Suffering After Christ

There’s something fascinating that happens when someone discovers a new idea. Maybe you’ve experienced this or know someone who has. But there’s this feeling that a lightbulb has flicked on, that all the puzzle pieces just fit, and you become filled with a feeling of enlightenment.

Another thing that happens is that you also feel like no one else sees it. It happens in our circles when people discover the doctrines of grace. Ironically in their zeal they forget to show grace. We’ve got to lock them up for bit while these truths sink deep. It’s called the Cage-Stage.

I image the Christians that Peter is talking to were going through something similar. Called out of spiritual darkness into light, their paganism which devalued them has now been washed away to reveal the beautiful truth of their value, made in God’s image.

As these Christians dug deeper into the Scriptures, they saw the wonderful ideas of God’s justice for those poor and cast aside. The widow, the orphan, the sojourner. The slaves, the women. Emboldened, enlightened and empowered, the temptation for these Christians is to rise up against those systems of injustice, and take what is rightfully theirs.

But Peter urges them towards a different path in life. We saw in the last passage how our freedom in Christ enables us to live as bond servants to God. And in our freedom, we lay aside our rights in the face of unjust governments. Here Peter turns to those slaves and in the same manner urges them towards that same kind of life.

In talking to them specifically, Peter speaks to you and me now. Despite all that is ours in Christ, the hope of the inheritance in heaven, the new creation, our life here on earth is one of suffering, not glory.

The passage before us here calls us to a life that that is a hard life. It’s a hard life because it’s a life that sets aside everything that we are, and think we deserve, and perhaps know we deserve. It sets all that aside that we might take up the life that Christ set for us to follow.

Peter calls us to a life of suffering following the footsteps of our saviour, Christ. This will be what we will look at this evening. We will do us under three headings: Our Calling, Our Example, and Our Saviour.

Our Calling

Peter begins this section here by first addressing those servants in the church’s midst.

Let us read vs 18-20

There are many difficult things Scripture requires of us. Things that we constantly battle against. Scripture calls us to put to death sexual immorality, to rid ourselves of anger, pride, lying, and gossip. These all cause us to look at the remaining, indwelling sin within us and kill it. But despite how difficult these things are, we find that they are understandable.

You know how quickly you give in to your pet sins. How daily you stray from God’s goodness, grace and mercy. Despite how difficult they are to hear, often if we’re honest, we can take those words. But what puts those kinds of difficult words in a different category to the difficult words before us, is that they are all personal. They are sins that just deal with us.

But the kind of growth in holiness and grace that Peter is urging us towards is one that rubs at our pride. It requires humility and a laying aside of everything we think we ought to have. It is not just personal but deals with injustice and “unfairness” in how others treat us. It’s easy enough to be realistic with our own sins, but that of others. No way!

What I mean is this: you could hypothetically “do well” in keeping yourself pure. Walking and speaking in truth, being kind with your words. Yet still be so full of pride that you would never let anyone treat you unjustly. Particularly when it comes with a power imbalance.

I’ve often told you of how I felt as a kid when I got punished. The rising heat up under the collar. The bristling at punishment. “How dare they! It was so unfair!” I often thought. Kids I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Especially because you didn’t even start it, right?

But we also experience this as we grow up. Our workplaces are filled with this injustice. In my work, I’m often at the bottom of the pile. I have a boss and a manager (not that now I have problems), but I also have customers.

In all of these relationships, I have felt that rising heat of justice within me. I’ve been blamed for things unfairly. And often the response has been one of hard justice.

I don’t think there’s many of us that can escape this dynamic of having people over us. Most of our work has to do with providing something for someone else. And when that happens, we are often beneath who we are serving.

So, what are we to do in this circumstance? We may not be household slaves, bought with money, but each of us is often in a position of some sort of power imbalance. And so, though we are free in Christ, what does He require of us? Peter says, a willing, respectful, subjection.

It’s easy to obey someone who is good and kind. But someone who acts with intentional evil? That’s a different story.

Peter himself understands what he is saying to us. Was it not Peter who in response to Christ saying He must suffer and die responded, “Far be it from You, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to You!” Was it also not Peter, as we heard this morning in Mark 14, when faced with the priests and guards to take Jesus away, who took up his sword and struck the ear of the servant?

How could someone completely innocent as Christ suffer such injustice? But as Ryan pointed out this morning, at that time Peter was seeing with his eyes, not listening to the words of Christ.

Peter is us and we are Peter. We bristle at suffering and injustice. When we look around during suffering, what do we see? Only those who are attacking us, Christ’s children, and His bride the Church.

But what has Christ said to us? Our inheritance is in heaven, it belongs with Christ. It is where neither moth nor rust will destroy. It is imperishable and unfading, kept for you.

So how does this change your response when all you see around you is opposition? Peter does not tell us to take what is rightfully ours, instead he calls us to submit, “not only to the good but also to the unjust and cruel.”

This is a difficult word to hear. The 17thcentury Archbishop of Glasgow, Robert Leighton, fondly called Scotland’s “Apostle of Peace,” said of us as Christians, ‘They like better St. Peter’s carnal [or worldly] advice to Christ, to avoid suffering (Matt 16:22), than his Apostolic doctrine to Christians, teaching them, that as Christ suffered, so they likewise are called to suffering.’

And is that not true?

But Peter’s view has changed completely, he not only sees the path of suffering as the way to glory, but he also sees suffering as the place in which true Christian character is displayed.

Continue reading to the end of vs 20

Here we can see the words of Christ echoing in the words of Peter. It’s easy to love and respect those who show the same towards you, but what is that? Don’t even unbelievers do the same? When a child or slave suffers from wrongdoing, that is nothing other than justice.

But what pleases God and causes Him to show us grace? It is when we show Christian character, giving grace as we have received it. Extending mercy because of the mercy shown to us.

True Christian character then, according to Peter, which God looks favourably upon, is not taking up the sword and defending God’s so-called honour (which is often a thinly veiled excuse to avenge our hurt pride).

Rather, it is having the mind of Christ, like Joseph who suffered much injustice for living righteously, and suffering for and despite doing good. Christ was the one who ultimately did and fulfilled this. And it is to Him that we and Peter now turn.

Our Example

It is easy for us to shy away from considering Christ as our example. We don’t want to make Him into someone who is just a moral, good man that we must follow like every other religious leader. But Peter sees no problem with this and so we shouldn’t either.

Read vs 21-23

Peter begins to explain how we should go about this life of suffering.

1. He says firstly that we are called to this suffering.

In chapter 10 of his Gospel, Mark tells us how James and John requested that they sit at the right and left of Christ in glory.

Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” 39 And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

Christ calls us to follow Him, He is the light of the world and to follow Him means that we would never walk in darkness. He goes before us as an example that we would walk in His footsteps. That means, that as our Lord and Saviour suffered, so too we may suffer also.

We take up our crosses, and denying ourselves, our pride, our sin, our very being as we think it is in our eyes, see ourselves as Christ does, sinners saved by grace.

But in laying aside sin and taking up righteousness, we beckon ridicule. People hate to see righteousness.

Peter says that we should “follow in His footsteps.” This is like walking along the beach behind someone, planting your foot where they did to imitate how they walked.

These words carry weight for Peter. Peter followed Christ’s footsteps and calls us to do the same. He followed Christ in the mountains of Galilee. He followed Christ on the way up to Jerusalem.

Peter followed Christ on that procession from the Mount of Olives to the cross. He saw Christ led, as a lamb to the slaughter. He followed Christ as he went on the way to atone for Peter’s sins.

How fresh in His mind would Peter’s own denial of Christ be? Yet Christ walked to the cross in order that Peter would be forgiven. Now Peter is ready to follow the same footsteps of Christ, even to death upon a cross. He Apostolically urges us to that same life of suffering.

2. Secondly, Peter shows us what that life would look like.

1. Vs 22.

Peter says that Christ committed no sin, not even when He was reviled. No deceit was found in His mouth, all that Christ said was sincere. We too should resist the sinful desire to respond. We ought to be sincere in all that we say.

2. Vs 23.

Peter says that Jesus was patient in trial. Like a lamb before the slaughter, He opened not His mouth. What kind of a saviour do we have!? He was perfect and holy, completely sinless. Yet He allowed Himself to be ridiculed, threatened and jeered at.

When the people mocked at the foot of the cross, He made no reply. When the criminal to His ridiculed Him, He said not a word in return.

There was no way that any insult could cause Him to sin. If any person had cause to reply justly it was Christ. Instead, He entrusted Himself to God who judges justly. No even a word left His mouth in sin. Friends, it is not our place to take our own justice into our hands, it is God alone who judges. Resist the temptation to sin when suffering.

Peter says that we must also be subject to those who are cruel. And yet, not even this necessitates our revenge. Follow the example of Christ, judgement is God’s. God judged Christ on our behalf and found Christ guiltless and so raised Him to life.

God is a just judge, to Him we must leave justice and exercise patience in suffering.

You bristle with righteous indignation, but God is the judge of all. Now, we are to show grace and humility, suffering for Christ’s sake, forsaking all else. Your life is in the hands of God, He has judged and found you in Christ. And so, amidst trials, tribulations, and suffering, know that you too will be raised to new life, guiltless in Christ.

Our Saviour

As I was preparing for this sermon, I came across a beautiful story one of the authors relayed. The year was 1948. The place: Soon-chun, Korea. Communists had briefly been able to take power of this small town. In their power, they rampaged the town and in the mix of it, Pastor Yang-won Son’s two oldest boys, Matthew and John, had been executed. Dying as martyrs, with their last dying breathes they pleaded and called upon their persecutors to have faith Jesus.

Once the communists were pushed back out of the village, one man, Chai-sun, a young man in the village was found to be the one who had fired the fatal shots, killing Matthew and John. His execution was immediately ordered. But something unexpected happened. Pastor Son asked that all the charges would be dropped from this man, and that Chai-sun would be released and adopted in Pastor Son’s care. His daughter Rachel, then 13, supported her father in this request. Only then did the court grant this gracious request. Chain-sun, the murderer of his sons became as they were, the son of a pastor and more remarkably, a believer in Jesus Christ.

“And I thank God that he has given me the love to seek to convert and to adopt as my son the enemy who killed me dear boys.” These were Pastor Son’s words in reflection of this marvellously gracious event. Instead of succumbing to a sinful retaliation, Pastor Son recognised the grace God that gave him which enabled him to respond in a such way that did not seek his own justice, but instead to extend grace and mercy.

Pastor Son had taken to heart these words before us in 24 and 25. He knew that all he had was in Christ. Christ not only goes before us as an example, but Christ also goes before us as our saviour.

Read 24-25.

The book of Hebrews tells us that the priests in the temple go daily to offer up sacrifices on the bodies of animals. But the Apostle Peter tells us that Christ went up in His own body, he bore our sins upon the tree.

We are prideful, we seek our own justice. We retaliate and do not show grace. We don’t entrust our lives to God as Christ did. We look around and all we see is persecution. We disobey the commands and life of Christ He has set out for us.

We love our own lives. We rebel against both earthly and heavenly authorities. What wretches we are. But yet, it was those same sins that Christ took upon Himself.

The stripes that were lashed across His body by the Romans are our healing. Christ suffered in His own body, the ultimate, final suffering in order that we may be healed! By His stripes, you are healed!

Your pride, your denial of Christ, your anger, your retaliation, your indignant responses, all these and many more, Christ has taken upon Himself. By His stripes you have been healed.

This is all so that you may now no longer live in sin and under the power of sin, but now live in His blessed righteousness and the power of the resurrection of Christ. You longer live under the power of sin which causes you to react and retaliate to suffering. By His stripes you have been healed.

Now you live in Christ, hid in His comfortable salvation, as He lives. Dead to sin, but alive to Christ and righteousness. By His stripes you have been healed.

You, like sheep, have gone astray. Peter Himself denied Christ, the Shepherd when He was struck down.

But like a shepherd which loses one sheep and goes out from the 99 to find the one, Christ comes to you now.

The Lord is your Shepherd, in Him you shall find no want, and every supply of grace. He is our overseer and protects and cares for you, He will preserve your life.

Watch and pray therefore, that you do not fall when you are tempted, but when you do, Christ our shepherd and overseer, is praying for you. He is interceding for you. It is he who protects and nurtures your faith, even amidst the deepest trials.

Pastor Son could have rightfully and justly taken up the sword and avenged his sons. Instead, he chose the path of suffering. Of looking his son’s killer in the eyes each day and seeing Him as His own son. Christ did not look at us and see murderers, adulterers, liars, cheaters (though we rightfully are), instead He chose to see us as His sons and daughters.

As pastor Son extended the hand of grace to Chai-sun, so Christ too extends His hand of grace to you now. Take up His saving hand of grace now, and His cross of suffering and follow your Lord and Saviour, having His mind amidst suffering and showing grace and mercy to those around you. Christ has called you to this life, follow Him and imitate Him. He is your Saviour.