1 PETER 2: 21-25 [Renewing Hope Series]
THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST'S REDEMPTIVE SUFFERINGS
[Luke 24:25-27; 44-47 / Matthew 5:9-12]
In Peter 2:21-25 God redirects the attention of suffering Christians to the sufferings of Christ. By looking to Jesus the Christian who suffers unjustly receives direction, comfort and strength. By looking to Jesus the Christian experiences a renewal of motivation and a change of disposition in their suffering. God knows the injustice which believers endure and has given Himself that they might have the empowering to overcome sin, both within and without by continued obedience.
Christians are called to follow Christ's example in suffering even while doing what is right (CIT). Undeserved suffering is not to be thought of as alien to Christianity. Christ Himself suffered unjustly and left us an example of how to suffer and that good can be brought about through suffering.
What should be the attitude of Christian men and woman in a world where suffering occurs? Christians need to have a Christ-like attitude of redemption in their social relationships. Christians need to understand that Christ suffered in their behalf and that their lives are to be lived redemptively for others (CIM) even if it involves suffering. The three main points of the message are:
I. Since Christ Suffered for You, 2:21.
II. Christ Entrusted His Life to God; 2:22 & 23.
III. Christ's Redemptive Suffering, 2:24 & 25.
First let's look at what is expected of the believer since Christ suffered for him as is found in verse twenty-one. "For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps."
In writing "for you have been called for this purpose," Peter states that suffering is an integral part of the Christian's calling. The call to follow Christ is not only to imitate Him in doing right but to be willing to suffer in the doing of it. The implication of the phrase since Christ also suffered is that suffering is part of the Christian's calling only because it was first part of Christ's. Jesus had taught His disciples that He must suffer according to the will of God because He was the Christ (Luke 24:25-27; 44-47).
The next understanding of Christian suffering comes from the phrase "for us" which means on behalf of and for the benefit of us. It describes an agent acting for the benefit of or in place of another. Christ suffered to secure redemption from sin as will be further seen in verse twenty-four. Jesus' suffering was for others to provide a ransom for, and remission of, sins (Matt. 20:28; 26:28). The supreme motive for enduring the undeserved suffering Christians have been called to is stated in verse twenty-one as the believers indebtedness to Christ. A sense of gratitude develops when Christians understand what Christ has done in their behalf. The implication is that Christ's sufferings were much more than an example, which they definitely were. His sufferings were vicarious. Jesus suffered as a substitute, in our place for our sin.
Why must Christ suffer that I might be set free? How is it that the ground has to be wounded by spade and plough before it will produce corn or wheat for us? How is it, that, when the corn or wheat is produced, it must also be subjected to torture, must be crushed under millstones, ground and ground again, before it will make bread for us? How is it, that, even then, the bread is not committed to the stomach before it has been further bruised and mangled by the teeth. Why is vegetable life sacrificed for us? Why is animal life sacrificed for us? Why does every child come into the world through the gate of pain? How is it that things are secreted within chaff or skin or shell, and that violence must be done to chaff, skin, and shell in order to reach the hidden good? Finding the answer to these questions may help to open up the higher question of Christ’s sufferings for man.
Christ not only suffered as our substitute but also for an example. The fourth teaching in verse twenty-one is that Christ set a precedent or an example to be followed. All true Christians in this world that would walk with Christ must expect to share the sufferings of Christ. To follow in Christ's footsteps is to follow the way of suffering (Mark 8:34; 10:38). [The prospect of suffering is to be intentionally faced with joy and thanksgiving to God (4:13,16)]. The word "example" is hupogrammos which is a master to be copied or traced over. This is a picture word "meaning a copy set by writing-masters for their pupils” [Vincent, Marvin. Word Studies in the New Testament. Vol. 1. 1946. Eermans. Grand Rapids. P. 648]. It indicates a writing or drawing that is placed under another sheet and to be traced on the upper sheet by the student. The original writing was a perfect model and was intended to be used as the master trainer by the copier to develop his skill. Christ lived out the perfect model for the Christian to copy in suffering.
The verb translated "you to follow" is a compound word, epakolouthein and indicates following so closely that you walk in Jesus’ steps. The picture is that of a guide who knows the difficult terrain and the best way to the chosen destiny. Those that follow must place their feet in the very steps that He made.
In our western counties, when men go out HUNTING into dense backwoods, where there are no roads or paths of any kind, they take their hatchet and cut a little chip out of the bark of the trees as they go along. These initially white markings make it easy to find the way. They call it "blazing the trail." Christ has "blazed the trail for the Christian." He has traveled the road Himself, and knowing the way, He tells us to follow Him, and He will lead us safely home.
If we will take our eyes from one another, and from the things of this world, and follow Him we will be led in the right way. We would be saved many a dark hour, if we were only willing to walk with God, if we would only just let Him take us by the hand and lead us. What God wants us to do is follow in His footsteps.
I have been told that scouts sometimes found an INDIAN TRAIL consisting of only one footprint, as if only one man has passed over the land. The chief goes first, and all the rest of the warriors follow him and put their feet into his footsteps. That is what our Chief wants us to do. He has passed through life successfully and has forged the way to heaven, and He wants us to follow in His steps.
While doing the highest of good for man Jesus suffered. We who follow Him on the narrow road to life are called to also suffer while doing His good in our humble way. So Peter urges believers to pattern their lives after the legacy left behind by Jesus’ suffering. Christ's sufferings were for others, that they might be saved. Please realize that it does no good to follow Jesus' example of redemptive suffering unless you have first accepted Him as your substitute dying for your sins so that you might be acceptable to God.
Peter encouraged perseverance even in the face of unjust treatment for doing right but this can be redemptive only for true believers. By so living we may win to Christ those who treat us unjustly or those observing our behavior during mistreatment.
I know enough of GARDENING to understand that if I would have a tree grow upon its south side, I must cut off the branches there. Then all its forces go to repairing the injury; and twenty buds shoot out, where, otherwise, there would have been but one. When we reach the garden above, we shall find, that, out of those very wounds over which we sighed and groaned on earth, have sprung thriving branches, bearing precious fruit, a thousand-fold.
By following Christ's example and living redemptively for others, we may suffer. When the Christian suffers let him face it as Peter teaches in verse twenty-two with courage, endurance and trust that God is in charge of the future.
II. CHRIST ENTRUSTED HIS LIFE TO GOD, 22 & 23.
The second point in the message explains how Christ was able to suffer for others. Jesus suffered for others because He entrusted His life and its final outcome to God's care and providence. Verse 22 states, “WHO COMMITTED NO SIN, NOR WAS ANY DECEIT FOUND IN HIS MOUTH.”
Why is it best for us to follow Jesus Christ? The reason the believer can rest assured that following in Christ's steps, copying His life, is best is that Christ was without sin. Sin, hamartian, means “to miss the mark.” Christ never missed the goal God had for Him, not in word, deed, thought, or attitude. Copying Christ means the believer will not miss the mark. Following His words and way will remove "deceit" from the believer's life. He was a "lamb unblemished and spotless" (1:19). Having no sin of His own to answer for, He could bear the sin of others. Having no sin of His own for which to suffer, He suffered for righteousness sake.
The stress of verse twenty-three is on the silence and submission of Jesus in His unjust suffering. "And while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously." The Sinless One was challenged, despised, belittled, slandered, spat upon, mocked and yet maintained His self-control even with divine retaliation always at His disposal. He suffered undeservedly and without protest because of His confidence in the righteousness and vindication of God. The present Greek participles and imperfect tenses emphasize that Jesus endured repeated provocations and never once lashed out. He was a victim of abuse but He abused not. He who could have fulfilled every word did not threaten. It is a demonstration of greater courage than whatever form retaliation takes.
Jesus could live this way because He "kept entrusting Himself" to His Father. Christ's inspiring character came about because He lived life by continuously trusting that His earthly circumstances of oppression were either designed or permitted by a sovereign who was wholly righteous in His judgments and His decisions concerning Him. The sting is removed from suffering if it can be left in the hands of the Lord knowing that His knowledge of the situation and His ability to deal with it are far greater and more encompassing than the individual who suffered. Jesus completely handed over to His Father the injustice of the revilings and the revilers for God's righteous judgment and kept on doing the Father's will. Jesus committed His life and His cause into God's hands. This life-long practice would allow Him, while on the cross, to commit His Spirit into the Father's keeping.
By living life in faith Jesus instituted a precedent and principle to those who follow Him that although they may suffer unjustly they should entrust their lives to their Faithful Father as well. Believe that in God's due time, just as He raised Christ, He will raise the faithful Christian up out of suffering also. [Though it should be recognized that the believer may be raised up out or suffering through death.] This attitude is difficult to attain and only trust in the sovereignty and righteousness of God can bring it about in the life of one who has suffered unjustly for the cause of Christ.
To protect itself from aggressors, the HORNED LIZARD uses some unique defense mechanisms. In the Smithsonian, Susan Hazen Hammond wrote about how the lizard defends itself. When the creature is threatened by a large predator, it runs through an elaborate behavioral repertoire. First, the lizard will hiss and swell its body with air. If that doesn't work, the animal will flatten its body into a dorsal shield and tip it up toward the attacker. The predator may decide that this little animal might just be too difficult to swallow.
When all else fails, however, the lizard's eyelids will suddenly swell shut. A hairlike stream of blood comes shooting out from a tiny opening near the animal's eyelids, to be shot point-blank at the aggressor. The blood must contain noxious compounds because it clearly repels the recipient. Then the eyelids shrink back to normal size, and the horny toad - its own cheeks streaked with blood - will look around with what at least one human observer saw as a triumphant expression.
Like the horned lizard, when we feel we have to defend ourselves, anything can happen. But when we're threatened, God wants us to entrust ourselves too Him.
Another reason to leave the outcome of suffering in the hands of God is the belief that ultimately God is in complete control of all that happens in the believers life. Jesus knew His suffering was divinely ordained. Hebrews 5:7-9 states that Jesus as the Son of God learned obedience through the things He suffered. Gethsemane and the intense spiritual striving of Jesus to obey God's will teach that life and salvation are no empty drama nor charade but are played out in the brutal realities of life and demand the fullest obedience to the Father's will. How can one tame the lion of the tongue (James 3) and the rebellion of the heart and obediently follow God's will in times of suffering? Verse twenty-four contains the answer.
III. CHRIST'S REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING, 24 & 25.
The third point in the message is that Christ's suffering according to the will of God was the means of man's redemption. The Christian can obediently continue on and learn righteousness through suffering and the discipline it instills (Heb. 12:11). Believers find the power to die to self-will because Christ died for their sins in His death and their ability to be obedient by the power of His resurrection.
Verse 24 states that Christ died in our place suffering the punishment for our sin. “And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” The point is not the fact that there were wicked men on the earth when Christ lived and that He suffered terribly at their hands and that Christians will also suffer at wicked men's hands today. The point is that what Christ suffered He suffered in man's behalf and received the penalty for man's sin so that man might be saved or made righteous by His death. The example of Christ will be for no eternal purpose unless by Christ's removal of sin man finds freedom from them by Christ's death and moves into a new life of righteousness so that man, like Christ, patiently endures what ungodly men inflict.
The declaration that “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree” is called substitutionary atonement. Jesus endured the penalty of sin and that the penalty was not His own. The bearing of another's sin and the punishment it is due requires suffering, it requires sacrifice to make atonement. It took like nature, human nature, to suffer in order to remove the infinite demerit of sin and it took a divine nature to be able to bear the infinite suffering. He took the place of sinners and bore the punishment their sins deserved.
Every sin carries with it punishment. God created the universe and established that "the wages of sin is death." No man can break that steel chain. Christ took the sinner's punishment upon Himself. The cup that man could not drink, Christ drank. The suffering man could not carry, Christ bore. The Divine bore human suffering for the sin of the world in His human flesh. God transferred to Christ all the sin man has ever committed or will commit. God took man's sin and placed them on Jesus and His death was a death for man's sin. Like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders, the Lord bore the burden of all the sins of humanity and made atonement for them before God.
According to the Chicago Tribune, on June 22, 1997, parachute instructor Michael Costello, forty-two, of Mt. Dora, Florida, jumped out of an airplane at 12,000 feet altitude with a novice skydiver named Gareth Griffith, age twenty-one. The novice would soon discover just how good his instructor was, for when the novice pulled his rip cord, his parachute failed. Plummeting toward the ground, he faced certain death.
The instructor then did an amazing thing. Just before hitting the ground, the instructor rolled over so that he would hit the ground first and the novice would land on top of him. The instructor was killed instantly. The novice fractured his spine in the fall, but he was not paralyzed.
One man takes the place of another, takes the blunt for another. One substitutes himself to die so another may live. So it was at the cross, when Jesus died for our sins so that we might live forever.
The purpose of Christ's suffering and death was to bring about a complete separation between man and his sin and provide the possibility for a new life of righteousness. The word "might die" is apoginomai from apo meaning "remove" and ginomai meaning “existence.” The word means a removal or cessation from this existence. Through the supernatural death of Christ believers have ceased to exist as far as sin is concern and have been given the opportunity in Christ to live righteously. Through living in Christ believers can died with Him to sin. By His strips our wound or sin nature is healed.
It is paradoxical that through the hurt done to Jesus Christians get healing. His death makes possible the emancipation from sin and sinning for all who will appropriate its effect by faith.
The word healed is picturesque language of the believer being healed from the wound of sin. By Christ's deed, by the wound inflicted upon Him, man can be healed of his sinful life. Those that die with Christ to sin are made alive to righteousness by the same power that raised Christ from the dead. Sin loses its hold, its allurement, its attractiveness.
Such a substitutionary death by the Eternal One provides present day benefits for those who will appropriate Christ's sacrificial atonement for themselves. The question is how is the Christian healed by the wound of Jesus? Is physical healing the thought here?
Certainly part of the suffering indicated in this suffering servant was physical. The context of the passage contains the answer to how was man healed. The context not only of this epistle but of this passage is suffering. It seems thus out of context as well as beyond reason to say that Christ extinguished physical suffering, of which sickness is an aspect, to a complete end. If Christ did not remove physical sickness or suffering what was the Christian healed of by Christ's wound? The word “wound” is singular and refers to a bloody welt caused by flogging. The scourging of Jesus by the bone or metal tip leather thong lacerated Him so that He appeared as "one mass of open, raw, quivering flesh trickling with blood." The Lord Jesus was so terribly mangled and disfigured that He was all wound and in that condition the weaken Lord died quickly carrying away the sins of the world.
No doubt that Christ suffered horribly physically, but was that His greatest suffering? Remember Christ died for the sins of the world. He was the sacrificial lamb that came to take away the sin of the world. The Infinite One died for an uncalculated quantity of sin punishable by death in which blood was spilled. This was the real sacrifice. He was not sacrificed for man's physical bodies or physical well-being, but for mankind's sin. Man's sin, not man's physical healing, was the issue of Jesus' obedient suffering.
Christians need healing from sin's wounding way. Sin and its temptations lure man from God and then destroy the life they infest. Verse twenty-five says that "you were continually straying like sheep but now", by the death of Christ, "you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” Man was constantly straying before the wounded Christ forged the way to life. By the death of Christ man is provided the avenue not only to return to God but to return to God's righteous way of viewing and living life. The believer was healed of sin's power over him. He was healed of the sinful way of his fallen nature. The indication of Shepherd and Guardian is [again] that God providentially cares for His people. He watches over them and guides them like a good shepherd does his valued flock.
In CONCLUSION
A small boy was consistently LATE COMING HOME from school. His parents warned him that he must be home on time that afternoon, but nevertheless he arrived later than ever. His mother met him at the door and said nothing. His father met him in the living room and said nothing.
At dinner that night, the boy looked at his plate. There was a slice of bread and a glass of water. He looked at his father's full plate and then at his father, but his father remained silent. The boy was crushed.
The father waited for the full impact to sink in, then quietly took the boy's plate and placed it in front of himself. He took his own plate of meat and potatoes, put it in front of the boy, and smiled at his son. When that boy grew to be a man, he said, “All my life I've known what God is like by what my father did that night.”
God the Father and Christ the Son care for their believers. By the might and power of that which can bring life out of death they providentially watch over the affairs of earth and the lives of believers. Those that follow Christ and live a life of redemptive value to and for man, will suffer. Like Jesus they need to trust that this is part of God's plan. They need to affirm that the Lord God brings good out of bad. Out of the Christian's suffering for good, God will bring about His great redemption. Through death God brings righteousness to life. The suffering that comes from patterning one's life after Christ and following in His steps, always leads to glory, for this was Christ's destination, and is His eternal abode.
