Expect Persecution!
“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. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.”
1 Peter 4:12-16
Throughout this series, we have seen some ways that the Apostle Peter is really echoing truths that he had first heard from Jesus—truths that we can read for ourselves in the Gospels. So when I summarize Peter’s opening imperative, ‘Beloved, do not be surprised’ (v. 12a)—by the single word EXPECT, you may recall the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Jn. 15:20) and “In the world you will have tribulation” (Jn. 16:33). This is a divine guarantee. This is a Christian expectation.
Doctrine. The maturing Christian expects persecution to prove out Christ-likeness.
Why do I say it like that? To have an expectation is simply the opposite of being surprised; but Peter forbids the latter—DO NOT BE SURPRISED. The verb for this “surprise” (ξενίζω) comes from the root noun for “stranger” (ξένος), which is reinforced by Peter because he uses it again a few words later: ‘as though something strange’ (v. 12c). How then can we not be in a stranger relationship to this thing? In order to do that, we must get our minds around what the thing is that we are expecting. Peter calls it a ‘fiery trial’ (v. 12b), two separate words in the Greek, so that the fire is in the dative case, which here could be either location or instrumental.1 Think about that. A trial of fire can be fiery because something is placed in a fire, or because fire is applied externally.
(i.) The first cause of the fiery trial
(ii.) The material cause of the fiery trial
(iii.) The formal cause of the fiery trial
(iii.) The final cause of the fiery trial
The First Cause of the Fiery Trial
The first, or efficient, cause is the ultimate cause of any single thing. And the first cause of this fiery trial is God. Now this is the only one of the four (or five) causes that is not specifically mentioned by any explicit words in today’s text. In fact, Peter treats the fiery trial itself as if it were the personal agent, coming for you: ‘the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you’ (v. 12b). But we understand that the trial itself doesn’t have this intentionality. It doesn’t see you and think about testing you. But the fact that God is the primal Actor behind all our trials here—including those most fiery ones—can be shown in six ways:
First, the Bible teaches that God tests His people by fiery trials. “God tested Abraham … ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Gen. 22:1, 2); and “God left [Hezekiah] to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart” (2 Chr. 32:31).
Second, God ordains all that comes to pass for the believer in any event. If He ordains all things, and if the fiery trial is a thing, then it follows that God always ordains the fiery trial: “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).2
Third, the Bible’s reasons for God’s testing match the reasons Peter offers here. We will come back to this, but making us share in the sufferings of Christ to be like Him is a divinely caused action. So Paul says, “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29).
Fourth, the key distinction we will see Peter make is a distinction God makes: “that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire” (1 Pet. 1:7). Precious metals are also revealed by divine fire in Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3. Sometimes in Scripture, this distinguishes between the elect and the reprobate, the sheep and the goat; other times between different degrees of treasure that true believers have laid up in heaven.
Fifth, ‘the Spirit of glory and of God’ is said to ‘rest upon you’ (v. 14) in it, as He was that fourth person in the fiery furnace with the four Hebrew boys in Daniel. Jesus promised the disciples: “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:11-12).
Sixth, the truth is explicitly mentioned in the passage that ends the section: ‘suffer according to God’s will’ (v. 19). Here it is pointless to distinguish between God’s will of decree and will of precept, as anything that God desires that you do in a trial is as ordained by God as the trial itself: “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phi. 2:13).
The Material Cause of the Fiery Trial
The material cause is the particular stuff that an actor is working on that limits the sort of product that can be made. If a sculptor strikes his mallet on the chisel and digs into a slab of marble, we wouldn’t expect a nice warm apple pie to come out. Here, the material of the trial is not the fire, which is not literal anyway. In verses 15 and 16 we see the word ‘suffer’ used twice, but the suffering is what happens to you. That would be more like the chisel. So what is the marble?
We have already established that the overall context of Peter’s letter focuses on persecution rather than more general kinds of suffering. A fever, a broken leg, and mounting debt do not mind if you are a Christian; yet the person who hates Jesus Christ minds that you are a Christian. So here, if ‘you share Christ’s sufferings’ (v. 13a)—CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS would most literally be speaking of that suffering that came at the hand of the Jewish and Roman authorities. But even that is not the material for you and for me.
Notice that we cannot just call these bodily injuries. We also gather the idea of persecution from a specific form Peter mentions here: ‘If you are insulted for the name of Christ’ (v. 14a). Something that could not be true of the old you is being injured in these insults. The new you resembles Christ, as the Christians were first called Christians in Antioch3 because they were “little Christs.” It was a pejorative.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (Mat. 5:11).
You are the material under this suffering. You are the matter receiving the persecution. But be careful to observe that it is the new you: the Christian you, that which has a share in Christ’s suffering. The stuff you are made of, as the metal being forged by the fire, will be persecution-shaped, even cross-shaped;4 and therefore, it matters how you move in the flow from base alloys to fully formed vessel.
The Formal Cause of the Fiery Trial
Let me make this simple: How can you tell the difference between true persecution and false persecution? In other words, if I show you two scenes, both of which have a man led away in handcuffs and thrown into the back of a police van, would you say that both men are being persecuted? You would probably answer me, “I need more information.” In order for this suffering to qualify as the form of Christian persecution, Peter gives us two qualifications, two distinguishing marks:
First, this suffering can bring you to a place of rejoicing ‘insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings’ (v. 13a) or ‘suffers as a Christian’ (v. 16a). Something about it has to resemble Christ’s suffering; and we have already seen that this resemblance cannot be anything Jesus does for us as our Substitute. His suffering was unique in that sense. However, we can—as Peter said earlier—“follow in his steps” (2:21) in being mistreated unjustly. This is the true meaning of those words of Paul the trip up so many, namely, that “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).
Sproul commented on that, “Paul did not mean that there was merit lacking in Jesus’ passion, but rather that Christ has invited all who are in Him to taste of His suffering.”5 I would only add that we arbitrarily weight the emphasis of the sentence wrongly anyway: e.g., what is lacking in Christ’s affliction. But we have already chosen not to give the inflection to the words before—e.g., in my flesh what is lacking. It is I who have not yet suffered like Him. And when the treatment that I get begins to look like the way He was mistreated, I receive the greatest confirmation.
The second qualification Peter gives to us draws out the same point; but it is by way of a contrast.
But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed (vv. 15-16b)
In this contrast, both of these forms of suffering receive a painful action from some external, personal agent. But with one of them, you ought to be ashamed; with other one, you ought not to be ashamed. Jesus gives us a most crucial criterion: “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Mat. 10:22). To “suffer as a Christian” and to “share in Christ’s sufferings” are really synonyms then. It is for the name of Christ in that the person afflicting you does so out of hatred for Christ, and you represent Christ. He cannot get to Jesus, and therefore must take it out on you.
What gets shaved off the final product—the form of the sword pulled out of the fire—as impure and shameful recipients of persecution is this: ‘But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler’ (v. 15). Peter’s list of unrighteous suffering is not exhaustive, but it is there for our wisdom. We should at least start where God has given us to start. No one who is punished for murdering or stealing is suffering unrighteously. They receive their due. But even with things less severe, we should be leery of congratulating ourselves and go to the Lord first: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me” (Ps. 139:23-24). David did this even when his cause was just and he was mistreated for it:
O LORD my God, if I have done this, if there is wrong in my hands, if I have repaid my friend with evil or plundered my enemy without cause, let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and let him trample my life to the ground and lay my glory in the dust (Ps. 7:3-5).
How many of us can pray such a prayer? I fear that we do not care about coming out of the fire in the form that God sees, but only as man sees.
The Final Cause of the Fiery Trial
The final, or end, cause is the reason for which an Actor commits any action. If God is the Actor and First Cause, then it is His end we are after: His design or aim or motive or goal.
The first one Peter mentions in the course of the text is surprising: Joy! How can that be? But so it is: ‘But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed’ (v. 13). Now it is a progress of joy—a foretaste now and the feast on the Last Day. A biblical example will help with what it looks like to rejoice in the midst of it:
and when [the council] had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name (Acts 5:40-41).
Ultimately, however, something of God is glorified through a Christ-shaped lens. Several clues dropped throughout the text by Peter. What is looked forward to through this mistreatment is to ‘be glad when his glory is revealed’ (v. 13c). Not just the end, but the end of HIS GLORY revealed on that day. Who rests on you in the midst of this mistreatment? He calls Him ‘the Spirit of glory’ (v. 14b). True Christian persecution begets not shame but instead, ‘let him glorify God in that name’ (v. 16b). Glory is spread through this passage because glory is spread by our suffering in this way.
The persecuted Christian glorifies God—that is, tells the truth about God, draws attention to a specific glory in God—by reassembling the unjust treatment heaped upon the Son of God. If this happens, you do not just experience joy subjectively, but it is, objectively true, that Peter says, ‘you are blessed’ (v. 14). You resemble Jesus in this way—of course you are blessed! And it’s exponential, because as you resemble Jesus more and more, the world must hate you more and more, and as the world hates you more and more, it must persecute you more and more, and thus the end cause of God’s glory grows.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Instruction. Why does it help to know this? That of this fiery trial, the first cause is God and final cause His glory—through the material cause of the new man who reminds the world of Christ, and so draws the formal cause of true persecution. How does this help us? It is so that you know what this thing is you are to be expecting. You and I will continue to be surprised by this fiery trial to the degree that we do not know from Whom it comes and why He brings it, and then what exactly it looks like when it arrives. The more you familiarize yourself with a thing, the more you can expect that thing; and the less we familiarize ourselves with a thing, the less we can expect that thing. It is a very simple value. Study the nature of the fiery trial, that you will no longer be surprised!
Use 2. Instruction. This is a passage that would overwhelm us with “too much” application, if there could be such a thing. We often want to know which side of Peter’s contrast we really fall on. As I said, Peter’s list of unrighteous suffering is not exhaustive, but it is there for our wisdom. Let us start where most would fall: Meddling. Many a Christian confuse our duty to rebuke or even counsel with what is really meddling. We do not exercise wisdom in what God may already be working on directly or through others we could consult, but we don’t care to.
Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears (Prov. 26:17).
This can even apply to the national and international level. Nations can be meddlers. International policies can be meddling policies.
Use 3. Correction. This passage offers a dual correction because, as we saw, verses 15 and 16 offer a contrasting criterion for telling when there is a true persecution for being a Christian versus some good old fashioned “what’s coming to you” for acting up. But one of the implications of this that we need to review over and over in an anti-Christian environment. Do not be so quick to believe the character assassinations of fellow believers, or you may find yourself swept up in a devilish mob. So many professing Christians will trip over themselves, grovel to the world, and pay all of their tolls, if only to convince them that they’re not with “those Christians” who will not bow down to the idols of the moment. But Paul warns us,
But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another (Gal. 5:15)
And Jesus gave a warning with an even broader principle behind it: “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). Peter’s contrast here gives specific criteria for true and false persecution. Go here first, before you wind up in a devilish mob.
Use 4. Consolation. Peter says that ‘the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you’ (v. 14b) in the midst of the fiery trial. The best part about that is not a mere principle. It is not something that we, by our own will power, must remember and apply—though, as I said, it is a gracious gift to be taught this and to remember and apply it. But the best part about this promise is that it is God’s promise: that He will be our God and our Father and our Friend, personally with us. He will be that friend that sticks closer than a brother.6
____________________________________________________________
1. cf. Daniel B. Wallace, The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 73-76, for the various instrumental uses of the dative case.
2. NASB
3. Acts 11:26
4. Calvin uses this language: “That we may then be in a prepared state of mind when the waves of persecutions roll over us, we ought in due time to habituate ourselves to such an event by meditating continually on the cross” (Commentaries, XXII.2.134).
5. Sproul, 1-2 Peter, 152.
6. “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).
