the Cross in 1 Peter 3

a passage i'll be teaching on soon

This last Sunday I faced a fairly simple and straightforward passage: 1 Peter 3:8-12. It is a call to grace filled relationship: humility, unity, brotherly love, and the like. It is a call not to take revenge. It is an application of Psalm 34 and the pursuit of life. How does the Gospel fit into this? How can people see the Savior with faith and apply his work to their own lives?

God gave us grace to see this as we discussed the passage. The general pattern would be to preach an outline, to define each idea as clearly as possible, to illustrate it clearly. The goal would be people walking away with a clearer understanding of their duties. But is that what Peter had in mind?

Here is what we found: The cross is the center of the passage -- starting in 2:13 and going through 4:6. The Savior's sacrifice is there twice (2:21-24 and 3:18). We asked: How is Peter reflecting on the cross here?

The passage is about relationship -- and so is our redemption. How do we tie those two together?

It seems that Peter is calling them to relate to fellow Christians and to non-believing opponents in the same way that God has related to us. As I preached this I developed the meaning of the text and also pointed out that what Peter was defining was impossible for us. Then I noted that Peter is describing the Savior's relationship with us. We then spent considerable time meditating on the death of Christ and its fruit entirely from the perspective of relationship.

The question was this: How did God respond to us when we were offensive? How did God respond to us when we are rebels? We looked at the life of Jesus and considered how he treated his followers (who were, like us, stupid) and his enemies (who chased him his entire public life). It was amazing to consider the amazing, utterly grace filled, response of Jesus to his enemies and his friends.

I concluded with this: every difficulty in relationship is a window into our Savior's love, into his grace. We then applied this to various issues in relationship...