Fireproofed Faith
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so 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.”
1 Peter 1:6-7
This is typical of reading the epistles of the New Testament. Since they are letters, they involve continuous thought, an unbroken train of logic. So here we have the word THIS, as in ‘In this you rejoice’ (v. 6a). That is the way the ESV renders the relative pronoun, which is literally “In which” (ᾧ), but the English smooths out what we consider to be a run on sentence. We must look back to see what is the antecedent to this. It is that whole causal chain of God’s mercy and especially the inheritance. So what the Christian rejoices in is the substance of salvation. That is why we can rejoice in bad times; not because we are in denial about the pain or sadness.
This picture of joy and grief woven together gives a good backdrop for what faith really is. That is what is at the center of this passage, namely, ‘your faith’ (πίστεως). It turns out that faith isn’t just a looking, but really a holding on to. It isn't just a mental note-taking, but a whole-person trust in a Person.
Doctrine. The faith in Christ which alone justifies immediately and irreversibly, is tested for its reality in this life and vindicated to Christ’s glory on the Last Day.
We will see that Peter here divides this testing into these two phases of development—day by day, and then all at once in the end.
(i.) God constantly ordains trials to test the reality of faith.
(ii.) God finally vindicates His own glory in the triumph.
God constantly ordains trials to test the reality of faith.
There is no room in this passage for God adding purpose to your trials once He finds out about them. No—God is the one who designs the trials. Note the purpose-filled language here: ‘various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith’ (v. 7a). We may recall the classic passage on divine providence from the story of Joseph: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). The Scriptures are not only plain that God orchestrates all events to accomplish the biggest events in history, but He does the same for the sake of strengthening our faith: “in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Ps. 139:16).
When Paul sent Timothy to the Thessalonians, he told them it was,
to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this (1 Thess. 3:2-3).
As surely as the Christian is predestined for glory, so he is predestined through trials. And for all that Job went through and all that he lost, we might ask: What did he gain? “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5).
Here TEST means not only the discovery of the results of one’s performance—as in, “Test yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5)—but the actual molding and perfecting of the performing thing, which we do not perform on ourselves. So there is the testing agent and the agent being tested. Peter uses an analogy, and we must understand it to see how it brings clarity. He parenthetically makes an analogy between our faith and gold—‘more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire’ (v. 7b). There is a likeness and an unlikeness. Our faith is like gold in that both are being tested by fire; but our faith is unlike gold in that it is of far greater value. But how is gold tested by fire?
Does gold sit in a chair and remember to bring his Number 2 pencil and fill in multiple choice questions? No—in fact, gold wouldn’t be able to sit up straight in his chair because when gold is placed into the source of heat, it runs like liquid.
So this testing is a melting, a reshaping, in a refiner’s fire, that our thoughts become more like God’s thoughts, our will more of what God wills. We become more active, but only because a fire that burns off the passive elements weighing us down.
The analogy must be drawn out so that no spiritual alchemist smuggles in his dark magic of human merit. So let’s get this distinction in our minds: When we think of tests, we think of grades and performance; and when we think of performance, we think of competing; and when we think of competing, we think of boasting. But Paul says,
Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law (Rom. 3:27-28).
The aim of this test, during our lives, is the evidence of true faith. This is the true meaning of James’s statement that, “Faith apart from works is dead” (Jas. 2:26). Earlier in that same chapter: “someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (2:18). So by GENUINENESS here Peter means something that gives evidence in this life.
It might seem like these two truths about faith have nothing to do with each other. Faith alone justifies in God’s courtroom; faith is tested by the trials of life. What is the point of testing a thing—like a smith fashions a sword (which is a continuous thing)—if faith’s work in justification is a finished thing? The moment we believe, we are justified, “just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Gal. 3:6). The answer is that, even though faith’s role in relation to God’s act of declaring us righteous is a finished thing when we believe, faith’s role in everything else is just getting started. And that takes fire. Fire reveals value, and as sinners, we are natural born de-valuers. We are poor judges of value. So this is a fiery mission that God gives to faith.
Calvin says of this,
The argument is from the less to the greater; for if gold, a corruptible metal, is deemed of so much value that we prove it by fire, that it may become really valuable, what wonder is it that God should require a similar trial as to faith, since faith is deemed by him so excellent?1
All of that is the purpose of a fireproof faith in this life. But Peter doesn’t stop there.
God finally vindicates His own glory in the triumph.
In the last part of verse 7, Peter presses fast forward from the every-day to the final day: ‘may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ’ (v. 7c). What is called evidence in this life may be called a vindication in the end. This is the meaning of Paul’s words: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). Ultimately, what He has been working in you will be revealed to be the most real you. But the glorification of the Christian is a doctrine that sails between two ditches. On the one hand is a false humility that keeps faith weak; on the other side is pride that contends with God for His glory. So, from one ditch we are kept with the promises of glory,
But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory (1 Cor. 2:7; cf. Rom. 2:7).
And from the more dangerous ditch we are kept by God’s declaration: “My glory I will not give to another” (Isa. 48:11). There must be a glory that God confers on His saints on that Day, and a glory intrinsic to God in Himself, to which no creature ever could or ever should aspire. This is one practical reason that every Christian must be a theologian about things that really matter. We don’t want to shrink back in our faith, but we also don’t want to call “faith” what is really contending with God for His glory: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Ps. 115:1). So this tested faith will pass by giving and gaining only due senses of glory.
The phrase ‘found to result’ (v. 7c) suggests that we are making a discovery. The fact that Christ should have gotten all of the credit for the shape of that sword is a bit of a revelation to creatures like us. The glory of Christ in salvation is a discovery. It is a lesson learned in time, but it also takes fire, because of that boasting I mentioned. When Peter boasted that he would never desert Jesus, and Jesus had to tell him that he would deny his Lord three times, what then? He said,
but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail (Luke 22:32)
We want to lay hold of that sword. No fire required. We want to make our own finished product, like the famous statue of the self-made man. That was Peter, and that would be us too. But though Peter fell, we can know that his faith was not severed from him. Why? Because Jesus said He was praying that his faith would not fail; and so He intercedes for us right now at the Father’s right hand.2
This ‘praise and glory and honor’ (v. 7c) is famously captured by the imagery of crowns. Of the living creatures and twenty-four elders in the heavenly worship scene of John’s revelation, it says that, “They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, ‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power’ (Rev. 4:10-11).
This last expression—the ‘revelation’ (ἀποκάλυψις) of Jesus Christ—is where we get the word “apocalypse,” which is much misused. The revealing of Christ and the revealing of all things are inseparable, just as the sudden appearance of the sun in the noonday sky would also cause the sudden appearance of anything on the ground. Paul compares the Last Day to a revelation by fire, just as Peter uses the word fire here. Paul was talking more specifically about how one builds on the church, namely builds into the people that make up the church. He says,
each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (1 Cor. 3:13-15).
Now if Paul was talking about the “product” of other souls and Peter is talking about the product of one’s own faith, why do I bring this passage in? It is simply that this final “fiery reveal” does not contribute to one’s merit before God. Jesus is all our merit before God for justification. Peter’s words here mean what they mean. This REVEAL, or VINDICATION is of what? It can’t be of our own merit. It ‘may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ’ (v. 7c)—not the revelation of me or you. Yes our finished faith is what gets dusted off and unsealed from its mortal package, but the whole radiance that will be noticed by all is the completed work of that Master Fashioner of Metals. You are “we are his workmanship” (Eph. 2:10).
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Correction. In this passage, Peter puts faith under fire every day of this life and he puts the fullest certainty of it on display on the Last Day. But how does he do so? Does he do so by mixing either one of those necessities with that faith which alone justifies? Just the opposite. The faith is under fire. The fire is not that faith and the faith is not that fire. The fire is what proves the faith. Much less does he confuse the righteousness that our faith is IN with the subjective performance of that faith!
Various errors have cropped up because some shallow understanding of the Reformed doctrine of sola fide provoked a pendulum swing. Invariably what this means is that someone hears the “alone” (the sola) in a way that negates either the necessity of works or the necessity of perseverance.
For example, the doctrine of so-called “final justification” was promoted in the last generation by the New Perspectives on Paul. That view read passages like Romans 2:13 as if Paul is making a statement about what else God has to take into account on Judgment Day, where he says that it is “the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom. 2:13). But here Paul is not saying anything different than James in the second chapter of his letter. Being a “doer” is not an upgrade to being a believer. The whole point is that the “doers” are the true believers! If you say that true faith must produce real results under fire, you do well. But if you mistake the running alloy for the finished sword, your thinking is as shallow as that dross that needs to be burned to the surface. Worse yet, if you mistake the reflection of Him in the forming metal with the oozing, running performance—all that impressive dross!—then, again, your view is not as deep as you think. More importantly, it is dangerous to your soul.
Use 2. Admonition. When we hold on to the dross of our own performance, the fact is that we are prideful; and one of the functions of those fiery trials is to burn precisely the boasting out of us. The little clause, ‘if necessary’ (v. 6c) speaks to the individual. God knows the exact temperature and pressure that each needs. He knows what levels of vanity and self-reliance remain. The warning, then, is to take time in those trials to repent of pride. Turn from believing that God owes you. Turn even from thinking that you’ve earned God’s blessing because you have suffered. What did Jesus say even of the person that does their job? “ So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10). Let us also repent of trying to give God advice on how to better sanctify us—that there are better ways that the trials He puts us through. He knows exactly what is necessary for each one of us.
Use 3. Consolation. There was one more little phrase in that same verse that I didn’t cover: ‘though now for a little while’ (v. 6b). Faith doesn’t just look back to Christ’s finished work and up to what God says in the courtroom. Faith looks forward to the promises that make this whole life shrink in the best possible way. It’s a little while—smaller than we think, and, mercifully, smaller than it hurts. Paul says this,
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Rom. 8:18).
Some verses are easy enough to memorize, and maybe even easy enough to believe—when things don’t hurt. But when the fiery trial comes, here is a truth that makes or breaks faith. Do you believe that God can make it so for you? that He can drown any sorry in an infinite sea of goodness, to see it as He sees it, and to know what to grasp hold of in faith, when everything else that would drag your soul down burns away.
To end here, listen to the words of James if you want an action-item straight from God’s word:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (Jas. 1:2-4).
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1. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII.2.33.
2. Hebrews 7:25
