1 Pet 4.12-16
suffering with christ
(1 Peter 4.12-16)
Jason Procopio
I’m really excited today, because back in September, we began a series on the letters of Peter—before taking a break for Advent we got to 1 Peter 4.11—and today, after a six-week break, we’re picking back up right where we left off.
But because it’s been a few weeks since we’ve been here, let’s take a second to remember what we saw before. Peter is writing this letter not to one church in particular, but to several churches, to Christians dispersed in a part of Asia Minor (which today would be Turkey). So these would have been mostly Gentile churches living in a Greco-Roman culture and under Roman control.
From the beginning, Peter calls the Christians to whom he is writing “elect exiles”—that doesn’t mean they’ve been exiled from their homes and now live elsewhere, but rather they are spiritual exiles. These people used to be one type of people, and now that they have been saved by faith in Jesus Christ, they are another type of people; in Christ, God has adopted them and naturalized them, made them citizens of his kingdom first and foremost, rather than citizens of Rome. And as such, they are now marked by a new way of living: they are marked by the culture of their true home, the kingdom of heaven—a culture which would have been marked by a vastly different ethic than that of the Roman Empire.
Now that immediately sounds like a threat. Even today, if we were to say, “We’re not citizens of France, but citizens of the kingdom of God,” one could take that to mean that we are hostile toward France. But Peter is clear that this shouldn’t be the case—being first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of God will in fact make us better citizens of the country we happen to be in.
But of course people outside the church had a hard time believing that, and they saw this growing religion as a threat. Christians were rejected by their families and their friends; they had their possessions taken away; they were imprisoned and killed—the Roman Empire was a hostile place for Christians. So it could be easy to become discouraged and disheartened.
Peter writes to these churches to encourage them to persevere, and to suffer well. He encourages them to live as the new people of God—foreigners in this hostile world, people looking forward to a future home with God in heaven, testifying to the gospel by the way they are subject to authority, the way they relate to one another in their marriages, and the way they respond to suffering.
That’s where we were last time we were in this book. Peter encouraged his readers to be willing to suffer, if necessary, in order to remain faithfully obedient to God’s commands—because if obeying God is so important to us that we are willing to suffer for it, that shows the work God has done in us.
He’s going to pick up that same thread in today’s passage, but he’s going to be a little more specific now. In chapter 4, verses 1 to 11, he spoke about practical obedience, and being willing to suffer for that obedience in a general way; in v. 12-19, which we’ll be seeing over the next two weeks, he’s talking about suffering specifically because of the faith.
12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.
Suffering with Confidence (v. 12)
So I’d like to dip my toes into some slightly controversial water for a moment. I might regret it, but here we go.
2020 was a tough year for churches. We were under quarantine, so we couldn’t meet, and when we got out of quarantine, very tight sanitary restrictions were put on us—restrictions we are still applying today. And I remember some tense conversations that were happening this past summer. People looked around, and they saw that churches were required to follow stricter sanitary measures than, say, restaurants and cinemas. We had to have more space between people, fewer people present depending on the size of the room, etc. And Christians were getting really upset, some even going so far as to say that these stricter measures for churches were a form of religious persecution.
Now there were a few things I didn’t get about these really tense conversations going on. First of all, I could completely see why a church would be subject to stricter sanitary measures than, say, a cinema. I’ve never been in a cinema where everyone stood up and started singing. We sing in church—and we encourage everyone to sing loudly, with all their heart, for the glory of God—and we know that singing is one of the worst things we could do, in terms of the transmission of COVID-19. So yeah, it’s normal that they’d ask us to stay even further away from each other, to wear masks when we sing.
We share communion in church. In a cinema, you don’t reach into your neighbor’s popcorn to grab a few. In a cinema, you don’t typically have conversations with twenty other people before you leave. And so on.
Here’s the other thing—and the most important. Even if these angry Christians were right, and these restrictions were a sort of religious persecution… Why would that be surprising? Look where we are! I know what we say, but realistically—are we really surprised that our secular government would consider the arts and gastronomy more important than religion? Surely that shouldn’t be surprising to us.
Were we not told to expect these things? Peter says it really clearly in v. 12—
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you…
This isn’t unexpected! This isn’t strange! This is right on course with what Jesus told us to expect. He said that a servant isn’t greater than his master; if they persecuted him, they’ll persecute us too (John 15.20). This is the normal reaction of an unbelieving world to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is how these things go!
But that’s not all; there’s more to say about this than simply, This is normal. Peter calls such persecution, such suffering for our faith, the fiery trial. And he says why the fiery trial comes: it comes upon you to test you. Peter talked about this in chapter 1 verse 7, when he said that our various trials have a purpose:
…that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
What he’s saying is that there is a good kind of suffering—even if the trial is fiery, that fire isn’t a threat; it is a positive test, with a positive outcome expected.
This is really hard to wrap our minds around, because it’s not the kind of thinking that comes naturally to us. We naturally view trials as obstacles; they are roadblocks in the way of our happiness. It’s really hard for us to believe, or even remember, that God has plans behind our problems. We believe the Bible teaches that God is absolutely sovereign over every last aspect of the world he created, and that he allows nothing to come against his children that will not be for their good and for his glory.
And the challenge of the Christian life is to see not just the world around us, but the everyday events of our own lives in that way. It’s counterintuitive for us, because we won’t always know what God’s purposes behind a given situation are. Someone will get sick, or someone will be cruel—or much more common: we’ll just have a rotten day, in which nothing seems to go right—and we’ll get frustrated, or fearful, or just generally negative, because in that moment we’re not thinking about the bigger picture; we’re thinking about what we want right now. We’re not used to taking a step back and praying, God, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but YOU know, and I know that you’re good. So help me to trust you.
So it’s not just that we shouldn’t be surprised when trials come upon us because that is the normal state of things for Christians. We shouldn’t be surprised and dismayed when trials come upon us, because our God loves us, and he uses our trials to put our faith under the fire and make it stronger. Now, could he make our faith stronger without those trials? Sure. He’s God. But—and this is one of those areas we have to choose to trust him—because he’s God, he knows the best possible way to bring about his purposes for us. Which means that in any given trial, as weird as it may seem to us, that trial is the best way to grow us up in him.
Suffering with Christ (v. 13)
So already there, we have a reason for joy—we can rejoice because we know God is using this trial to bring us closer to him. But Peter goes even further than that, and gives us another reason for joy. V. 13:
But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
Now remember the context—as we’ll see in the next verse, he’s speaking specifically here about suffering we experience for righteousness—suffering because we choose to obey God rather than give in to sin. Whether that suffering comes in the form of insult or slander or abuse or lack, he’s talking about suffering for Christ. And he tells us to rejoice because in that moment, we share in Christ’s sufferings. And as we share in Christ’s sufferings, our increasing and eternal joy is assured.
I’ll be honest with you: I have a really hard time understanding this. I’ve read my Bible; I know how Christ suffered, and I do not want to suffer like that. It seems completely illogical to me, on first analysis, that sharing in Christ’s suffering would bring me joy.
But Scripture testifies that this is indeed the case.
In Acts 5, when the apostles are arrested and threatened by the chief priests, what do we see? Acts 5.40-41:
…and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41 Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Colossians 1.24—the apostle Paul says,
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church…
32 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, 33 sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. 34 For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.
And these are just a few examples of several we could give.
So why does this happen? Why does suffering for Christ produce joy in us? The reason is similar to the one we saw before in 1 Peter 4.1-2, when Peter says that whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased to sin. Our willingness to suffer in order to persevere in obedience gives us confidence that God is truly at work in us, that we are truly putting our sin to death.
And in a similar way, our suffering for Christ produces joy in us because is gives us further proof that we are indeed united to him. That he has brought us into his life.
When we talk about what it means to be united to Christ, we often repeat what was said when we got baptized: that we are united to him in his death and resurrection. And that’s true. But union with Christ also means union with him in his life—when we are united to Christ, we are united to him in the way he lived his life on this earth. His pattern of living becomes our pattern of living. And Christ’s life on this earth was distinctively marked by his suffering for righteousness.
There will be moments in our lives when it will be increasingly evident that we are living life as Christ lived his. I’ll never forget when I was a teenager—I was fourteen or fifteen years old—for the very first time people started wearing bracelets with the letters WWJD on them—What Would Jesus Do? Now, I still have a lot of problems with the way that question is sometimes answered. A frequent one I heard as a teenager in America was, “What would Jesus do? Well, he certainly wouldn’t drink alcohol.” Actually, in moderation, he probably would. What was his first miracle again…?
But the question is still a good one. In many situations, we don’t really know what Jesus would do (like, would Jesus play video games? surely not all of them, but is Super Mario okay?). But for everything we don’t know about what he would do, there’s a lot we do know. In the gospels we see very clear examples of Jesus’s ethic—what he considers good and holy and what he considers sinful. And in the letters in the New Testament, we see even more. And in the rest of the Bible, we see even more than that. We have a lot of information concerning what God loves and what he doesn’t love.
And so if we grow in our knowledge of the Word of God, we will learn to better and better see what Jesus would do, not in all situations, but in many. And there will be moments in our lives when we will be faced with a choice; and when, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we choose to live as Jesus lived, those moments are precious for us, because we can see our union with Christ on display, lived out before our eyes, IN OUR OWN LIVES.
Now here’s why I said all that: the same is true when we suffer for righteousness. We look at our situation, and we see how we are resisting temptation even when it is painful…and we remember Jesus in the desert, being tempted by the devil. What did he do? He suffered for righteousness. Or we suffer abuse from our family because of our faith…and we remember Jesus’s brothers refusing to believe in him. He suffered for righteousness. In those moments, we can see our union with Christ on display, lived out before our eyes, in our own lives. And those become precious memories for us—moments when our faith is confirmed, and the promises of God fulfilled. Those are beautiful, joyful moments, when we were able to see Christ’s life at work in our lives.
Suffering with Courage (v. 14-16)
And if we rejoice in our sufferings, now, in this life…how much more will we rejoice when Christ returns, and we see his glory?
This is what Peter is saying, and he gives a concrete example in v. 14:
If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.
This is a good example, because it is probably the most common form of persecution a Christian can endure, in any culture. Being insulted for the name of Christ is painful—it’s painful to be rejected and slandered by our fellow human beings, even if we don’t know them. It’s even more painful if the rejection comes from those we’re close to—friends or family. (Which is, sadly, often the case.)
But here too, there is blessing to be found in that pain. In v. 13, it was the blessing of sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Here in v. 14, it is the blessing of the Spirit of God resting on us.
Now this is tricky, and we don’t have time to go into a lot of detail here. When Peter says the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you if we are insulted for the name of Christ, he’s talking about a particular fullness of the Spirit’s presence in our lives, to give us strength in that moment.
That doesn’t mean that the insults themselves gives us more of the Spirit—we don’t go looking for insults to have more of him. But the simple reality is that in those moments when we suffer for Christ, we arrive at a point where we have no other source of help but him. Suffering for him forces us to trust him, to ask for his help, to believe that he’s there even if we can’t see him. And the result of this work is that we grow in our faith—the Spirit manifests himself in our lives in a particular way, which we hadn’t known before.
And this Spirit that rests upon us also gives us a glimpse of the glory waiting for us. It’s a sort of visual call-back to the cloud of God’s glory resting on the tabernacle, or in the holy place in the temple, as a tangible mark of his presence with his people.
That still happens today, but the venue has changed. Now, God’s temple is his people. The glory of God is seen in the Spirit’s dwelling in his people with power. The question is, what does that look like? What does the Spirit, resting on the people of God, look like in the particular context of suffering for righteousness? Peter’s going to get there; he’s going to answer that question by way of contrast.
V. 15:
15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.
Peter’s saying that it’s not suffering in itself that procures this blessing of the Spirit; to put this very simply, there is good suffering, and there is bad suffering.
What is “bad suffering”? Bad suffering is suffering because of sin. That’s what he says in v. 15—let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. You meddle in other people’s affairs in an unhealthy way, and they’ll be hurt; they’ll resent you for it; relationships will be broken, and it will cause you pain. You kill someone, they catch you, you go to prison, and you’ll suffer. That is not helpful suffering. Sin’s consequences inevitably lead to suffering, and these sufferings sink people further into despair rather than driving them to hope in God.
Okay, so then what is “good suffering”? It’s what we’ve been talking about: suffering for righteousness. Sharing in Christ’s suffering. Suffering insult or slander or abuse or loss because of your obedience to God’s commands. This kind of suffering brings us the blessing he talked about in v. 14. But here in v. 16, Peter tells us what that blessing looks like—and he does it in a really interesting way. Read it again, v. 16:
Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.
What he says could easily slip by unnoticed if we’re not careful. He says, “If anyone suffers as a CHRISTIAN.”
This is interesting, because in every other instance in the New Testament, the word “Christian” is a derogatory term. It is an insult, used by the enemies of the church to malign them. The word "Christian” means “follower of Christ,” and Christ was not a popular guy at the time. He was an enemy of the state. So “Christians” were dangerous radicals; they were those weirdos who followed the wannabe insurrectionist.
So then look at what Peter does. He takes this insulting term, and he reappropriates it. “They call us followers of Christ…and that’s true. We are followers of Christ. So if that’s what they call us, if that’s what they think of us…let’s show them what that looks like. Let’s show them what it looks like to follow Christ.”
And what does it look like? Firstly, if we follow Christ, we are not ashamed of it. That’s hard, because shame is the goal of persecution; shame is the goal of slander. And because deep down, we have bought into the idea that we are right to be ashamed. That we’re right to be embarrassed.
Now I want to be careful here. If you have felt this shame, you’re not alone. I have too. We all have. If you have ever neglected to share the gospel because you were embarrassed, you’re not alone. We’ve all done it, at some point or another. That shame is natural—the apostle Paul warns us very clearly in 1 Corinthians 1.18 that the gospel will be seen as stupidity to those who are perishing, so if we are sharing the gospel there will be people who think we’re stupid, and no one likes to be made to feel stupid.
But if we consider even the nature of the good news of the gospel, we’d see being ashamed of our faith for the epic foolishness that it is.
The gospel is the good news of the God of all things, who takes on the very humanity he created, who walks among sinful human beings without becoming sinful like us, who not only doesn’t pour the wrath we all deserve on us, but who takes our sin on himself and absorbs that wrath in himself so that we wouldn’t have to, who promises us eternal and glorious reward for the very faith he gave us... There is no better news than this!
Were people ashamed when Paris was liberated after the Nazi occupation at the end of World War II? Did they walk through the streets shamefaced, trying to hide the fact that they’d been freed? No—they came out in droves to cheer and celebrate together, in full view, because they had received such good news: WE ARE FREE.
The gospel is everything good that God intended when he created this world, summarized in a story. It is the restoration of what was broken. It is the revelation of what was hidden. It is the coming close of what was far away. It is unity, where before there was division. It is healing, where before there was sickness. It is joy, where before there was sorrow.
If we would just take the time to remember why we are Christians, what the gospel is, we would not only not be ashamed, we would be bold. We would be happy. We would not hesitate for a moment to proclaim the glory of God, because nothing else could hold a candle to the importance of this good news.
And that is precisely the second mark of what it looks like to follow Christ—what it looks like to be a Christian.
Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.
If you are a Christian, show them what following Christ is like—not only is there no shame to be found, but in its place there is bold celebration of the glory of God, manifested in Jesus Christ.
Do you see how this frustrates the plans of those who insult and persecute us? Their goal is to shame us…and it doesn’t work. Their goal is frustrated. Our goal, on the other hand—to glorify the God who saved us—remains uneffected. Rather than renouncing the name for which we are being persecuted, we celebrate it. This is Paul and Silas singing hymns in prison. This is Stephen boldly preaching the gospel before being stoned to death. This is Christ praying for the forgiveness of his crucifiers.
Imagine being one of the persecutors in this context! If you are the one doing the insulting here, you only have two options. Either you dig in, and you refuse to see what’s right in front of your eyes, because your mind simply can’t process what you’re seeing; or you have to stop and say, “These people are seeing something I’m not seeing, and I want to see it.”
Conclusion
Now I know a lot of you may be hearing all of this and thinking, None of this means anything to me. Because you’re good. You feel good. You’re happy. No one’s persecuting you for your faith. You’ve grown up in a family in which this is just the way we do things. We go to church. We pray together. We read the Bible. Everyone in your family is a Christian, all of your friends are Christians… All this talk of suffering for your faith doesn’t really hit home, because you don’t really ever suffer for your faith. I’m not even really talking about being persecuted for your faith; I’m talking about those of you who never really feel any pain in your Christian life.
If that’s the case, then there may be a problem you need to address. I don’t ever want to give you the impression that if you’re not miserable as a Christian, you’re doing something wrong. The joys and the delights that come with following Jesus are indescribable, and outweigh whatever pain we may feel. That’s always true, if we remember the gospel.
But at the same time, if you’re taking your Bible seriously, if you’re taking following Jesus seriously, then there will necessarily be times in your life—and often—when the Bible will lovingly but firmly press on areas of your life that aren’t quite what they need to be. If you are taking your Bible seriously, it will always call you to greater holiness, greater conformity to the image of Christ, and that call will always be that you put your sin to death. Putting your sin to death is painful. It’s wonderful, but it is painful.
So just ask yourself this morning: What areas of my Christian life are a little painful for me? In what areas has God been calling me to change, in the light of what you’ve seen in his Word? If you can’t think of anything, then chances are either you haven’t been reading your Bible, or you haven’t been following Jesus. If that’s you, then get on your knees and beg God to speak to you; to show you through his Spirit the areas in your life in which you’re not as Christlike as you should be; ask him to stir in you a new desire to read his Word and hear his voice and obey him.
And for those of you who can immediately say, “Yeah—this area of my life is killing me. I want to follow Christ, but I am having such a hard time not sinning,” there is good news here. If that’s you, the first step is already done. You know there’s a problem. The Holy Spirit has already pointed at this thing and said, “There it is.”
So listen to what Peter says. Pray and ask God to convince you that there is joy in the suffering. Not despite the suffering—IN the suffering. “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” Last summer we drove eight hours to the Alps for vacation. Parents, you know—eight hours in the car with two little kids is not fun. So why do we do it? Because we know the joy of the Alps is waiting for us. When we know there is joy to be had because of what we’re enduring, we endure it—and we endure it gladly. Because we know the joy that is waiting for us is so much greater than the pain that is coming at us right now. Look at the treasure waiting for you, and suffer well.
If we can learn to do this in our ordinary Christian lives—in our fight against sin—then we will be ready to do this when persecution does come. When persecution comes, what will we do? We will show them what Christians look like. We will not be ashamed, but we will glorify God in Christ’s name—for the same reason. Because in so doing, we share in Christ’s sufferings, that we may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
