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Reading 1 Peter 2:21–25.
What is absolutely guaranteed is that you’re going to face really hard things.
You know what isn’t at all a guarantee? That you’ll handle it well.
The passage is meant to equip us to do it well.
See the passage in light of what’s before (slaves) and after (wives). The suffering of Christ and the fruit of it ties all these together.
The servants addressed—household servants serving “masters” who might be “good and gentle” and might be “unjust” (2:18).
Slaves are called to be godly in the face of being treated in ungodly ways. There is “grace” (favor, blessing) for those who do this.
Our paragraph adds weight to Peter’s exhortation. Why do this? It’s part of what it means to be “called” to follow Christ. He is the ultimate example for what it looks like to be godly in the face of being treated in an ungodly way.
And then after this Peter turns to the submission of a wife to a husband. Our paragraph is the example for the wife as well. Just as servants are to “do good” even in a hard work situation (2:20), so the wife is to “do good” even in a hard marriage (3:6).
In 2:20 the servant is said to “find favor with God” (NASB), “commendable before God” (NIV), “brings favor with God” (CSB).
The kind of character Peter is calling for in wives “in God’s sight is very precious” (3:4) and it will often “win without a word” the husband (3:1).
Isaiah 53 and its behind-the-scenes role in the passage.
Perspective: On suffering. On the cross of Christ.
Writing to Jews and Gentiles scattered throughout the churches. Clue he’s writing to Gentiles is in places like 1:14, “the passions of your former ignorance,” 1:18, “ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers”; 4:3–5, “the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do…orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” Most revealing is 2:10, “once you were not a people.”[1]
Not a Christian? Know that in this passage we get to the very heart of the Christian gospel. So much of what we mean by “gospel,” a word that means “good news,” is presented for us here.
We’ll cover it in point 3.
Sermon:
Prayer
“TO THIS YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED” = “To…what?”
Go back to VV. 19–20.
That’s what we’ve been called to—godliness in the midst of suffering, especially suffering at the hands of others.
Even unjust suffering.
Peter was there when Jesus taught the Twelve:
“And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matt 10:38)
Peter was there when Jesus taught his disciples that he would “SUFFER many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes” (Matt 16:21) and then said:
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matt 16:24)
It is “TO THIS you have been called…”
The SUFFERING we face and the CROSSES we bear are personalized. Individual.
Peter will keep going back to this idea in his epistle, the SUFFERING we face, the GODLINESS we must maintain.
As Christ did not receive the crown of glory without the crown of thorns, this call also means following the example of Christ in suffering.
Peter Davids, The First Epistle of Peter[2]
Our example in this SUFFERING is Christ himself.
Peter had his own experience of the example of Christ. But he doesn’t portray Christ in that way with his own historical remembrances. His remembrances are captured in the Gospel of Mark.
What he does here is present Christ using the language and ideas of Isaiah 53. Of the 12 verses of Isa 53, Peter will cite from or reference 7 of them.
Isaiah 53:9 and 1 Peter 2:22:
He committed no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth. (Isa 53:9 LXX)
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. (1 Pet 2:22)
“Sins” and “lawlessness” are synonymous and ties to V24 and Isa 53:4, 11, 12.
Isaiah 53:7 and 1 Peter 2:23:
And he, because he has been ill–treated, does not open his mouth….as a lamb is silent before the one shearing it, so he does not open his mouth. (Isa 53:7)
When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1 Pet 2:23)
“CONTINUED ENTRUSTING HIMSELF TO HIM WHO JUDGES JUSTLY” (V23).
Jesus again the example:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. (John 17:1–5)
Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.” (John 19:11)
The only way to do this is to do what Jesus did and SEE BIGGER.
Wayne Grudem and God righting all wrongs:
This knowledge that God will ultimately right all wrongs is essential to a Christian response to suffering, for God has put within us all a sense of justice which will not allow us simply to forget wrongs suffered for which we think there will be no punishment for those who have done them. But committing the situation to God, knowing that ultimately ‘the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality’ (Col 3:25), means that our sense of wrong suffered can be put at rest, and enables us then to imitate Jesus in praying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34). We thus seek for the wrongdoers not forgiveness without cost (which is impossible in God’s just universe) but forgiveness paid for by the great cost of the blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:19).
Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter[4]
The Suffering Servant our Example—and now our Redemption.
Peter here gives us one of the great gospel summaries in the New Testament. And because it deals with substitutionary atonement it deals with what JI Packer calls, “The very heart of the Christian gospel.”[5]
Peter unpacks the mystery of the cross. He does here in a single verse what Paul does in Romans 3–7.
What we learn here is that the death of Jesus isn’t just an example of humility and integrity in the harshest of situations.
If we stop with the cross as a good example or even the greatest example, we are dead in our sins. The cross must be more to us if it is to have an impact on our lives.
Peter tells us what that more is.
For Christians, those who have placed their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can say with Peter what he says here in V24: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.
Peter calls the cross “the tree” here, using the language of Deuteronomy 21:23. But he just means the wooden Roman cross on which Jesus died.
When Jesus died there “his body” was “on the tree.” But there was more on the cross than just “his body.” There was also “OUR SINS.”
That’s why he went to the cross. He went there to “BEAR OUR SINS.”
Bearing Sins has a deep OT history. Peter is pulling most directly from Isaiah 53:
This one bears our sins….He himself shall bear their sins….He bore the sins of many. (Isa 53:4, 11, 12)
He himself bore our sins. (1 Peter 2:24)
But the idea goes back especially to the Day of Atonement:
The Day of Atonement involves two goats. One is “the sin offering” (16:15). This goat is killed and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat to “make atonement” “because of “all the sins” of the people of Israel (16:16).
This second goat is the scapegoat. First Aaron lays his hands on the head of the goat and then “confesses over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, all their sins” (16:21).
The language used there is, “He shall put them on the head of the goat” (16:21). And then it’s sent into the wilderness. Listen to this language and picture and remember Jesus the Lamb of God who bore our sins in his body on the tree:
The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. (Lev 16:22)
But we know from the NT book of Hebrews that sacrifices like these can’t ever really take away sins. That’s why the Day of Atonement had to be repeated every year (Lev 16:34).
But then came Jesus “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). His sacrifice could really do it.
He really did accomplish what the Day of Atonement was talking about—cleansing of sin and “bearing all our iniquities on himself away to a remote area.”
Even the way the death of Jesus happened shows us this:
Not just “his body on the tree,” not just “our sins” that he “bore.”
THE CROSS IS A COMPLETE SOLUTION TO OUR PROBLEM—BY HIS WOUNDS YOU ARE HEALED:
Problem is the guilt of sin, the punishment we deserve because of sin, but also POWER TO OBEY!
This solution is here also. PURPOSE OF V24: “That we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”
Now we find the answer to HOW to follow the example of Christ. Right here in these words—That we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
Knowing WHAT I am to do is not enough if I am NOT ABLE to do it. If you tell me how to get to the Grand Canyon, it doesn’t do me any good if I haven’t got a car to get there.
If you tell me how to lift 500 lbs for a bench press—what techniques to use and how to position your grip on the bar. What good is that if you actually put 500 lbs on the bar? It’s true for you, too!
But here in V24 I see the HOW. I see HOW I am ABLE to walk in the footsteps of Christ. It’s because of the cross.
Because of the cross and my faith in Jesus I can “die to sin and live to righteousness.”
I can stop sinning and start obeying because of the death of Jesus. But if I’m not united with Christ then I’m not ABLE to.
Then Peter ends the verse with another idea from Isaiah 53:
With his wounds we are healed. (Isa 53:5)
By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Pet 2:24)
To a slave who knew what it was to have physical “wounds” that brought no healing and no redemption, this was precious truth.
Jesus himself received “wounds.” But in his “wounds,” we receive healing. This healing is far bigger than healing from sickness—though that’s part of it.
HEALED here means I receive the COMPLETE SOLUTION
He summarizes these ideas in V25, again borrowing from Isaiah 53:
All we like sheep have gone astray. (Isa 53:6)
For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Pet 2:25)
The Suffering Servant has become our Good Shepherd. We “were straying” but no more. Now we are with “the Shepherd.”
And for slaves struggling with unjust masters there’s more. They can know a different master. Jesus is the “Overseer of your soul.”
Where a master can dictate what you do with your time and with your body, there’s a deeper part of us that only Jesus owns. He’s the “Overseer of our soul.”
RECAP
APPLICATION
Our age is an age of boasting:
But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal 6:14, NASB)
PRAYER
[1] See on this J. Ramsay Michaels, 1 Peter (Word, 1988), xlv–xlvi.
[2] Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT, 107.
[3] Four others are 42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; 61:1–3.
[4] Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter, TNTC, 103.
[5] JI Packer, “What did the cross achieve?”, In My Place Condemned He Stood (Crossway, 2007), 53.
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