Carson / Nielson Resurrection Life in a World of Suffering

1 Peter
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5703-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

'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.

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nielson, Kathleen

Carson, D. A.

Leseproben

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.

The grass withers,

and the flower falls,

but the word of the Lord remains forever. (1 Pet. 1:24–25)

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 those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1:1–2)

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...