Sermon Text:

We continue working our way passage by passage through 1 Peter. This book is a manual on how believers are to conduct themselves in a world that is opposed to the gospel. Last week we saw that receiving God’s grace moves our affections away from sin and toward God. Peter says the effect of this change is that believers will abstain from some things and they will keep others. 

Last time we saw believers should abstain from the passions of the flesh and pursue holiness, enabled by the truth of God's Word and the work of the Holy Spirit. For those of you who remember J. Vernon McGee, this week the Bible bus stops at verse 12 where we will take a look at what Peter says believers are to keep doing as a result of the grace we have received. Verse 12 says,

12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 

Among the most well-known teachings of Jesus is that we are to love our neighbors so Peter’s instruction to keep our conduct honorable is not surprising. He says in response to slanderous name calling against you, be honorable, so that those who revile you will see your behavior and glorify God.

I suppose if you asked the average person they would say that the way to get to heaven is being good. Of course, we know that isn’t true. Our good works are not the reason why God forgives us or accepts us. We are forgiven because of the good works of Jesus, not our own. Although they are not the reason for God’s loving us, it is still the case that God is concerned about our works. The puritan pastor Thomas Adams said, “good works are interesting things. Nobody will ever be saved because of them, yet no one will be saved without them. Speaking of good works Martin Luther said, “the faith that alone saves, is never alone.

It seems today many believers are puzzled by the role good works play in the life of faith. One of the most common questions I am asked is some version of what the role of good works or holiness is since we are justified by grace apart from works. The answer is that any works that are truly good are themselves expressions and evidence of faith. A holy life is the fruit that comes from the root of faith. Another part of the answer is that God is doing more in our lives than just rescuing us from the penalty of our sin.

It is one of these other things Peter focuses on in this verse. The good works done in us are a testimony to the power and glory of God. We do not pursue good works for our salvation, but, in a sense, for the salvation of others. Our behavior confirms our testimony to the power of the Gospel. Our lives show that the gospel is true. That is our main point this morning. Believers are called to live honorably as a testimony to the power of the gospel to unbelievers.

Peter begins

12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable

There are three key words here: conduct, honorable, and gentiles. “Conduct” is one of Peter’s favorite ways of describing our walk as believers. The word is used 13 times in the New Testament and 6 of those appear in this letter and two more in his second letter. It refers to the overall way we live our life. 

The word the ESV translates as “honorable” is a Greek word that means good in the sense of being beautiful or attractive. We are to keep our way of life good in the sense that it is attractive.

He says we do this among the gentiles. Remember, Peter is writing to churches that include believers with both Jewish and gentile backgrounds, and mostly gentiles.  So, when he talks about them being exiles among the gentiles he is showing they are no longer who they used to be. Those who believe in Jesus  have been taken out of the world and made participants in the covenant promises God made to believing Jews. 

In all of scripture there is never a covenant made with gentiles. Both the Old and New covenants are given to Israel. The gospel is a covenant promise made to Israel. It is announced in Jeremiah 31:33,

33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  

This promise includes not only forgiveness, but also the holy and beautiful way of life Peter has been urging. We see this in Ezekiel 36:24–28,

24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.  

God will gather the exiles to be his people and they will be made holy by an internal work of the Spirit. These New Covenant promises are at the foundation of everything Peter has been teaching. By contrasting believers with gentiles he is reminding us that by faith we have been included in the promises. The gathering into the land will be fulfilled when the kingdom comes in its fullness on earth, but the spiritual renewal has already begun.

Believers are those who have been made a new people and have been cleansed from our idolatry and have received a new heart and have the Spirit of God within us. Peter isn’t only writing to Jewish believers and the church doesn’t replace Israel. Peter is saying that all who have put their faith in Jesus have been adopted into God’s covenant people by an act of grace performed by God himself.

Believers who were born gentiles are no longer gentiles, but have become true israelites. Romans 2:28–29 says,

28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.  

So what Peter is saying is believers are to keep our way of life beautiful or attractive among unbelievers. The Bible gives us many reasons for doing this, but in this verse the emphasis is that it leads to God’s glory.

Peter says keep your way of life attractive among unbelievers,

so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 

He says our obedience in living a beautiful life in the face of slander and abuse will result in God receiving glory. Notice, he doesn’t say, “if” they speak against you, but “when” they do. Although true believers desire nothing more than to see others come to know eternal joy, we will be hated and called evildoers. 

Our motives and principles are misunderstood and mischaracterized. Believers are seen by the world as in the way of progress. At best, we are thought fools, at worst we are considered agents of oppression and purveyors of dangerous ideas.

Have you noticed anytime the media interviews a Christian it seems they have gone out of their way to find either a complete nutcase or someone whose views have very little to do with what the Bible actually says. Most TV shows or movies, if they even acknowledge Christians exist, almost always portray them as bumbling fools, hypocrites, or villains. 

It is increasingly common for people to actually consider biblical values evil. We are accused of being unloving, of hating certain people, of not caring about women, of not caring about the marginalized, and so on. Lies and exaggerations about us are easily accepted and spread. This is nothing new. 

In the first century, Christians were said to be cannibals because people heard we met together to eat flesh and drink blood. Christians were accused of being sexually immoral and comments about loving our brothers and sisters and having love feasts were used as evidence.

The philosophers said we were ignorant and enemies of rational thought. The craftsmen said our morality was bad for the economy, and the authorities accused us of being atheists because we refused to worship the gods or the emperor. If a crop failed or a storm did damage, it was easy to blame our lack of worship for the false gods they thought protected them.

We should expect to be mischaracterized in the world but Peter says that true believers must live in such a way that if anyone were to get to know us, they would see that the lies are not true. Our lives should be so filled with love, so beautiful in comparison to the world, that they counteract the stereotypes the culture has about who we are. Our lives are to contrast living in the truth and the lies. 

Our entire lives are to be a testimony to the power of the gospel. What message do we send the world if we proclaim the power of Jesus over sin and still live in it? What value is it to preach a gospel about the love of Jesus if our actions show we live in hate and selfishness? We are called to proclaim a message about the power of God to transform those who are spiritually dead into the children of God. We are called to display the truth of that message.

The truth of the message does not depend on our goodness, but we should be growing in the truth and its power will produce a love in us the world doesn’t have. 

I recall the story of a young man who went to an adult establishment. He said that as he was growing up his father would often warn him not to go there because he would see things he shouldn’t see. When the young man came of age he decided to go anyway. A friend asked him, “well, did you see things you shouldn’t see?”, and the young man replied, “I did, I saw my father there.” 

This father told his son the truth but the power of that truth was not shown in his own life. Our salvation and that of others rests in the perfect work of Jesus not our own. Even so, if the Spirit of Christ is in us, we will be growing in grace. We do not pursue holiness to be loved by God, but because we are already loved by God. That love is to overflow into our sincere love for others, even those who hate us, just as Jesus did.

As we saw last week, this doesn’t happen automatically, we have to pursue it by the power of God. It is the constant encouragement and prayer of the apostles that we do so. Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1:9–11 is typical of what we see throughout the New Testament,

9 … we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy;  

There are a lot of believers out there who think once they have been forgiven and accepted, they have reached the finish line. They want to reduce the life of faith to just whether they are going to heaven or not but we are born again to live to the glory of God. To reduce the entire Christian life to if we are forgiven or not is like thinking there is no difference between your wedding and your marriage. One is intended to be the beginning of the other.

The Bible says we are saved by grace FOR good works that God equips us to do. Our lives and our testimonies are linked. We are to be lights in this world that point those who know us to the realities of the next world. Many believers struggle with questions about how best to engage a quickly changing culture. What role are we as believers supposed to play, if any, in making this world a better place as we focus on the next one? How should we think about the culture wars, social justice, and so forth?

Peter is giving us several principals that help us to think through those questions. The first is something we have already mentioned. The world will call us evildoers. Trying to modify or accommodate our beliefs to please the world, as many are doing, is foolish and useless. We do not seek to be honorable by accommodating ourselves to the world. We proclaim the only message of hope for a condemned world and if we compromise the gospel to be more acceptable, we lose our reason for being here. In Matthew 5:13 Jesus says, 

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

The gospel is offensive to the natural man because it is exclusive. It demands we give up any pretense of wisdom or goodness. It demands we admit that we are weak, selfish, and incapable of being in charge of our own lives. It insists we are helpless to change this and that God is sovereign and if we are to be saved it must be through his power. A gospel that is removed of its offensiveness in these respects, cannot save.

The gospel is offensive because sinners are proud. But we are not to add our own offensiveness to it. Too many believers confuse being rejected because they are obnoxious with being rejected for the sake of the gospel. We are not sent into the world to offend it. There is enough offense in Christ, so let there be none in us other than what he brings.

We are also not called to completely withdraw from the world in some kind of self-imposed Christian bunker. Some say we must avoid any engagement with the culture or politics or anything of the world at all. I know we all sometimes feel like retreating from all the craziness, but that isn’t what we are called to do. The holiest person who ever lived was our Lord and rather than avoid suffering, he endured so others would be saved. We are to be like Jesus.

Peter says the unbelieving world should “see our behavior” so that God will be glorified. Jesus says it this way in Matthew 5:14–16,

14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

There are others today who insist the best way to do this is to become activists. Peter isn’t talking about movements though. That doesn’t mean there are no times where the collective moral influence of the church has produced great changes for the good of society. Sometimes that even comes through the direct engagement of believers.

I think of William Wilberforce who used his political influence to help abolish the slave trade in the British empire. In his famous letter from the Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed,

“There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

He said this in criticism of the weakness of the church on issues of racism and segregation in his day. I think it is important, however, to recognize that it is an oversimplification to think Wilberforce and Dr. King were encouraging the church to become social, political, or economic activists. The British abolitionist movement and the early American civil rights movement called believers to be bold in standing for the truth of their own convictions and to put them into practice.

We all play a part in how we use our influence as citizens of this world, but Peter’s focus here is not the consolidation of social, economic, or political influence. We can work for a better society but ultimately laws cannot change anyone’s heart. Only God can do that. Peter is addressing believers in terms of our way of life, not our way of lobbying. 

Our individual and collective influence should be expressed in love. That means we can differ as to specific policy proposals, candidates, etc. A Chinese brother can love his neighbor and Jesus living in a very different socio-political environment than a sister in Palestine and both can be faithful. The commission given to the church is not to become activists, but to become evangelists. 

In Mark 8:36 Jesus says,

36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

We are to use our influence to do good while recognizing that the fundamental problems the world faces are not external. The pain and injustice in the world do not ultimately come from the wrong social, economic, or political programs. They come from the sinful rebellion of people against God who is the source of all love and goodness.

The Bible teaches us even the most extreme radical cannot go nearly far enough in accomplishing what is needed to change the world because the only thing that can bring lasting change is a new heart, and only God can do that. That is what he offers through the Gospel. Our sin has separated us from God and there was no way for us to fix that. We were under a sentence of death from a holy God. But in an act of amazing love, he sent his son Jesus to live a perfect life and to die in the place of everyone who would ever put their faith in him. 

He was nailed to a cross, where he experienced the wrath of God poured out on him for our sin. He died and was buried, but three days later, he was raised from the dead. He died as a sinner but overcame death proving that God’s wrath against our sin was satisfied. In Christ, we are free from condemnation. But we receive even more than this. We are given a new heart that beats with affection for God. We are made new in anticipation of a new world to come.

The gospel overflows with good news for the needy and oppressed. It proclaims that injustice, repression, exploitation, discrimination, and poverty are all doomed. Nobody who repents and believes in Jesus is forced to endure the crushing power of evil forever. And those who come to him now live as ambassadors for Jesus, sent into the world to be and to make disciples. Peter is telling us that we are to act as Jesus acted. When insulted, we are to love. In Luke 6:32–36 Jesus says,

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. …  

35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

The gospel empowers us to live so that when people come to know us they will realize that the stereotypes about us are untrue. Men and women transformed by the grace of God are more powerful than movements. We can put away the slogans and the banners and focus on actually loving real people God puts into our lives.

If we spent just ½ the time and energy actually getting out into the world and interacting with real broken people that we spend on social media complaining about what is wrong with the world, I’m convinced we would see revival. If we spent ½ the time talking to God in prayer that we spend complaining, I’m convinced we would see revival.

The world thinks we hate certain people. What should we do? Start a marketing campaign or get to know people who think we hate them and show them love. Love in telling the truth, yes, but also love in sincerely caring for them.

The world thinks we are indifferent to issues of justice and poverty. Should we join marches and parades? Maybe, but how about building authentic friendships with people of different backgrounds, races, and social status so we can show our love to them as well as tell them?

God doesn’t call us primarily to post memes or sign petitions to defend our morality. He certainly doesn’t call us to wish judgment upon others whose sins differ from ours as though we don’t also deserve hell and have not also been saved by grace. We do not pursue good works to show our own goodness, but God’s goodness. We are merely a tool he uses for his glory.

Peters says we are to pursue Christ- like lives, so God’s goodness would be clear to all who come in contact with us. Living our lives as a believer among your neighbors, even if they hate you, will be the most powerful thing you can do to create a context for sharing the gospel with them.

We believe that it is a sin to take the life of an unborn child. Love means not only do we support abortion laws, but we are willing to care for the mothers and the children who need help. 

We believe God has created every person as valuable and designed them for a unique purpose. That means it isn’t enough to just say that same sex attraction or gender confusion is wrong. We must be willing to show people struggling with those sins compassion, inviting them to share in the love of Christ as we love them.

As Dr. Rosaria Butterfield has observed, 

“There is a core difference between sharing the gospel with the lost and imposing a specific moral standard on the unconverted.”

We could go on all afternoon, but we don’t have time. My point is that even sinners know what it means to be cared for with dignity as human beings. Peter says when we, like Jesus, are willing to love even those who hate us, the result will be that

they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 

The day of visitation could refer to either judgment or salvation. Some scholars think Peter is saying that they will glorify God when they are judged, admitting the good works of believers and vindicating God’s judgment. That is possible, as visitation is sometimes used that way in the Bible. 

But the more common use of the idea of glorifying God is found in those who believe and the idea of visitation is sometimes used in salvation contexts as well. For example, speaking of Jesus, Luke 1:68 says,

68  “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people  

Also, Acts 15:14 uses this language saying, 

14 Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name.  

So the idea of visitation and glory both appear in contexts related to judgment and salvation and I think salvation fits the context better. Peter urges us to live lives that are attractive and his emphasis seems to be on the response of unbelievers to that. I think the point is that our lives will complement our proclamation of the gospel and be used by God to bring some to Christ.

That is why I believe the main point is

Believers are called to live honorably as a testimony to the power of the gospel to unbelievers.

Last week, we saw the Holy Spirit works with the word to strengthen our love for Jesus so that it is worth more to us than any other desires. In this verse he says this love is more valuable to us than even our own comfort or reputations because we look forward to the amazing blessing that God may draw others to salvation because of the love he has displayed in and through us. 

Amazing grace indeed.