The Blessings of Righteousness

We’ve come a long way in the book of 1 Peter and we’re well past the halfway mark. Having taken a break from this sermon series for a little while because of Christmas, let’s remind ourselves of where we are and some of the truths we have learned!

For starters, we established back in chapter 1 that Peter’s purpose for writing this book was to encourage Christians who were suffering and experiencing trials of various kinds. He set about doing this by focusing on the living and eternal hope Christians have because of Jesus, that hope of course being eternal life. The question we asked then was how we go about focusing on this hope. The answer is by intentionally living a holy life.

Followers of Jesus have been made into a chosen people, set apart by God that we may proclaim him and his Son Jesus (2:9). Because of this, we are different and are called to live differently as Jesus Christ lived. This is what we mean by living a holy life.

This holy living includes being submissive to the authorities placed over us. All people are to submit to the government, employees are to submit to their employers, and wives are to submit to their husbands. These voluntary acts of submission are so important because it models Jesus’ own submission to his Father and to the human governments. To submit when our faith allows is to be the example of Jesus to the world. Additional, by submitting even through hardship, God is glorified by our patient endurance and our testimony for Christ is greatly strengthened.

For husbands, holy living also includes honoring their wives as spiritual equals before God.

Having addressed separate groups of people, Peter now addresses all Christians in our text today in 1 Peter 3:8-12.

Righteous Living

“8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless…”

In this passage, Peter gives six more ways all Christians should be living. Let’s take a quick look at each:

1. Unity of mind: The meaning of this word is just that, to have a like mind or to be of one mind. This means Christians are to desire the same spiritual things and are to seek the same spiritual things. Christians you meet in China should have many similarities to Christians you meet in Montana. There are certain values and pursuits inherent to being a follower of Jesus: loving our neighbor, sacrificing for the benefit of others, gentleness, kindness, joyfulness, peacemaking, etc. We should work hard at pursuing these things together to be united in mind.

2. Sympathy/compassion: This relates to our emotional response to the hardships of others. We should be so focused on helping others that we have an emotional response of sympathy to someone’s hardship so that we are drawn to action to help them in some way.

3. Brotherly love: Other Christians should be like family to us because of the shared bond we all have with Jesus. We should continually make a choice to love other believers and treat them with the love and respect we would our own family.

4. Tender Heart: This is very similar to being sympathetic and compassionate. Instead of hardening our hearts against hurt and pain, we should remain softened to it so that we are able to be sympathetic and mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep as Paul said (Romans 12:15).

5. Humble Mind: Some translations say be courteous but the idea being communicated is of humility. It’s thinking less of yourself and more of others and their needs. Followers of Jesus should be making it a regular habit of living for the benefit of others.

6. Bless: We are called to bless those who insult us. The Greek word translated bless is the word εὐλογέω which is similar to the English word eulogy. The idea of blessing those who insult us is that we should speak well of them and be respectful and kind to them, just as one would be when giving a eulogy at a funereal. This applies to anyone who insults or comes against us, Christian or not.

Now, these six instructions have a few things in common with each other. First and most importantly, they are reflections of Jesus. Jesus lived in all these ways and his life is the very example for us to follow. These right ways of living are possible because they are of Jesus, and we have the Spirit of Jesus dwelling within us.

Second, having unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, tender heart, humility, and blessing those who insult involve doing something for someone else; they are selfless in that to live in these ways dictates a giving up of our ourselves for the sake of others. These things do not directly benefit us and so we will often find them difficult.

Third, these are not traits valued by mainstream society. The world does not value unity, sympathy, love, tenderness, humility, and speaking well of those who hurt them. Our politicians do not operate this way, the media does not operate this way, business do not operate this way, even many churches and Christians do not operate this way. More likely than not, if you live as Peter described throughout the whole book so far, you’d be called weak, spineless, a pansy, a pushover. I’ve seen a lot of this kind of talk even from one Christian to another and it’s heartbreaking. It’s so sad to see how most Christians in America think it’s bad practice to submit to the government, have a tender compassionate heart, live with humility, and treat enemies with love. Yet we’ve seen from 1 Peter and from the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus wants us to live differently from the world and to have different values than the world does, even if it seems backwards because the life of a Christian is supposed to be a living testimony of Jesus himself.

Mahatma Ghandi, the famous nonviolent activist for peace, was an Indian Hindu with a great appreciation for Jesus. One author wrote about him:

“Seeing Gandhi live, the Christian missionary E. Stanley Jones asked him: "Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is it that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower"? The latter's reply was clear: "Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It is just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ".” (Gandhi's message to Christians | Africa needs Gandhi (mkgandhi.org))

I do not want it to be said of me or of this church that we are so unlike our Christ. But, I am aware of some ways in which I am unlike Christ. I often find that when I become more like Christ in one aspect it’s revealed to me another way that I am failing. Let us all pursue Christ in such a way that we become like him and love him so much that we are happy to be noticeably different from the rest.

It is certainly no easy task to live as Peter has described here and earlier in the chapter, but there is motivation to for righteousness living: blessings of our own.

Blessing for righteous living

In verse 9, Peter said that we have been called to this righteous living that we may obtain a blessing. This blessing from God we receive is not one of kind words like the way we are to bless those who insult us, but a blessing of spiritual benefit or gain. There is eternal and heavenly benefit directly from the hand of God when Christians live a holy lifestyle that benefits others.

Peter quotes from Psalm 34 because the Psalm says the same thing: if you desire blessing, do good and seek peace for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and he hears their prayer. This does not mean we will have a trouble-free life or even that we will prosper and have lots of money. Rather, the blessing will certainly be an enjoyment and contentment in the life God has given no matter what.

Spiritual blessing from right living (righteousness) has been a theme for Peter. So far in the book, we’ve learned that loving Christ leads to joy (1:8), living a holy life with fear leads to avoiding God’s discipline (1:17), submitting while suffering leads to God’s approval (2:19-20), and husbands honoring wives leads to unhindered prayers (3:7).

So, if we need motivation to live like Jesus, remember that righteous living leads to spiritual and eternal reward that not only affects ourselves but others and gives glory to God.

A word about faith

I’d like to mention one more point about all this. For over a year now, really ever since COVID started and really threw a wrench into life, a recurring theme for us has been the supreme importance of Christ and the kingdom of God over everything else. Time and times again we’ve seen from scripture that our faith in Christ should never be set aside or put on hold for anything else. Rather than being selfish as some might argue, this is actually the least selfish thing we could do for all those around us because what people really need more than anything else is forgiveness and eternal hope, and the way they will be drawn from death to life is largely by our living testimony of Christ. The more we grow in our faith, the more we will live like Jesus and more people will be drawn to the real Jesus.

But I recognize that all of this invisible. We can’t craft a better faith with a hammer, nor can we see the results of our hard work of faith ticking up numbers in a bank account. God himself is invisible and none of us have ever seen Jesus. No one has ever returned from the dead and given us a trustworthy idea of what happens after we die. The entire foundation for our faith is unseen and the rewards or benefits of our faith are largely unseen. That’s exactly what makes it FAITH. To most people, faith is a stumbling block because people want to see immediate, solid, quantifiable, and measurable results. They want real-time benefits, not intangible spiritual ones. Jesus does not promise any of that. What he promises is spiritual and eternal and will one day be made more real than anything we can imagine, but that day has not yet come.

I guess the point of what I’m trying to say is this: being a Christian and living like Jesus requires an active faith and trust in God. It requires a faith that is the driving force of every decision we make. It requires a faith that is so real and important to us that we would risk pain, sickness, and death to remain faithful. If we want any hope of remaining faithful through trials and tribulations, we need a desire for the unseen God that is greater than any desire for any visible thing and this only way we can have this kind of desire is by having our hearts directed to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.

Conclusion:

When we look to Jesus, we see a man who had perfect unity of mind, the greatest sympathy and compassion, genuine brotherly love, the most tender of hearts, the lowliest humility, and gave the greatest blessings to those who insulted him. How was Jesus able to live in these ways? Because he cared must less for himself and much more for his Father and for others.

By the power of the Spirit of Jesus within us, let us commit to pursue a selfless life of with unseen rewards for the glory and honor of our King. Amen.