1 Peter 4:12 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 4:12

Comments

This is going to be about the beginning of a persecution of the early church, which began at the time of Nero, just about the time this letter was written. It started with the burning of Rome and it lasted pretty well for two centuries. Here is the predictive part of this chapter – the people of God are warned. Peter addresses those who are loved by God, and, generally speaking, only true believers who have known the converting power of God can gladly suffer anything for Christ. Of course the Apostle Peter knows that some of those he is addressing may not be saved, but this word is to those who have a definite experience. You have to have a spiritual objective to be able to suffer. You have to have heaven in your mind and in your heart. You have to have love for Christ: not a little sentimental love for Christ – because you grew up in a Christian family, because you maintained a kind of adherence to the Christian faith – but a real love for Christ, that appreciates all that he is, and all that he has done for his own people. That is why in a time of physical persecution, the numbers in church are greatly reduced. ‘Beloved, think it not strange.’ You could translate that ‘foreign’, because the Greek word comes from a word which means ‘a host’ or ‘a guest’. Let’s say ‘a host’ – somebody who receives foreigners from far countries – and it came to mean ‘think it not strange’. It is as though people are behaving like foreigners, so different from yourself that you cannot understand their conduct. The idea is: if people reproach you, insult you, scorn you, take steps against you in the office because you are Christian, don't think that this is something peculiar and unreasonable; it should not be allowed, and we shouldn't have to stand this. Of course, there are some measures you may be able to take to lessen persecution; you have certain rights. By all means take them, but don't be astonished or surprised. Peter is going to go on to say the gospel age is the age of hostility and persecution. In his great love for his people, God nevertheless, from time to time, tests the church, sometimes very severely. The tests have a purpose. They are refining tests. Peter speaks of trials in this very epistle: tried as gold, as silver is tried in a furnace, to prove its purity and to make it pure. Now how can you endure such persecution? Surely it will shatter the churches to smithereens. Surely people will not hold on and believe. Ah, but they can, if they have a mission mindset. If our concern is for souls, no matter what, we can endure anything. Do we have a mission mindset? The most important thing to you is not the economy. That is important, of course, but much more important is the winning of souls collectively as a church, and individually if we can: to have a mission mindset. We are called and set in this world for this purpose. Of course, persecution isn’t strange. Don’t consider it an accident, as though some strange thing had happened to you, that God didn’t know about or plan! It is to be expected because Satan is against us, because we are preaching the gospel. The world is offended at us and God will permit it because he is going to try the church. Of course, man’s intention, and the devil’s intention, is to silence the gospel, but God is purifying his people and demonstrating that they are genuine. At the time of the English Reformation, it is said (and I think justly) that it was through the deaths of the martyrs that the hearts of the people were turned, because martyrdom proved beyond anything else that those people were genuine. If people would die for their faith, if the preachers would burn at the stake, rather than deny Christ, then these people must have a hold on him, they must really know him. Gradually the hearts of the English people were sickened by the martyrdoms and their sympathies were with the martyrs and the Reformation and things began to change and conversions on every hand and wonderful blessing swept the country.

Application

Today in this country we are not physically persecuted, but we are increasingly going to be persecuted by other means. Intellectually we suffer persecution. The Christian faith will be attacked and derided and belittled and scorned, and you hear the clamour of atheism doing exactly that at this time. We will be persecuted in a political way, as increasingly laws are passed to make faith and moral standards illegal. That will happen and we may have to suffer increasingly on account of these things. Then there will be the general scorn and repudiation of many, many people as we seek to witness.

Then, even worse, we will suffer as the devil throws false teachers at us, to try to wreck our faith and our doctrine. We see this most widely represented at the present time in the tremendous movement of worldliness brought into the churches, and many people fall to it. They have the world’s entertainment and music and clothing, and there are churches round this city where the worship is just like a pop concert, where the whole thing is just completely worldly and sensational and unspiritual. This is a form of persecution.

God is sifting his people. He doesn't want his New Testament churches to be filled up – even in the inner core membership – with people who have no conversion experience. Of course, we have hearts for the lost. We are ever seeking to win the lost, but in our inner family we believe only the regenerate should come in. We don't want the church to be silted up and suffocated in its innermost membership, and its decisions and its thoughts and its acts, by people who are not converted. In many churches, it happens. It is not surprising that those churches decide to adopt contemporary Christian worship. The so-called seeker sensitive churches are often saturated with people whose interests have never been changed by the Lord.

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1 Peter 4:12 Commentary and Bible Study