Suffering for Doing Good

One morning, Newton—that is, John Newton—addresses his congregation as follows. This is the eighteenth century:

I [count] it my honour and happiness that I preach to a free people, who have the Bible in their hands. To your Bibles I appeal. I entreat, I charge you to receive nothing upon my word, any [further] than I can prove it from the word of God; and bring every preacher, and every sermon that you hear, to the same standard.[1]

We pray for the illumination of the Spirit:

Make the book live to me, O Lord.
Show me yourself within your Word.
Show me myself, and show me my Savior,
And make the book live to me.[2]

Amen.

Well, we are over the halfway mark. I’m sure you’ll have noticed that. I counted up how many verses we’ve done and how many still to go. We want to make sure, I want to make sure that I keep in mind the way in which we began so that as we process towards the end, we don’t lose our bearings.

We recognize that Peter, as he draws the letter to a close, is encouraging those to whom he’s writing concerning the true grace of God and the importance of standing firm in it. He’s writing to those who are scattered, exiles, strangers, sojourners,[3] but they are citizens of heaven.[4] They are made, metaphorically, spiritual stones; they are being built into a spiritual house.[5]

From a human perspective, in most cases, they wouldn’t appear to amount to very much. They’re living their lives isolated, rejected, opposed, and yet they know that they are “a chosen people.”[6] They’ve been chosen by God and brought into the family of God and are to live, as we’ve been singing this morning, as brothers and sisters of God, with all the challenges and privileges that go along with that.

Peter, in writing in this way, is essentially the shepherd. And he is exercising, as a shepherd, a ministry of reminder. It comes across, I think, most clearly in his second letter, when he actually states the facts. He says, “I intend always to remind you of these qualities, even though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. And I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things.”[7]

That is the task of the teacher, whatever you’re teaching. He’s not writing to inform them of things that they have never known but to remind them of things that they must never forget. And whenever I say that, as I just have, it reminds me of my history teacher at the Ilkley Grammar School in Yorkshire. He was a fine man. He was from Bradford. His name was Norman Salmon. I won’t want to take time with him except to recount this: that I remember he would be working with us through something like the Chartist movement in the nineteenth century that went on for a while, and he used to sit up on the window ledge and tried not to fall asleep as he was putting us to sleep. And eventually he said to us, “Now, listen here, lads. If you forget anything in my class, don’t ever forget this: that Bradford City won the FA Cup in 1911.” Fifty years later, I was able to tell you that. You know why? ’Cause I’ve never forgotten.

The work that’s being done with these children here is fantastic. I had the privilege yesterday of being with some of the children’s leaders and just grounding them in these essential truths. And here we are, all of a sudden: grown-up children. And Peter, writing to those and now speaking to us by the Spirit through the Word of God, having explained the nature of submission to civil government and the importance of it within the framework of employment and certainly in marriage, he now comes and says to them—verse 8—“Finally, all of you…” It’s a kind of preacher’s “Finally,” given that you’ve still got all the chapter 4 and chapter 5 to go. We all learn from the best, you know.

But essentially, what he’s doing is he’s bringing by way of summation, I think, what he has begun back in, probably, the eleventh verse of chapter 2, where he begins, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles,” and so on. And he’s gone along through that. And I take it that that may well be what he means when he reaches “Finally…” He wants to make sure that those who are reading his letter understand the way they are to deal with people who are making life difficult for them and also how they are to love and care for one another.

A Series of Five Calls

And that’s where the text begins in this series of statements: “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind”—a call to harmony, the kind of harmony that is to exist amongst those who are bowing to the same Lord and Savior, like members of an orchestra. Cleveland Symphony is one of the top five in the nation, and they all play. And they don’t all play the same instrument, they don’t all play at the same time, but they all play the same score, and they all submit to the same conductor. And harmony and unity in the body of Christ, of course, is along those very same lines.

But not only harmony; also sympathy—empathy that enters into the cares and concerns of one another. I’ve been struck very forcibly by these prayers every morning—that they have not been rambling concoctions emerging just from a simultaneous sense of urgency but have been thoughtful and prayerful and have allowed people like myself, who have no knowledge of any of these things, to be able to enter into them. It is clearly obvious, the sense of sympathy and of care—which, of course, is emblematic of brotherly love.

“Love one another,” Paul writes in Romans 12: “Love one another with brotherly affection.”[8] The Thessalonians receive an amazing encouragement when he writes to them, and he says, “Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.”[9]

Presumably, they also, in Thessalonica, had developed a tender heart—that at the very core of their being… The Greek word there speaks of that: Moved to the very core, moved with a sense of compassion, stirred by recognizing that what they see before them, what they’re experiencing in the life of another, is such that it is not simply head knowledge to them, but it galvanizes them into prayer, into concern, and into action. There’s nothing superficial about it, nothing sentimental about it. It is the expression of the Samaritan—unlike the priest and the Levite, who went down the road. (And I had to memorize that at school in Glasgow.) But when the Samaritan came and when he saw him, he looked on him, having seen him with compassion.[10]

And, of course, it’s no surprise that humility of thought is fundamental to that as well. (And we’re only still in the eighth verse.) Again, Peter and Paul, if they’d got together to compare notes, would have said, “We’re really just saying the same thing slightly differently”: “I say to every one of you not to think of himself more highly than he ought.”[11] Because both Peter and Paul would have understood the clarity of the Scriptures in the Old Testament, not least of all in the Prophets and particularly, perhaps, in Isaiah, who himself, realizing how vast and great is God, cries out from his heart in that amazing temple scene. It’s no surprise that he writes in the sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah,

This is the one to whom I will look [says the Lord]:
 he who is humble and contrite in spirit
 and trembles at my word.[12]

That God would actually speak to us, that we might hear him, and then that we might be those who are able to pass it on.

Now, can I just pause there at the end of verse 8, and let’s just do an inventory for ourselves, just for a moment in our minds, individually and corporately, in light of those phrases: harmony, sympathy, brotherly love, tenderheartedness, and humility of mind. When visitors come to our church families, is this what they discover? Because this is God’s intention for us, and it’s clear.

Our Approach to Opponents

Now, verse 8, then, addresses how we act towards one another. But what is our approach to be to those who oppose us? Well, he comes immediately to that in verse 9. I’m taking it that he has outsiders in his mind particularly, but, however, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility of the experience of friendly fire.

Paul is honest enough when he writes to acknowledge that he has experienced friendly fire in his life too. For example, as he gets to the end of his swan song, of his letter to Timothy, in 2 Timothy 4, and he’s giving various calls out to folks who’ve been part of his ministry, he’s honest enough to say, “Alexander the metalworker did me [much] harm.”[13]

And Peter is actually passing on here to his readers what he has heard Jesus say. He heard Jesus say, “You[’ve] heard … it … said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enem[y] and pray for those who persecute you.”[14] He’d heard Jesus say, “Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.”

And it is “to this you were called,” he says in verse 9—which is a phrase that he’s already used back in verse 21 of chapter 2. There he was speaking about “We’ve been called to the reality of patient endurance in the experience of unjust treatment.” And here, as he reuses the phrase, he’s calling for a display of active kindness—active kindness—which responds with blessing and not with curses: that we’re to be praying for them; we’re to be showing kindness to them; we’re to be promoting their well-being.

How hard is this? How tough is this? The Christian life is not just hard; the Christian life is impossible, bar the invasion and power of the Holy Spirit. I was delighted that we had the Italian connection this morning, because I was having my own little Italian connection earlier on. And I can explain why. Because as I got to this in reviewing my notes—and I said to myself out loud, “This is incredible. How difficult is this? I don’t even like these people, and I’m supposed to show them kindness and to promote their well-being.” That doesn’t come naturally. Of course it doesn’t! It’s supernatural. And then I thought of the hymn:

Come down, O love divine,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit … with thine
Own ardor glowing.

And then particularly the verse that begins,

Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be
And lowliness become
[My] inner clothing,
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part
And o’er its own shortcomings
Weeps with loathing.[15]

You say, “Well, I’m following you so far, but where does the Italian connection come in?” Well, that was because that was a poem written in the fourteenth century by Bianco de Siena. If you’ve been to Siena, and you’ve stood there, and you looked to that amazing square (actually, circle) and you say to yourself, “How we long for these people here—these thousands of people here—to know the liberating power of Jesus that is in the gospel!”—and here we have in that poem, then transformed for us, the call for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives in order that what the Bible calls us to we might be enabled to do.

The Christian life is not just hard; the Christian life is impossible, bar the invasion and power of the Holy Spirit.

And so it is that, if you like, with the words of Jesus ringing in the ears of Peter as he’s reflected upon them, he then goes back into the Psalms, and in verses 10 and 11 and 12, he quotes from Psalm 34—reminding us as he does so that the direction that is contained in this psalm and, indeed, in the Bible is intensely practical. And we won’t try and unpack it, but just notice, for example: “If you want to really live a long life and see good days, watch your tongue. Keep your mouth from evil, keep your tongue from evil, turn away from evil and seek to do good. Seek peace, and go after it with the same kind of endeavor that the famous”—the now-famous—“George the Labrador goes after his food. Seek peace and pursue it.” It’s a graphic verb: “Go for it.” I want to be a champion of this. I don’t want to be the disruptor in my elders’ meeting. I don’t want to be the kind of person that is always carping and criticizing and complaining and acting like Eeyore all the time, the way our poor brother was asked to act last night, if you remember. He was very concerned when he met me to tell me, “Now, what I’m going to do this evening in this little dramatic part—I’m not like that at all,” he said. I said, “You don’t have to justify it to me. I never met you in my life.”

Schreiner, the Baptist, in his commentary—and I only have one quote from him, but I liked it, so I wrote it down—this is what he said, just in a sentence: “A life of goodness does not simply happen as believers meditate quietly in their rooms.”[16] “A life of goodness does not [automatically] happen as believers meditate quietly in their rooms.” I can be all kinds of things quietly in my room; the trouble is as soon as I get out. And then my mouth starts to go, and then other things go along with it. I don’t know about you.

Suffering for What Is Good

“Now,” he says, “since I’ve mentioned to you the importance of dealing with people who are reviling you, let me ask you a question. Let’s ask it rhetorically”—verse 13: “Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?” And it is in this section that we have the fairly well-known verse concerning a reason for the hope that we have.

It’s, I think, fair to say that it is at this point that Peter begins to really dial down on what it’s going to mean to help those who are reading to understand the way in which they’re going to navigate suffering. So he wants to direct them, to comfort them, to fortify them in order that when they face suffering, when they face trials, grief in all kinds of ways, that he might be enabled to prepare them not simply to endure suffering but also to find in those experiences of difficulty the opportunity to testify to the glory of God.

Generally speaking, being committed to doing good shouldn’t actually, normally, if you like, result in harm. After all, if the magistrates—if civil authorities, as we thought about yesterday morning—if those magistrates are doing their duty, then we’re going to see evil punished and good rewarded.[17]

However, Peter recognizes that everything is not as we would want it or like it to be. And in verse 14 he says, “But let’s be honest about things: If and when you should suffer for righteousness’s sake, you will be blessed. You will be blessed.”

Now, as I thought about the children yesterday and as I thought about the young people—many of them students and teenagers, I think, who were teaching the children—I thought to myself, “Many of these young people in this context are wrestling seriously with, you know, Matthew 6 at the end: seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and these things that God desires will be added unto them;[18] making commitments at a time like this. That’s been the testimony of so many. Some of you are going back twenty and thirty years and testifying to this.

Now, what do we say to our teenagers and our young people? “Even if you should suffer for righteousness’s sake, you will be blessed.” Well, how would they be suffering for righteousness’s sake? Well, in the present generation, if you’re prepared to honor your father and your mother—actually obey them, come home when they say, live under their tutelage and loving care—you may actually be ridiculed by your friends. If you, as a young student today, are committed to moral purity before marriage and in marriage, the chances are that you’re going to be maligned for righteousness’s sake. If you are committed to being a truth teller in a world of shifting values, in a world of people who have made a skill in telling lies to one another, you may become the occasion of animosity.

Now, you don’t have to be a teenager. In company outings, corporate outings, Christmas parties, social gatherings, they may hate you. But you will be blessed.

In most cases, the response of the culture to even expressions that are fairly minor concerning Jesus is at least irritation, often opposition, and on many occasions just flat-out rejection. Years ago, I had the privilege of speaking at a corporate gathering—and it was a long time ago—for Chrysler Corporation in America. They gave awards to students. And for some reason, I had been invited to give a talk to them. They were receiving awards because they’d been good students. And it was within the context of corporate culture. However, I used the opportunity to provide the story of the man who built his house on the rock versus the man who built his house on the sand. And nobody said anything to me in terms of the leadership of the thing when I got in my car to go home, but later, the only report I had was “The Begg fellow gave a very good talk, but we would like a lot less of Jesus if he comes again.” “A lot less of Jesus.”

See, Jesus was the problem. Spirituality’s not the problem. Religion’s not the problem. Jesus is the problem. And when we do what Jesus says—when we trace our lives against the Spirit-endued framework of all that he desires for us—then we will be blessed. Because Jesus promised that: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”—not persecuted for being a jolly nuisance in your office. That’s easy. No, “persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[19]

Now, let’s be honest: Most of us know very little about persecution. Suffering is an area of spiritual geography that we have to really try hard in order to say, “Oh, yes, I get this.” Some have paid the ultimate price. As I was thinking about this again this morning, I was reminded of the fact that when I was at the equivalent of Moore College in London… That’s a reach. But anyway, when I was there… (That’s trying to pull myself up rather than pull you folks down.) Anyway, myself and a friend, along with a young lady, were sent to the London Embankment Mission. The London Embankment Mission is full of people who are living on the embankments and around the streets of London. They bring them in, they offer them pizza, and they hold that out as a reward for having to listen to dreadful talks from the Bible given by people that they bring in—namely, myself and my friend Steve.

We’d never experienced anything like it. The lady who was with us was a singer. She had a beautiful voice. Her name was Mary Fisher. She was Welsh. And I have such a vivid recollection of it, because when Steve was speaking, a gentleman—one of the people from the street—got out a newspaper. The entire newspaper! He opened it out like that in front of his face. And so Steve is here, the man is there, and the newspaper is there. And I remember sitting, thinking smugly to myself, “Oh, Steve is not doing very well!” you know. “This is not what you would call ‘coming across.’” But next it was my turn. Oh! It wasn’t the same fellow; it was one of his pals. But he took it up a notch. He went in his coat, and he brought out a gigantic alarm clock—one that has the bells on the top. And he set it and made a ring like about one minute later.

The only time there was silence in the room or attention was to the lilting voice of Mary Fisher, a mathematics and science teacher who trained at LBC because, like many here, had felt the call of God to world missions. She was working with a mutual friend from Rhodesia, from Zimbabwe, over at Murewa, who was helping her to prepare for the Shona language in order that she could instruct. And off she went to do that. You can find this just by googling it. She was a couple of years ahead of me, and she went off to do exactly what she’d planned to do. And on the twenty-third of June 1978, when the Zimbabwean guerrillas attacked the Pentecostal school, she and a number of others passed into eternity.

When her belongings were brought back to home—cassette tapes in that time—the people who began to play the cassette tapes found that one of the songs that she’d been teaching to the young children in the school, sung in Shona obviously, was the song,

For me to live is Christ, [and] to die is gain,
To hold his hand and walk his narrow way.
There is no peace, no joy, no thrill
Like walking in his will.
For me to live is Christ, [and] to die is gain.[20]

She was thirty-one when Jesus took her home.

Peter is not writing in abstraction here. “Have no fear of them,” he says, “nor be troubled.” Surely there are a number of lines in this letter, as I’ve already said, that must have cost Peter to write. “Have no fear of them or be troubled.” Really, Peter? You mean like you didn’t have fear of those people who were asking you the questions about whether you followed Jesus or loved Jesus or knew Jesus? Like when you didn’t have any fear when the lady says, “Surely you are one of his,” and on the third occasion, with fearful oaths, you said, “No, I’m not a disciple of Jesus; I don’t know Jesus”?[21]

Giving an Answer

Now, it is this same Peter who is giving instructions: “Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, … in your hearts honor Christ … as holy, always … prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you.” In other words, as you face this suffering and as you respond according to God’s plan, then it will be an occasion for people to say, “Why is it that you have responded in that way? Can you tell me why it is that despite the fact that you’re going through this, instead of you reviling, becoming spiteful, or whatever it might be, there’s a dimension to you that I don’t understand? Can you please help me understand?”

Well, Peter says, you’ve got to be ready with an answer. Well, Peter was ready with an answer. It was the wrong answer! And now he says, “Don’t be like me.” Peter in the courtyard, in face of all the trials—and now us in face of trials and opposition. When, enabled by grace, we end up not fearing our opponents, we cause them to be surprised and so on. The setting may be a courthouse. It may be a common room. It may be a lab. It may be a golf course—whatever it might be. But Peter says, “Make sure you do this.”

Maybe just another pause. What about the times when we have floundered in the equivalent of the courtyard? What about the times when we have bottled it when the opportunity was so clearly there to speak a word concerning Jesus? Well, we ought to be encouraged by Peter’s example—not in terms of his collapsing like a broken deck chair but that the fact is that in the economy of God, that’s not the end of the story of Peter. If it were the end of the story of Peter, we wouldn’t be reading his letter here this morning. Because the collapse in the courtyard is more than offset by the barbecue on the beach, with the Lord of Glory providing breakfast and restoring him and fulfilling the promise that he’s made to him: “Listen, you fellows. Satan has desired to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you—you, Peter. And when everything is put back in order, you go ahead and strengthen the brethren.”[22] From devastation to restoration. This is the God we serve.

The Christian life is a series of new beginnings. Somebody might be listening to my words right now, and in a way that nobody around you knows, you are burdened by a courtyard moment. And part of the reason that we’re sitting under the instruction of the Word in multiple ways now is in order that we might have that experience of, if you like, the barbecue on the beach. Because the God we serve is the God who is able to restore even the years that the locusts have eaten,[23] and, as he will actually go on to tell us before we finish (if we make it to Friday), that God, the God of all grace, is the one who restores, who confirms, who strengthens, and who establishes you.[24]

Now, in seeking to do what he encourages us to do here, we recognize that if we’re going to be able to give answers to people, we have to make sure that we understand that tone—if I can come back to tone again—really, really matters. In fact, the tone with which we respond to people will often have a greater impact than our ability to marshal our facts or even to explain our position.

You will notice that there’s a couple of ways you can go at this. Verse 16: With your conscience clear, even when you’re slandered, even when those who revile you, make sure that your response is with gentleness and with respect rather than with arrogance and self-assertion. Here is “honorable conduct” of verse 12 in chapter 2 brought to the fore. The witness to Christ involves our words and also our lives. And strong arguments will not actually be honoring to God or particularly helpful to anyone if they’re not supported by a consistent life. Slander and reviling will be answered by our good behavior, even though—verse 17—even though it may be our good behavior that has provoked the animosity in the first place. It is still, he says, better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God has for us, than for doing evil.

The Suffering of Jesus

Now, he’s going to go on and make it clear that we shouldn’t be surprised by the suffering. But we need to learn to respond to it in the distinctively Christian fashion. The suffering should be undeserved; it will be, because God is sovereign, divinely ordained; and those factors are clear because they are there in the suffering of Jesus. We’re at verse 18. (You think I’m trying to go slow so that I can avoid the difficult part at the end. That’s only partly true.)

“Christ also suffered … for sins.” What do we know about this? Well, we know a number of things. That it was undeserved. Undeserved. That he suffered in the place of those who deserve to suffer. He bears a punishment that others deserve in order that we might know a forgiveness that we don’t deserve. It is a vicarious involvement. It is a substitutionary involvement. It is at the same time an unrepeatable act on the part of Jesus: “Christ … suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” It is therefore purposeful. The suffering is purposeful, in order that those who are rebels against God might be made the friends of God. The story of Jesus as it is recounted here is the story of triumph and not of defeat. It is the story of an empty cross. It is the story of the victory over death and sin and the grave. And the story of Christian proclamation has to be just that.

This morning, as I began to look at the newsfeed, I came on something you may have seen, and that is that the people at Fox News in America were all very excited, devoted about six minutes to their program to announcing the fact that in Apple’s figures, in terms of the most effective podcasts now, at the beginning of 2025, number one is a Roman Catholic priest encouraging people to pray the rosary every day throughout the year. Now, I’ve got no comment on the Fox people and the motivation of what they’re doing, but I do know about the rosary. Are you really asking me to say every day, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”? Are you really asking me to say, “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for [me, a sinner], now and at the hour of our death”? Because if you are, I need to tell you: Mary can’t do any of that. She never could.

Jesus bears a punishment that others deserve in order that we might know a forgiveness that we don’t deserve.

We need the courage in these days, as gospel men and women seeking to introduce the world to Jesus—the courage to be Protestant. To be Protestant! Christ’s sacrifice for sins was a once, unrepeatable sacrifice for sin. Here is [“Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery”] “The Constitution of the Sacred …” in Vatican II:

The Mass … is at the same time and inseparably:
a sacrifice in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated; …
… For in it Christ perpetuates in an unbloody manner the sacrifice offered on the cross, offering himself to the Father for the world’s salvation through the ministry of priests.[25]

Our message is so far removed from that. Because the triumph of Jesus is exactly that:

The head that once was crowned with thorns
Is crowned with glory now;
A royal diadem adorns
The mighty [Savior’s] brow.[26]

He’s “the resurrection and the life.”[27]

“The Spirits in Prison”

“Well,” you say, “yes, but what are we to make about all of the challenge of the remainder of the text? Are you really trying to stay away from that?” No, no, no, no. But I’m assigning it for homework. And any lingering questions you have, the eminent faculty, both present and former, of Moore College is scattered around the building. And I’ve checked, and I believe that they have this under masterful control.

What are we to make of this? Well, just a number of things, in seriousness.

Presumably, what we read here was clear, or certainly was clearer, to the first readers. I hope so.

Secondly, we recognize the danger of drowning in a variety of interpretations.

Three: We’re thankful for people like Martin Luther, who’s been mentioned already this morning, who says of this, “A wonderful text this is, and a more obscure passage perhaps than any in the New Testament, so that I do not know for a certainty just what Peter means.”[28] Now, if he was around, I’d give him a big hug—the same kind of hug I want to give to John Calvin for never having given us a commentary on the book of Revelation. And I have it on good report that it’s because he didn’t fully understand it himself. That’s worthy of another hug if it’s true.

What do we have? The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. Jesus died. His earthly life ended. But that earthly life was succeeded by his heavenly life. In that life, subsequently—not before, preincarnately, not during, in between death and resurrection, but post-resurrection I take it—that the spirits to which he proclaimed victory are those who had rebelled in Noah’s day. How does that work? At some point along the way, he confirmed his victory and their destiny.

Now, it so happens that in the Murray M’Cheyne readings, we were reading Genesis 7 this morning. And there we had it. It was perfect timing. In Noah’s day, God’s patience finally runs out, and what do we discover? We discover that the water that destroyed the rest of the world was the means of salvation to Noah and his family, who were floating around in the ark. And just as the flood spoke of judgment, which those in the ark were both saved from and saved by in order to enjoy a new world, so the water of Christian baptism speaks of the death which fell upon Christ—a death due to sinners, which believers into Christ are both saved from and saved by and through which they enter into the enjoyment of a new life before God. Now, we could say more than that, but we won’t.

Our salvation is portrayed in baptism; it is not performed by it. And when the first readers of this letter went for coffee with one another and said to each other, “Do you really get that thing about the ark, and in and out, and Noah, and everything else?” somebody said, “Well, I don’t think I’ve got it all, but I do get this: I understand exactly who Jesus is. He is Savior, Lord, and King. I understand exactly this: that he has accomplished a once-for-all atoning sacrifice in order that those who trust in him might know forgiveness of sins and joy in the Holy Spirit. And I know also that—not only who he is and what he’s done but where he is. Because he has gone into heaven on our behalf.”

When Calvin finished his preaching, almost inevitably, he prayed this prayer, which I now pray:

Now let us cast ourselves down before the majesty of our good God, asking him to forgive our sin and renew us in the image of Christ and to fulfill all his purposes in us and through us, to the praise of his glory. Amen.

[1] “Of a Living and a Dead Faith,” in The Works of John Newton (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), 2:558.

[2] R. Hudson Pope, “Make the Book Live to Me” (1943). Language modernized.

[3] See 1 Peter 1:1; 2:11.

[4] See 1 Peter 2:9. See also Philippians 3:20.

[5] See 1 Peter 2:5.

[6] 1 Peter 2:9 (NIV).

[7] 2 Peter 1:12, 15 (paraphrased).

[8] Romans 12:10 (ESV).

[9] 1 Thessalonians 4:9 (ESV).

[10] See Luke 10:33.

[11] Romans 12:3 (paraphrased).

[12] Isaiah 66:2 (ESV).

[13] 2 Timothy 4:14 (NIV).

[14] Matthew 5:43–44 (ESV).

[15] Bianco of Siena, trans. Richard Frederick Littledale, “Come Down, O Love Divine” (1867).

[16] Thomas R. Schreiner, The New American Commentary: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture, vol. 37, 1, 2 Peter, Jude (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2003), 167.

[17] See 1 Peter 2:14.

[18] See Matthew 6:33.

[19] Matthew 5:10 (ESV).

[20] John White, “For Me to Live Is Christ” (1969).

[21] Matthew 26:69, 74; Mark 14:67, 71; Luke 22:56, 60; John 18:17, 27 (paraphrased).

[22] Luke 22:31–32 (paraphrased).

[23] See Joel 2:25.

[24] See 1 Peter 5:10.

[25] “Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery,” in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Northport, New York: Costello, 1977), 102–103.

[26] Thomas Kelly, “The Head That Once Was Crowned with Thorns” (1820).

[27] John 11:25 (ESV).

[28] Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude (Kregel, 1982), 168, quoted in Edmund P. Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter: The Way of the Cross, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 156.