Stewards of God’s Varied Grace

Preachers in the Puritan era were known for many wonderful things. They would not have been great favorites in many of the homiletical departments. They had many, many points to their sermons. It wasn’t unusual for someone sitting in the congregation to hear their minister say, “And now, twenty-seventhly…” One such preacher had gone home at lunchtime. His wife had said to him, “You know, I think you need to back off a little bit on the number of the points.” And she stirred him, and he came back in the evening and basically apologized. He said, “Since my sermon this morning had so many points, my sermon this evening will be pointless.”

And I was thinking about that, and also of something else. I hope you don’t have your book open at talk number six, because if you do, you look at that—it looks like a dog’s breakfast there. There’s a little bit of everything in it. And as I looked at it, it made me think of the fellow who was given an assignment by his professor of homiletics. He was to give a talk, but he was to create the outline for his talk and to give it to his professor, which he did. He went out to see him; he handed it to him. And there was just a very long pause, the professor just looking down at the sheet. And eventually, the young fellow said, “It will do, won’t it? It will do?” And the professor said, “It will do what?”

So, that outline thing that you have in front of you, I tell you what it will do: It will confuse you dreadfully. And so, in the watches of the night, it is now going to be tackled in a different way: first of all, living under the shadow of the cross, in the first six verses; then living in the light of the end, in the central section; and then living on the path of suffering.

Father, as we turn to the Bible, we pray that you will take the truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in the likeness of the Lord Jesus,[1] in whose name we pray. Amen.

Living Under the Shadow of the Cross

Well, first of all, then, living under the shadow of the cross: “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh…”

You’ll note that he is picking up here from the eighteenth verse, I think, of chapter 3, where he has announced this: “For Christ also suffered”; he “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous.” In some ways, he is following up on what he’s already pointed out in chapter 2, in verse 24, concerning Jesus: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”

So, the exhortation that is coming from the pen of Peter is, first of all, that those who are his readers will be thinking properly. Thinking properly. You will notice there in the text: “Arm yourselves with the same [kind] of thinking.” “The same [kind] of thinking.” And what is essential for the reader, for ourselves, to understand is that we daren’t engage in the “continual and irreconcilable war”[2] to which we referred yesterday, as per the Westminster Confession—we daren’t go into that warfare without being armed properly. And our thinking has to be galvanized, structured, by the truth of the Word. If you think about it in terms of the classic passage in Paul’s writings in Ephesians chapter 6, where he is saying to his readers, in light of what they face, “Make sure that you put on the whole armor of God”[3]—and, as you know, part of that armor is the helmet of salvation:[4] learning to think biblically, learning to think theologically, learning to think Christocentrally, and so on.

When I think of that, I think of Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his little book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure, where he says in there, you’ve got to be very careful that as a Christian, you’re not listening to yourself, but you do need to learn to talk to yourself. And you need to talk sensibly to yourself, and you need to talk in terms of the truth of the Word.[5] So, when we take what is being said here in this opening verse and we clarify it in the words of Paul, I think we get an understanding of what Peter has in mind.

I find it interesting—I’m sure you do, too—that Peter, when in his second letter he refers to Paul, he says, you know, “Paul has got a lot of things to say, and some of them are really hard to understand.”[6] Well, in this case, I think that Paul is a big help in helping us understand verse 1. So, for example, Paul writes, “We were buried … with him by baptism into death, in order that, … as [Jesus] was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life”[7]—buried in baptism, raised with him to a new life. And that, of course, he clarifies: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that … we [should] no longer be enslaved to sin.”[8] The power of sin has been broken, but it hasn’t been eradicated. In our lives, sin no longer reigns, but it remains.

And one of the evidences of the transformed life in a context like this is to suddenly say, “Can it possibly be that so many bright, educated, keenly engaging people are about to go and give up themselves, if you like, in order that they might increasingly see a world that knows and loves Jesus?” And the answer to that is yes. If people from the outside were to try and adjudicate on what’s going on, they would be hard-pressed to find an explanation other than this fact: that each has discovered that they are going to live their lives under the shadow of the cross. They are now living a forgiven life that is focused on the purposes of Jesus.

She was a fairly high-ranking nurse in the South of England. Her name was Miriam. And in the process of moving from England to Scotland, she had become a Christian. She arrived in her church in the West of Scotland and quickly settled in. And as I got to know her, she told me that soon after she’d arrived in Scotland, some of her old friends from the hospital structures of the South of England had come up to Scotland, had got in touch with her, and said to her, “Miriam, we are here, and we want to take you out on the town.” She demurred. Her friends were surprised. And they said to her, “That doesn’t sound like the old Miriam”—to which she replied, “That is because I am not the old Miriam. I am now in Christ, I am a new creation, and I’m walking a different pathway.”

The power of sin has been broken, but it hasn’t been eradicated. In our lives, sin no longer reigns, but it remains.

Well, that all begins in our minds: thinking properly in light of God’s truth—and then, in verses 2 and 3, inevitably, living differently. Thinking properly, living differently—“no longer,” he says, “for human passions but [rather] for the will of God.”

In fact, the amount of mention of “time” here is significant through this whole chapter: “for the rest of the time in the flesh.” “For the rest of the time in the flesh.” What are you going to be doing with “the rest of the time”? What are you doing with the rest of your life? That’s what people have started to ask me. It’s quite unsettling. Apparently, you’re going to stop doing what you’re doing. Mark Thomas helped me: He said, “Don’t call it retiring. Call it redeployment. That will get them off your back for a little while.” And it’s worked. But they’re still asking, “What are you going to do with the rest of the time?” “Take my moments and my days,” I guess. “Let them flow in ceaseless praise.”[9]

Because we are no longer what we were. We “were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” We just lived for ourselves, to please ourselves—what he refers to as “in the passions of [the] flesh, carrying out the desires” of both the instincts of our bodies and of our minds.[10] What has happened? Well, he says we’ve been changed, haven’t we? That’s what we saw way back on Saturday night—which was about three weeks ago—and we realized that we’ve been “born again to a living hope [by] the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”[11] It’s not that we bumped into some religious program and decided to try it. It’s that we have been raised out of darkness into light[12]—that our feet have been taken out of miry clay, they’ve been put on a solid rock, and he’s established our going.[13]

Paul again:

But God, being rich in mercy, … made us alive together with Christ—by grace you[’ve] been saved—and raised … up with him … seated … with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward[s] us in Christ Jesus.[14]

“O, how the grace of God amazes me!”[15]

“For the rest of the time.” I would say, on average here—I haven’t checked—but most of us, in human terms, have less time in front of us than we have behind us. Does that then mean that as the runway shortens, we slacken off? We idle away? You remember Charles Simeon, when, after he had been going there for such a long time… He finished his ministry, I think, after fifty-four years, and he was a very devoted man, as you know, and he studied hard, and he rose in time, and so on. And they said to him, “You know, Charles, you’ve done a wonderful job. Why don’t you just relax and settle down and take it easy?” You remember his reply? “Shall I not run with all my might, now that I see the finishing line in view?”[16] That’s when you have the spurt. That’s when you have the kick, as they say in the Olympics—when you kick in. You don’t slacken off and lie down in the grass.

So, a challenge to some of us who are redeploying—a challenge to myself: “Kick in, you lazy Scottish rascal! Let’s go. Let’s go.” “Because, after all, you have spent enough of your time,” he says: “The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do.” “Enough time on that. You’ve been going with the flow,” he says. “That was your preconverted life. Anybody can go with the flow. Any dead fish can flow downstream. Takes a live fish to go up against the current.”

Timothy Dudley-Smith, whose name is not only known here but probably revered, died in the last little while. He died, I think, on the twelfth of August 2024. And when I was nine years old, he gave us his first of many hymns. His first was “Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!”[17] And amongst his many hymns, my favorite is the one “Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided…” And when he goes through: “Lord, for the years… Lord, for this; Lord, for that…” And he comes to

Lord, for ourselves, in living power remake us,
Self on the cross and Christ upon the throne;
Past put behind us; for the future take us,
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.[18]

Now, when you read verse 3, you say to yourself, “Isn’t it amazing how timeless the Bible is?” You would think that somehow or another, when we read this description in verse 3 about a place so far away at a time so long gone, we would have to somehow or another bring it up to date. We would have to contextualize it, if you like. But, you know, it’s striking as you read verse 3 that “the time … is past” now that “suffices for doing what the Gentiles”—or the “pagans”[19]—“want to do.” What do they want to do? They want to live “in sensuality, [passion], drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, … lawless idolatry”—basic, he says, debauchery.

I mean, the devil’s questions have never changed since the garden of Eden: “Do you think God really said that? Do you think God really meant that? Do you think you can really trust God?”[20] And his Friday night party routine, it seems to me, has never changed over all the years. Whether you’re in Bithynia or in Brisbane, or in Cappadocia or in Cleveland, or in Pontius or in gai Paris, or in Galatia or on the Gold Coast up there north of Brisbane, it’s the same deal! Go and look. Walk into the city. What do you see? You see life that is hopeless. You see the worshipping of idols that are self-depleting. You see people investing themselves in the forlorn dream that somehow or another, there’s something out there. And yet they know that the more they reach for it, the less it is. That’s what Peter is saying. “You’re thinking differently now, aren’t you?” he says. “And you’re living differently too.”

I think it’s very, very important we recognize that we’re actually not passive in this matter. That we’re not passive in this matter. I remember speaking at a conference years ago in the North of England, and they had a singer before I started. And I can’t remember the song, but it went something like this: “No more trials, no more fighting, no more…” And I said, “What is this?” And it was like the way to success in the Christian life is you sit down and do nothing. You let go of everything. And so, I guess it’s a succession of letting go, and eventually, you’ve got nothing left to let go, but you seem not to be making any further progress. And I was about to preach on “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”[21] But I had no chance to alter, and so I just went for it. And I recognize that. We’re not passive in this.

I say to young people all the time—I tell them the story that was told to me as a young man about the chaplain in the Navy down in Portsmouth on the South Coast. And he’s standing there with a group of young sailors, and he’s talking to them. And the sailors are saying, “You know, Chaplain, if your collar wasn’t turned ’round the wrong way and you lived in the real world, you would understand that we can’t help a lot of the things we do. We’re just—we’re responding to forces, you know, that…” And he said to them, he said, “If you look out here on the bay, you will see that these yachts are going along.” He said,

One yacht goes east, one yacht goes west
By the self-same winds that blow;
It’s the set of the sails and not the gales
That determine which way they go.[22]

“Oh,” they said. “I never thought about it that way at all.”

Thinking properly, living differently, what can we expect? Abuse? It’s there in the text: “With respect to this, they’ll be surprised when you don’t join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they will malign you”—or “abuse you”[23]—“but you should also know that they will give account to the one who is ready to judge the living and the dead.” Because this is why the gospel has been proclaimed—proclaimed “to those who are [now] dead”—so that the judgment due to them as sinners, by embracing the gospel, has been borne by Christ, bringing them, bringing us, into a new spiritual life which abides beyond death in the company of the redeemed.

Living, then, under the shadow of the cross.

Living in the Light of the End

Living, secondly—verse 7—living in light of the end: “The end of all things is at hand.”

History is not cyclical. I think we’re agreed on that. It is linear. We live in between the two advents of the Lord Jesus. The Anglican prayer book helps as much as anything—especially for people that come out of a culture such as my own—to recognize the fact that when we… In the Anglican prayer book and in the liturgy and in the collects, we recognize that the advent of Jesus in his first coming is in direct relationship to his second coming, and so that Christmas… Often, I think, at Christmas, we have that Titus passage in Anglicanism: “The grace of God that bring[s] salvation ha[s] appeared to all men”[24]—speaking, of course, of the wonder of the incarnation.

Whenever you read a phrase like “The end of all things is at hand,” especially if you’re in a local Bible study group, you know, put your helmet on, because somebody is going to tell you exactly about the return of Jesus Christ—particularly when he will be coming. And I’ve always been excited when Murray M’Cheyne used to speak to his Bible study group, and sometimes, for fun, he would say to them at the end of the evening, “And let me just ask you: Do you think Christ will return before we have our next study together?” And to a man, they all said, “No, not at all.” And then he said, “Well, you must always be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour we do not expect.”[25] When we think in terms of when that will be, “no one knows, not even the angels of heaven”—which is quite a thought—“nor the Son”—the one who is coming—“but the Father only.”[26]

We don’t know the when, but we do know the how. He will come in fulfillment of the promises that he has made and that the Scriptures provide us with. He will come in power to reign. He won’t come, as per his entry into Jerusalem, riding on the foal of a donkey, but he will come in triumph, and he will come, as we’ve already noted, “to judge the living and the dead.”

“The end of all things is at hand.” It’s interesting, to me at least, that it would seem that over the years of my life, there has been a diminishing interest in the second advent—at least the circles in which I move. The end-time preachers seem to have silenced the trumpet call, if you like. But the vacuum—the vacuum has been filled by climate activists. It’s that little lady Greta Thunberg that is on about the end of all things. She’s wrong! If she’d read Genesis 9 with me this morning, she would realize that God is sovereign over all these things. And whatever our view might be of that, the fact of the matter is that God, in his goodness, is watching over that—“seedtime and harvest”[27] and all these things.

So “the fiery trial”—whether it was, as we think, in terms of the Roman emperors—“the fiery trial,” he says, “when it comes … to test you,” you shouldn’t be surprised about that “as though something strange were happening to you.” And the prospect of their end simply calls for Peter’s readers to do what he and his friends had failed to do in the garden, to do what Jesus had exhorted them to do: to control themselves, to stay alert, to watch, and to pray.[28]

And that’s exactly what he’s passing on now, isn’t it? “Do[n’t] be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. … Rejoice … you share [in] Christ’s sufferings, that you may also … be glad when his glory is revealed. If you[’re] insulted for the name of Christ, you[’re] blessed.”

“The end of all things is at hand.” Therefore, what? Well, be quick to pray. Quick to pray. Prayer is so hard, isn’t it? I’ve listened carefully to these prayers. I’ve learned a lot about how to pray. So many of free church prayers are just rambling. This I’ve found profoundly helpful: When my prayer is meager, I have to face the fact that I must be regarding it as supplemental rather than fundamental[29]—when my time of preparation for teaching is far more about trying to understand a verb than it is about seeking God.

The prospect of their end simply calls for Peter’s readers to do what he and his friends had failed to do in the garden: to control themselves, to stay alert, to watch, and to pray.

These are the characteristics, he says, of somebody who’s living in light of the end: number one, prayer; number two, sustained love. Sustained love. Verse 8: “Above all,” right up there at the top of the list, “keep loving one another earnestly.” “Loving one another earnestly.” It’s not mushy. It’s not gushy. It’s a love that goes out of its way to take the initiative. Broken relationships, love always takes the initiative. It’s the kind of love that doesn’t find faults, doesn’t delight in looking around and finding things that are wrong. It’s the kind of love that chooses, even when things are wrong, to overlook them. Because “hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.”[30]

Stibbs, in a wonderful sentence, says… A forgiving spirit is what he’s writing about—a forgiving spirit that “finds a way to shelter the wrongdoer from exposure and condemnation”[31]—the kind of person who pours a blanket over things rather than exacerbating the condition or funneling it or framing it. Peter says there’s nothing to be served by that. “Remember! There’s only so much time left. Pray. Sustain your love for the brethren.”

Three: “Make sure you display ungrudging hospitality.” Ungrudging hospitality. It’s funny: When you travel, sometimes you say to somebody, “Oh, you must come over. If you’re ever in the region, come over.” And then you get a telephone call, and you put the phone down, and you say, “Goodness gracious! They’re actually going to come! That wasn’t what I meant! Well, I guess we’ll just have to have them.” Yeah. That’s called grudging hospitality. Ungrudging hospitality is sharing what we have with those who are going to benefit without secretly wishing that we didn’t have to.

Fourthly (prayer, sustained love, ungrudging hospitality): using our gifts to serve others—verse 10. The variegated grace of God has produced multiplication of gifts: “As each has received a gift, us[ing] it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s [various] grace”—as those who speak, proclaiming the very Word of God, the “oracles of God.” “We’re not here to listen to you, Mr. So-and-So. We want to hear from God. We’ve invited you to give this talk as a servant of the Word of God.” If you are serving, make sure that you serve “by the strength that God supplies.”

Well, you talk about serving? Let’s just pause for a moment. There’s been enough applause, I think, but you think about the people who are standing out there in those muddy puddles in order that we could be in here. And there was a lady who spoke to me this morning with… She had Wellington boots on and a yellow jacket. I don’t think she was wearing yellow to draw attention to herself at all. I think it was her job, and it was very clear, and she was serving with joy. She was passing on the grace that God had given to her in order that she might fulfill in her serving the purpose that God intends. And there is no way in the world that a church can function at all without this principle being clearly in place.

You remember when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4, he says, you know, “Who makes you different from [somebody] else?” The answer, of course, is God does. And “What do you have that you did not receive?”[32] The answer, of course, is nothing. And then he says, “Then if you have received it, why do you glory as if you had not received it?”[33]

Spiritual pride has got to be the worst kind of pride. Because all that we have in Jesus is an evidence of his manifold grace. And so he says, “As the strength that God supplies is revealed in you and through you, it is in order that in everything God may be glorified.” I’m sure that’s why we sang that wonderful song. I’d never heard it until I got here. It’s really wonderful, isn’t it? “May God be magnified.” That’s what he’s saying: in order that God may be magnified through Jesus Christ. Because, after all, for all things are “from him and through him and to him”—Romans 11:36.

Living on the Path of Suffering

So, first in the first six verses, living under the shadow of the cross (and we’ve gone quickly through that); living in the light of the end; and then, finally, living on the path of suffering. Living on the path of suffering.

Most of the commentators, I’ve noticed, suggest that this twelfth verse here is the beginning of the final section of 1 Peter. I think that’s a fairly arbitrary decision, but I don’t know. That would make the first section from 1:1 to 2:10, and then 2:11 to 4:11. It doesn’t really matter. But if it is, then he is now going to move to take us to his conclusion: “This is the … grace of God. Stand firm in it.”[34]

The unbelievers, he’s already acknowledged, will be surprised by genuine Christian living. “However, you as believers,” he said, “are not to be surprised”—not to be surprised, not to be caught off guard—“when the tests come to prove you and to reprove you.”

Now, Peter’s not bringing us something that he hasn’t already addressed. In fact, right at the very beginning, in the sixth and seventh verse of chapter 1, he has said, “You know, you’re already rejoicing in this, though now for a little while…”[35] I need to go back through and see how many references there are to time and to the passing of time in this letter. It may be that Peter feels that time is running away from him. He feels the sense of urgency. He uses verbs like that, doesn’t he—“I urge you” and so on? And so he says to them, “Here’s the wonderful thing: Through faith for a salvation, you’re rejoicing, even though for a little while, if necessary, you’ve been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith may be proved more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by the fire.”[36]

Now, Jesus didn’t put this material in the small print. When Jesus called Peter and the rest into his path, when he called them to be his disciples, when he called them to leave what had been their routine and to come and bow beneath his lordship and listen to his teaching and follow his pattern and so on, very clearly he says to them,

Blessed are you when people hate you [and revile you] and … exclude you … and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; [this is what] their fathers did to the prophets [as well].[37]

So what Peter is saying here is what he heard. This is what Peter heard. He’s passing on. What he has heard from Jesus he is now passing on.

Not only is it what Peter has heard, but it is also what Peter, as a follower of Jesus, has endured. He’s endured this as a follower. Acts chapter 5, you’ll remember. Because of all that had unfolded, the authorities took them, and “they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus,” and then they “let them go.”[38] And then they all dragged their sorry tails down the street, miserable and wretched, complaining, “I never thought it would be like this, following Jesus. I thought it would be a lot better than this. Can you believe this stuff? Goodness gracious! How much time we…” Uh-uh! No! That’s not what it says. Luke says, “[And] then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name [of Jesus].” And then it says, “And every day … they did not cease.” “They did not cease”![39] They got a beating. They rejoiced. They didn’t cease. To do what? Preaching the message of Christ.

So, this is what he heard, this is what he endured, and, of course, this is what he taught. “Insofar, you should be rejoicing as you share in Christ’s sufferings, so that you might be glad, and also when his glory is revealed.”

Can I say something at the risk of danger here? Can I say that he’s saying that this is a man-sized task? Is that all right—I mean, given what I said about sending my wife when I’m afraid and can’t open the jar? You’ll take it from me, right? Because I just watched the four-part documentary on Churchill, and I was struck by the fact that as the sailors were put together to ready to board the ships to engage in the combat that was going to take place in the Normandy landings and so on, they’re all there—Churchill and the rest. You know what they’re singing?

Onward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before.[40]

Now, how many of them understood what they were on about I don’t know. But there is no way in the wide world that you’re going to find somebody being dispatched for warfare in our day, from a secular world, they stand up to sing that. But you shouldn’t be surprised, because half the churches are unprepared to sing it, because we live in a generation that is increasingly afraid of its own shadow.

We were called the Crusaders in our boys’ Bible class. They were called the Crusaders. They had to get rid of it. They changed it to Urban Saints. I thought Crusader was a nice name—and I don’t like being… I’m not an urban saint. I know I’m a saint, biblically, and I’m not very urban. But anyway, that’s by the way. But we used to sing together as children. Remember, I told you, “[We’re] feeding on the living bread”?[41] This is the group at the front. This is our Crusader chorus: “The Lord enlisted me…” (It goes like this: “The Lord enlisted me.” Okay. )

The Lord [enlisted] me;
His soldier I [must] be.
He gave [his life] my [soul] to win,
And so I mean to follow him
And serve him faithfully.
[And] although the [road] be fierce and long,
I’ll carry on; he makes me strong.
And then one day his face I’ll see,
And oh, the joy when he says to me,
“Well done, [you] brave [urban saint]!”[42]

“Sound the battle cry! See, the foe is nigh.”[43] Has anybody heard that hymn in the last ten years, twenty years, thirty years? Ever heard it? No! You see, because people think we’re not involved… (Oh, thank you. We’ll talk later. Maybe you can help me find the person who stole my umbrella yesterday. That’s another story.)

It was called the Salvation Army. William Booth, at the end of the nineteenth century, was asked by people, “What is your great fear for the church in going into the coming century?” That’s the century that is now behind us. This is what he said: “In answering your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” Don’t you think he knew that it’s going to take an army—an army under the headship of Christ, stepping out, going forward in the face of suffering?

And so, he says, “If suffering is your lot, if you’re insulted for the name of Christ, make sure that you don’t suffer by being bad, killing people, stealing stuff, or just being a downright evil person—or a meddler!” “A meddler”! “Meddler” in the same section as “a murderer”! “Why, I’m not a murderer!” Yeah, but there’s a little bit of a meddler in you, Begg. Why are you sticking your nose into other people’s business?

There has never been a point in history where there was a greater venue for meddlers than on your cell phone and in your social media, where, across oceans, you can poke your nose into what’s going on in someone else’s church in a far different place without any knowledge of it at all. And you just have the great privilege of meddling in it. Peter says, “No, that’s not part of it. You’re not a murderer, and you’re not supposed to be a meddler either. When you suffer as a Christian”—verse 16—“it will bring no shame, because in that you have the experience, the opportunity to glorify God.”

“Play the man, Master Ridley!” “Play the man, Master Ridley! For this day we shall light a candle in England such as will not be extinguished.”[44] Oh, this is spiritual geography I know nothing about! I read it; it’s amazing.

And so he says in verse 17… “By the way,” he says, “it’s time for judgment to begin at the household of God.” He’s not talking there about the fire of wrath that will consume the unbeliever. He’s talking there about the fact that there is a purging fire, the fire of his discipline. “The flame [will] not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”[45]

If it’s hard for the righteous to be saved… And he doesn’t mean by that there is any uncertainty about whether the righteous will or will not be saved, but he says the pathway to salvation—finally to glory—is a tough path. It’s strewn with difficulties, and challenges, and disappointments, and fears, and failures, and so on. And if that’s the case there, then make sure that in the face of suffering, let’s do what Jesus did. What did he do? Verse 23 of chapter 2: “When he was reviled, he did[n’t] revile in return; when he suffered, he did[n’t] threaten”; he “continued entrusting himself to [the one] who judges justly.” The Heidelberg Catechism question 1 is good, isn’t it? “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Answer: “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

How firm a foundation is that, as we walk out, living under the shadow of the cross, living in light of the passing of time and the end that is before us, and living also, to one degree or another, on the path of suffering?

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[1] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[2] The Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2.

[3] Ephesians 6:11 (paraphrased).

[4] See Ephesians 6:17.

[5] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 20–21.

[6] 2 Peter 3:15–16 (paraphrased).

[7] Romans 6:4 (ESV).

[8] Romans 6:6 (ESV).

[9] Frances Ridley Havergal, “Take My Life, and Let It Be” (1874).

[10] Ephesians 2:3 (ESV).

[11] 1 Peter 1:3 (ESV).

[12] See 1 Peter 2:9.

[13] See Psalm 40:2.

[14] Ephesians 2:4–7 (ESV).

[15] Emmanuel T. Sibomana, trans. Rosemary Guillebaud, “O How the Grace of God Amazes Me” (1946).

[16] Charles Simeon to W. H. Michell, Cambridge, July 28, 1828, inMemoirs of the Life of Rev. Charles Simeon,ed. William Carus (London, 1847), 620. Paraphrased.

[17] Timothy Dudley-Smith, “Tell Out, My Soul” (1961).

[18] Timothy Dudley-Smith, “Lord, for the Years” (1969).

[19] 1 Peter 4:3 (NIV).

[20] Genesis 3:1 (paraphrased).

[21] Philippians 2:12 (ESV).

[22] Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “The Winds of Fate” (1916), quoted in Derek Prime, From Trials to Triumphs (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1982), 31–32. Paraphrased.

[23] 1 Peter 4:4 (RSV).

[24] Titus 2:11 (KJV).

[25] See Matthew 24:44.

[26] Matthew 24:36 (ESV).

[27] Genesis 8:22 (ESV).

[28] See Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38.

[29] J. Oswald Sanders, introduction to Effective Prayer (1961).

[30] Proverbs 10:12 (ESV).

[31] Alan M. Stibbs, The First Epistle General of Peter, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (London: Tyndale, 1959), 154.

[32] 1 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV).

[33] 1 Corinthians 4:7 (paraphrased).

[34] 1 Peter 5:12 (ESV).

[35] 1 Peter 1:6 (paraphrased).

[36] 1 Peter 1:5–7 (paraphrased).

[37] Luke 6:22–23 (ESV). See also Matthew 5:11–12.

[38] Acts 5:40 (ESV).

[39] Acts 5:41–42 (ESV).

[40] Sabine Baring-Gould, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” (1864).

[41] “I’m Feeding on the Living Bread.”

[42] Cecil John Allen, “The Lord Hath Need of Me (High Barnet Crusaders’ Chorus)” (1934).

[43] William Fiske Sherwin, “Sound the Battle Cry” (1869).

[44] Hugh Latimer, quoted in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563), chap. 12. Paraphrased.

[45] “How Firm a Foundation” (1787).