Trial and Sin

Going to try a new thing. See what you think. I am basically going to write what I've learned from Mark Driscoll's sermons on Trial (1 and 2 Peter). I might also intersperse it with things I've noted from John Piper's book "Battling Unbelief". I don't know. I hope it encourages your walk.

Trial and Sin

"Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To God's elect, stranger in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:

Grace and peace be yours in abundance."

(1 Peter 1:1-2 NIV)

Though these are just 2 verses, in these two verses we get all the truth of our salvation - namely that we are elect, we have been chosen by God, we are sanctified by the Spirit and therefore we can obey Jesus.

I don't know what your viewpoint is on election and predestination. I don't mean to cause a stir, but in these verses we are told that we are elect and God foreknew us. We know from Romans 3:10-18 that we didn't seek God because we were lost and we all sought our own way. Despite our unwillingness to follow God, God chose us and enabled us to have a relationship with him. We didn't do anything to deserve his grace and yet he pours it out on us anyway.

We know from the outpouring of his grace that God is never going to fail us and we are never going to surprise him with our sin. On the cross, Jesus died for our sins - past, present and future. We are no longer condemned, but have been given the right as sons and daughters to approach the throne of grace which we can approach in prayer.

Once we believe by faith in the truth of our salvation, we are given the Holy Spirit, who works in us to sanctify us, which means he is transforming us from the inside out so that we may one day be like Jesus. Phillipians 1:6 reminds us that we are a work in progress, but that God will finish what he started. The Spirit also transforms our desires, so that the closer we are brought to God, the more we desire to get closer.

Peter also refers to us as 'strangers'. The ESV uses the word 'exiles' instead, which makes his idea a lot clearer. The world is not our home, but heaven is. To make the world home is to make yourself depressed. It can't satisfy because we are being made for an eternity with our Saviour. This doesn't mean that life on earth is easy. To be a Christian means to be at war and we will be persecuted.

Persecution comes in two forms. In the West, what we experience may be verbal persecution - snide remarks by friends and colleagues, people maligning Christians, people calling us all stupid and misguided, etc. This gradually eats away at us and takes away our joy. The persecution that our brothers and sisters in the East face is physical. They put us to shame because they face up to it, but we merely try to be politically correct and sometimes say nothing at all.

There are 5 ways to respond to our form of persecution:

- Be liberal - take what seems palatable from the Bible and leave behind the things that make us uncomfortable

- Privatise your faith - keep silent and keep your faith to yourself without sharing it with anyone

- Quit - life as a Christian is too hard, so we give up under pressure

- Be fundamental - instead of loving our enemies and showing them gentleness, we fight against them

Or

- Live as an exile - this means living as a missionary and living differently, not for our glory, but for God's glory.

I don't know what this looks like, but the early Christians loved their enemies in such a way that they too became fellow followers of Christ. We are to do this too. It is easy to retaliate and not love, but we are to love and forgive others as Jesus has loved and forgiven us. This is really scary, but we have to look at Peter as an example. He was, at the beginning of his faith, like us - someone who was afraid and affected by what people thought of him. The New Testament gives us two examples of when Peter caved in to the fear of man - when he denied Jesus three times and when he followed the Judaisers, who expected the Gentile Christians to live as Jews. However, church history records that Peter was so transformed later in his life that he was willing to die crucified upside-down instead of denying Jesus.

Like Peter, we should keep our eyes on Jesus and trust in the sanctifying work of the Spirit. If we persevere in our faith, we too will be transformed so that we will pay more attention to what God thinks of us and not what people think of us. By God's grace, I hope we will all become people who will be bold for Jesus and will be vessels God uses to bring people to Him and to disciple them.