here's the starting point: in the blood of Christ that redeems us. All the obedience Peter's going to call for in this book is the obedience of those who have been made holy by the death of Christ on their behalf — sprinkled with his blood.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Resurrection Life in a World of Suffering"
by .
Copyright © 2018 The Gospel Coalition.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
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Table of Contents

Preface Kathleen Nielson 9

Introduction 11

Peter the Expositor: The Apostle's Use of Scripture in 1 Peter Juan Sanchez

1 Born Again to a Living Hope (1 Peter 1:1-12) Kathleen Nielson 37

2 Living Resurrection Life (1 Peter 1:13-2:3) Jen Wilkin 59

3 Remember Who You Are! (1 Peter 2:4-10) Carrie Sandom 79

4 Following Jesus Far from Home (1 Peter 2:11-3:12) Mary Willson 99

5 Sharing Christ's Sufferings, Showing His Glory (1 Peter 3:13-4:19) D. A. Carson 121

6 A Shepherd and a Lion (1 Peter 5:1-14) John Piper 147

Conclusion 161

Help Me Teach 1 Peter Nancy Guthrie John Piper

Contributors 185

General Index 189

Scripture Index 195