How Do We Live When the World is Against Us? (1 Peter 3:8-22)

When I was a kid, my friends and I occasionally would do something that I don’t recommend and I’m pretty sure is illegal. I grew up in south Orlando where the neighborhoods sprawl and run together more than they do up here. When the city was doing work around our neighborhoods and would put those orange detour signs up, we would move them around. Our goal was to arrange them so that somebody following the signs would end up driving in a big circle all over the neighborhood and end up right back where they started. There was no GPS back then so they would drive in circles and just get super frustrated. These drivers were moving the whole time, following the signs, but they weren’t actually getting anywhere. I know, I’m a jerk, but it was a lot of fun for a few middle schoolers. 

There are ways the world works just like that. Someone hurts me, I hurt them. They say something about me, I say something about them. They humiliate me, I find some way to humiliate them. Evil produces evil, which produces more evil, which produces more evil. We keep moving, but we never actually get anywhere productive and our souls are increasingly frustrated.

Peter is saying in this passage that Christianity allows you to get out of that circle. Peter has spent this entire section talking to Christians who are being mistreated by governments, by masters, and even by spouses. Now he pulls back and speaks to the entire church. 

How should the Christian live when the world is against you? I see three answers. 

1. Break the cycle of evil 8-12

Peter begins inside the church. Have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Then comes the command that kind of governs this whole section. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. 

The normal human instinct is reciprocity. You give me what I deserve and I’ll give you what you deserve. You disrespect me, I disrespect you. You attack me, I attack you. You make me suffer, I make you suffer. That’s the circle. 

And Peter says Christians are people who take down the detour sign. We don’t merely refuse to retaliate. Peter goes further: “On the contrary, bless.” That doesn’t mean evil isn’t evil or remaining in abusive situations or refusing to pursue justice appropriately. Peter is saying that even when someone genuinely wrongs us, their sin does not get to determine our character. 

Why? Peter tells us why by quoting Psalm 34: Whoever desires to love life and see good days… Peter says there is another road to take. The road of seeking peace and doing good. The world says, “Give them what they gave you.” Jesus says, “Give them what I gave you. Take on what I took on for you.”

Imagine you are at work and someone takes credit for something you did. You spent weeks on the project, solved the problem, stayed late…and then you’re sitting in a meeting when your coworker presents it as though it was mostly their work. What are you going to do? You can embarrass them in the meeting. You can start quietly telling coworkers what they’re really like. You can wait until they make a mistake and make sure everyone knows it. You can begin building a case against them. 

And the weird part is that you can do all of that without ever actually lying. Everything you could say would be true. But what are you trying to do? You’re trying to make them hurt because they made you hurt. That’s the circle. Evil for evil, reviling for reviling. Peter isn’t saying you can’t go to your boss and say, “I actually did most of that work.” Christianity doesn’t require that you pretend injustice didn’t happen. 

The question isn’t whether you can pursue what is right. The question is whether you need the person who hurt you to hurt too. That’s where Christianity gets off the circle. At work, following Jesus doesn’t mean you stop caring about what’s fair. It means that you stop needing revenge in order to feel like justice has been done. 

What happens when someone criticizes you? When someone misrepresents you? When someone posts something about you? What happens in your marriage when your spouse’s sin gives you what feels like permission to sin back? Will you stay on the circle or not? Christian maturity means refusing to take the detour sign the world puts up. 

But, there is an obvious objection here that Peter anticipates. What if I do good and they keep hurting me anyway? 

2. Don’t let suffering make you afraid 13-17

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? Normally, doing good goes well. But not always. But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. And then Peter says, “Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.” 

That’s the real battle. Peter has something more threatening than suffering in mind: fear. Because fear can make us compromise, it can make us retaliate, it can make us hide. So, instead of fearing, Peter says, “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you..” We often pull this verse out of its context as an apologetic verse. That is, we need to have our intellectual defense ready at all times for an engagement with an unbeliever. I myself have used that verse that way many times. And there is nothing wrong with being ready like this. But this verse says more than that in its context. 

Think about it. Why would an unbeliever in this context ask a believer about their hope? Because they are suffering and, yet, somehow they are still hopeful. People see Christians being mistreated and they give blessings in return. They see us threatened and we are not controlled by fear. A non-Christian then asks, “Why are you like this?” Peter is saying, “That’s when we get to tell them about Jesus.” And we must be ready. 

But, Peter is saying that we should do this …with gentleness and respect. Our manner is part of our witness. I’ve seen people ready to make their defense with no gentleness or respect. I knew a guy who got his concealed carry license for self-defense, but really he was living for the moment when he can legally use his gun. It just felt wrong. He would position himself at every restaurant so he could see the doors and be ready for that moment. That sadly how many Christians have their gospel defense ready. We should never defend the gospel in a way that makes the gospel look ugly. 

Peter’s main hope isn’t that unbelievers hear Christians give good intellectual arguments. It’s that they encounter Christians whose lives require an explanation. I said this a few weeks ago. When people who disagree with Christianity encounter our lives, does our life make Christianity harder to believe or harder to dismiss? 

There was a pagan Roman Emperor in the 4th century named Julian the Apostate. He was named that by Christians because he was Constantine’s nephew. He was raised in a new era where Christianity was legal in the Roman Empire, but Julian rejected Christianity and tried to revive the old pagan religions. 

For generations, Christians had developed a reputation for extraordinary care of the sick and poor… including the great epidemics of the third century. In 362, Julian complained to his pagan high priest in Galatia, “We have to start taking care of people the way the Christians do. They care not only for their own poor, but for pagan poor as well.” Julian didn’t believe Christianity, but the lives of the Christians made Christianity harder to dismiss. Their lives displayed the beauty of the gospel. 

And that beauty is clearest when life is hardest. Suffering has a way of revealing what our hope is really in. Christian suffering doesn’t hide the beauty of the Christian life, it uniquely puts it on display. Suffering strips away so many of the things we thought we needed and gives us the opportunity to discover that Jesus really is enough. He really is all we need. I can’t tell you how many people I have known who, in their toughest trials, found more beauty in Jesus than they had ever seen before. 

And when the world sees someone hurting who still has hope, they may begin to wonder where that hope comes from. When Christians hurt and still have hope, when we are mistreated and still bless, when we have every reason to be afraid and still trust Jesus…that is a life that the world has to explain. That’s why suffering doesn’t hide the beauty of the Christian life, but actually puts it on display. 

Some of us hear ‘don’t retaliate’ and think, “I’m good. I haven’t done anything to them.” But you’ve been retaliating against them in your heart for years. I’ve been guilty of this. We replay what they did. We rehearsed what we wished we had said. We secretly enjoy the thought of them finally getting what they deserve. 

Paul says in Romans 12, Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. And then he says something very uncomfortable. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he’s thirsty, give him something to drink. In other words, you don’t overcome their evil by returning it. Not even silently in your heart. That actually makes you more miserable. You overcome evil with good. Curses with blessings. 

And Pauls says that doing this is like heaping burning coals on their head. That doesn’t mean be nice because it will hurt them more or cause them to suffer more. The coals on their head is the conviction of what they have done in view of your kindness. It means that you can release your need to settle the score. Their heart is God’s responsibility. Justice is God’s responsibility. Your responsibility is to keep doing good. 

Then, Peter gives us the reason Christians can live this way. And from verse 18 onward, the camera pulls away from us and focuses on Jesus. 

3. Remember: Jesus has gone where you are…and He’s taking you where He is 18-22

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God… That is the gospel in one sentence. The righteous for the unrighteous. Peter’s flow here is Jesus suffers, Jesus dies, Jesus goes to the dead, Jesus rises, Jesus ascends, Jesus sits at God’s right hand with every authority and power subjected to Him. At a high level, Peter takes us from the depths of Christ’s humiliation to the heights of Christ’s exaltation. 

I want to look at that high level. First, Jesus has gone all the way down to where we are. This is the beautiful theological truth here that we recited today in the Apostles Creed. Christians have confessed for two thousand years the language of Christ’s descent to the dead. Jesus didn’t merely die. Jesus was dead. There is a difference. We can tend to collapse Good Friday and Easter Sunday together. Jesus dies and in our minds, almost immediately He rises. 

But that’s not how it happened. His body was placed in a grave. For His people, Jesus went not merely to death, but to the dead. And there is something incredibly comforting about that. There is nowhere Jesus asks His people to go that He has not gone before them. He knows what it is to suffer. He knows what it is to be rejected. He knows what it is like to die. And He knows what it is like to be dead. 

And there are these beautiful connections to the whole of the Old Testament. Israel goes down to Egypt. Jesus goes down to the realm of the dead. Israel passes through the waters of the Red Sea. Jesus passes through the waters of baptism. Israel goes into the wilderness and is tested. Jesus goes into the wilderness and is tested by Satan. Jesus goes everywhere His people have gone. 

And this brings us to one of the strangest passages in the New Testament. Being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison… There are several historic interpretations of precisely what Peter means here and smart, godly people can disagree here. 

For what it’s worth, I think Jesus is going to the place that held all the dead up to this point. I think this is what Jesus talked about when He said there is a place where Abraham and Lazarus were and there was this great chasm and on the other side of that chasm was a bad place where the rich man and all the rest of the unbelievers were. And if I’m right, just imagine the scene. 

Believers in the Old Testament were saved by faith looking forward to what God would do one day to save them from their sin. Their sacrifices pointed forward in faith to what God the Father would do for us in Jesus Christ. So if we see now through a glass dimly, these saints saw through the dirtiest part of that glass. 

They had all lived with only pieces of the promise. Some rejected what God had revealed. Others trusted Him with what little they could see. And now both groups see the same thing: Jesus Christ standing before them in victory. For some, He is the confirmation of their judgment. For others, He is the fulfillment of everything they had spent their lives believing.

Adam and Eve see Him as the Promised Offspring who would crush the serpent’s head. That’s all they knew God would do and now they see Him. Noah sees the One through whom God preserves a people through judgement. Abraham sees the Promised Offspring through whom all the nations will be blessed. Isaac and Jacob see the same promise narrowed further. Not merely Abraham’s descendants generally, but the promise that ran through Isaac, Jacob and then the royal line of Judah. Moses sees Jesus through redemption, Passover, sacrifice, and mediation. 

David sees Jesus as the eternal King. The psalms add suffering to the portrait of the Messiah. Somehow the victorious King will win through suffering. Isaiah sees Jesus as the child who will be born and reign on David’s throne. A shoot from Jesse. The servant despised, rejected, and wounded for our transgressions, bearing the sins of many. Jeremiah sees Jesus as the mediator of a new covenant. Ezekiel sees Jesus as the true Shepherd and the giver of a new life with a new heart and a new spirit. Daniel sees Jesus as the Son of Man whose kingdom cannot be destroyed. Zechariah sees Jesus as the King coming humble and rejected riding in on a donkey who will be pierced. And Malachi sees Jesus as the Lord Himself coming to His temple. 

They had spent their whole lives believing promises. And now the Promise was standing in front of them. Jesus is taking them all the way up to where He is and He will do the same for us! 

And here is where Peter brings Noah and baptism into the picture. Noah passes through the waters and Peter says, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you… And Peter immediately clarifies that he isn’t talking about physical washing of water..”not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Jesus has gone where we have gone and baptism says that we are going where Jesus has gone. Jesus was immersed by death and we are immersed in a coffin of water. We do this to show that we are united to Him. His story becomes our story. 

Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea from slavery toward the promised land. And baptism pictures an even greater exodus: united to Jesus, we pass with Him through death into resurrection life. We may wander the wilderness in this life, but we will arrive at the true promised land with Jesus. 

Then, the passage ends by saying Jesus Christ “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” That is the destination. Peter begins with Jesus in the depths of humiliation and ends with Jesus at the height of exaltation. Down into suffering. Down into death. Down into the dead. Up from the grave. Up into heaven. Seated at the right hand of God. 

The Christian claim is that Jesus went all the way down to get us so that He could bring us all the way up to Him. That is why suffering cannot ultimately threaten us and that is why Christian suffering brings us closer to Christ. 

The world is going around in circles. Evil for evil. Insult for insult. Fear that produces anger that produces retaliation, that ultimately just produces more suffering. But Peter says that we don’t have to stay in that loop. Not because Christians are just nicer people. But because Jesus broke the cycle of life and death. He has given us an entirely different road that He has already traveled. 

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There is nowhere we can go that Jesus has not already gone. But just as Jesus didn’t stay there, neither will we. He rose, He ascended, and He reigns. And if you belong to Him, there is nowhere Jesus is going that He will not take us with Him. 

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So, when the world hurts you, you don’t have to hurt it back. When the world frightens you, you don’t have to live afraid. When following Jesus costs you, you don’t have to wonder where this road ends. We know where it ends. It ends where Jesus is now. At the right hand of God, with every angel, authority, and power beneath His feet. 

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