1 Peter 3:8 Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. 11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. 12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."
Introduction
Are you having a good day? Have you ever thought about what that question actually means? What is a good day? And how do you know if you are having one? Everybody wants to have good days, right? In fact, they want me to have them too. Almost everyone I ever meet tells me, “Have a good day.” But what does that mean? How do you measure the goodness or badness of a day? When you put your head on the pillow at night, and you make an assessment of whether or not you just completed a good day or bad day – what is your standard for determining that? What are good days, and what is the secret to having more of them? You might say, “I’m not sure exactly what constitutes good days; I just know that whatever they are, I’m not having them.” If that is you, then today’s text is for you. Take a look at verse 10.
1 Peter 3:10 Whoever would love life and see good days must…
Then he goes on to tell us what we must do in order to have good days. But before we jump in to verse 10, let’s back up and make sure we remember the context.
The Attitude of Harmony
This section of 1 Peter is all about harmony in the church. We are God’s family, and our Father does not want discord in His household. If I went through and read you all the passages in the New Testament about the importance of harmony and peace and unity within the body it would take all morning just to read them. This is extremely important to God. Our family love for one another is the mark of our authenticity as believers.
John 13:35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
The creation of the Church was a matter of God taking two groups that were hostile toward one another – Jews and Gentiles, and abolishing that hostility, bringing us together in love with a supernatural unity created by the Holy Spirit. And we are commanded to guard that unity.
Ephesians 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
So starting in verse 9 Peter is teaching us how to keep that unity of the Spirit and harmony in the church, and we learned last week that it all starts with our attitudes. In verse 9 Peter commands five virtues that we all must have in order for there to be harmony in the household of God, and none of the five are actions. They are all attitudes.
Harmonious
The first one we looked at last week – homophrones. It means to have relationships that are not strained. It is the opposite of being at odds with each other or against each other.
Sympathetic
The next word is sympathetic. The Greek word is sympathes. Sym means with, and pathos means to feel, or to suffer. So sympathes refers to feeling something along with someone else. You feel what they feel. It is not when you see someone suffering you think, “Aw, poor guy. That’s too bad.” It is when you actually feel some of what he is feeling. He is feeling sorrow or some kind of emotional distress, and now you are feeling sadness or distress along with him. Probably a better English translation for this word would be empathy, because that is the English word that focuses more on feeling the same way the person feels. It means rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep.
And in the kingdom of God that extends even to those who hurt us – like David, who wept when his enemies got sick (Ps.35:14). Our natural inclination is to be glad when the person who hurt us runs into trouble. They have hardship and in our flesh we are secretly thinking, “Good – he’s getting exactly what he deserves.”
Proverbs 24:17 when your enemy stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, 18 or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him.
If you get all happy when God punishes your enemy, God will stop punishing him. Remember Jesus on the cross. He had compassion on the people who were torturing Him, even to the point of asking God to have mercy on them.
Brotherly
The next word in the list is philadelphoi (philos – love; delphos – brother). This is the kind of love close siblings have for one another – the kind of love that continues through every kind of hardship. Think of two siblings who are best friends. If you could rewind the tape and replay every time they have said something to hurt each other, or exchanged angry words, or were inconsiderate; play it all back for all the years they have lived together, and yet they are still best friends. That is a special kind of love, and it is the kind of love we are commanded to have for one another in the household of God.
Having that kind of love in the church is so important, Peter keeps bringing it up. He says it in every chapter.
1 Peter 1:22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1 Peter 2:17 Honor everyone, love the brotherhood of believers
1 Peter 3:8 love as brothers
1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 5:14 Greet one another with a kiss of love.
Back in chapter 1 we saw that our love is different from the world’s love because ours is an undying love. In the world, when things get rocky, the friendships fall apart. But in the kingdom of God our brotherhood is eternal, so our love continues no matter what.
Compassionate
Next comes the word, compassionate. This is a really interesting word. It is eusplagchnoi. Splangna refers to the entrails. It refers to when you feel emotions in your midsection, or belly. And the beginning of the word (eu) means good. So this word literally, is good-bellied. We are to be good-bellied toward one another. In your midsection, where you feel emotion – is favorable toward the person. The only other place this word appears in the Bible is a familiar verse – Ephesians 4:32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.
Humble
And the last word is tapeinophrenes (tapei – lowly, phrones – attitude) – an attitude of lowliness or insignificance – the opposite of being puffed up with self-importance. Your ideas are more important than mine, your preferences are more important than mine, your desires are more important than mine, your happiness is a higher priority than mine.
Philippians 2:3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves.
We do not have the posture of a know-it-all, we do not look down on those who have less education or less experience or less talent or less anything. The world assesses importance based on those things, but not us. In a corporation you are more important if you have a higher position. But in a family, a newborn is just as important as an 18-year-old. A person’s importance, in the kingdom of God, is a function of God’s love for that person, which means none of us is above the others. Jesus said the only one who is great in His kingdom is the greatest servant, and the lowliest and most humble.
Put all that together and what you have is an other-worldly, supernatural unity and harmony. In the world people get along with their friends. Harmony in the Church is something that is far greater. And that is never more obvious than in times of conflict.
The Restoration of Harmony
All Churches Have Disruptions of Harmony
And make no mistake – there will be conflict. No matter how hard we work at learning these five attitudes of harmony, we will inevitably stumble.
9 not repaying evil with evil or insult with insult, but rather with blessing
Where are all these insults and evil coming from? – your brothers and sisters in the church. James 3:2 says if someone never sins with his mouth, he is a perfect man, and we do not have any of those at Agape (except for Jesus). We all stumble in many ways. I do not know what you are looking for in a church, but whatever church you end up in I can promise you one thing – people in that church will insult you and do evil against you. It is up to you whether you want Presbyterians insulting you, or Baptists hurting you, or Methodists doing evil against you, or the folks here at Agape, but wherever you go, you are going to have brothers and sisters who are not yet perfect, and whose sin will periodically disrupt the unity of the Spirit and the peace and harmony that Jesus died to create. So after giving us the attitudes of harmony in verse 8, now in verse 9 Peter is going to teach us how to restore harmony when it has been broken.
No Revenge
And again, the way we respond in those times is what sets us apart. People in the world are nice to those who are nice to them. But when someone sins against them, hurts them, insults them – the norm is some form of retaliation. For some people it is just the crass, childish, eye-for-an-eye kind of retaliation where they just pay the person back in kind. You insult them, it causes anger, and that anger is expressed with whatever sharp, biting comeback they can think of to hurt you. For other people it is more subtle and sophisticated. If you hurt them they just respond by dismissing you from their life, sweeping you aside like so much garbage. They do not say anything or do anything against you, so it looks like they are taking the high road and not retaliating, but in reality they are retaliating. They make it clear to you that the flow of love from you is now cut off. They may not verbalize it, but in reality it is just like when you were in third grade and someone said, “You’re not my friend anymore.” That is the way all human beings naturally react to being hurt or sinned against or insulted.
With Blessing
But in the household of God it is to be different. When we are hurt, we do not retaliate, we do not get even – nor do we just walk away and dismiss the person from our lives. In fact, not only do we not retaliate on the negative side, but we show love on the positive side.
9 not repaying evil with evil or insult with insult, but rather with blessing
For most people, the best they can do is what your mom used to say – “If you can’t find anything good to say, don’t say anything.” And Peter says, “Baloney! If you can’t find something good to say, you are disobedient to God. Find something good to say. Repay insult with blessing.”
The Meaning of Blessing
To bless someone means to give them some good benefit verbally. The obvious problem with that is we do not have the power to bring someone a benefit just by speaking, like God does. If God blesses you, then whatever He said will happen – guaranteed. If God says, “May you be healed,” then you will be healed. But if I give you that same blessing – if I say, “May you be healed,” then you may or may not be healed. So the way we bless people is by saying “The Lord bless you.” But do not think of that as a mere wish. When a child of God asks the Lord to bless someone, that actually makes it more likely that the Lord will bless that person – as long as it is a genuine request. We cannot just mouth the words, “God bless you.” It has to be a genuine desire in your heart that the person be blessed. That is what pleases God – when you really, genuinely want that person to be blessed by God.
And this will be hard to do while someone is hurting you, because you are going to think, “Wouldn’t that be an endorsement of what the person is doing?” That person is sinning against you, and when you say, “The Lord bless you,” is that the right thing to say at that point? Because if the Lord blesses them while they are sinning against you, would not that just reward their bad behavior? We do not want sinners to be able to thrive in their efforts to commit sin. Peter’s answer to all of that is, “Yes, go ahead and bless those who are doing evil against you.” Let God worry about teaching them whatever they need to be taught. If you truly love the person who is in sin, you will say, “God, please remove whatever obstacles might be preventing Your fullest blessing on this person.”
The Motivation for Harmony
If nobody is hurting you right now this might sound like a piece of cake. If someone is hurting you or insulting you right now, this probably sounds impossible. If this seems impossible to you, Peter is going to help you with that. So far he has given us the attitudes of harmony, then talked about the restoration of harmony when it is broken, and now he is going to spend the bulk of the passage giving us the motivation for harmony. God knows this is hard for us, so He provides us with another one of those massive incentives that is so glorious that it absolutely dwarfs the responsibility. We are not going to be able to consistently bless those who insult us unless we have adequate motivation, and that starts at the end of verse 9.
Called
9 …To this you were called
Does that help? You are thinking, “I don’t want to be kind to him. I don’t want to show love or affection. I don’t want to bless him – he doesn’t deserve it!” Fine – do not do it because he deserves it. Of course he does not deserve it. Do it because your Creator – the One who knit you together in your mother’s womb, the One who gave His Son to die on a cross to pay the penalty you deserved so that you could be forgiven and live forever with Him in paradise, the One who has all knowledge and perfect wisdom, and who loves you in ways that are beyond the capacity of a human brain to even understand, the One who is the ground of all being and the final Judge of all men, and your loving heavenly Father – that awesome being has spoken, and He spoke your name! The Almighty Himself opened His mouth and called you, specifically, by name, to do something for Him. Does that make it any easier?
This is the fourth time Peter has brought up our calling. And he will bring it up again in chapter 5. For Peter, becoming a Christian is all about responding to a call from heaven. In 1:15 being a Christian is all about being called by a holy God to a life of holiness. In 2:9 becoming a Christian is a matter of being called out of the darkness of this world into light and into eternal glory (5:10). And in 2:21 we saw that we are called to endure unjust suffering. And here we find out that our calling is not just to endure it, but to respond to it with blessing. When God invites someone to become a Christian, that is what He is inviting them to.
That you Might Inherit a Life and Good Days
That alone should be plenty to motivate us, but Peter goes on. Take a look at the reason for this calling.
9 To this you were called so you might inherit a blessing
God called you to live a life of responding to insults with blessing so that as a result of living that way, you would inherit a blessing. What blessing? What is it that you inherit when you live this way?
10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. 11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.
The blessing you are called to inherit is life and good days. God has called you to inherit life and good days, but the only people who get life and good days are the people who keep their mouth from sinful speech, turn from evil and do good, and seek and pursue peace. So do you see Peter’s argument? God called you to inherit life and good days. But to get that blessedness, you have to turn away from evil speech and actions and pursue peaceful relationships. Therefore, when someone provokes you, respond by blessing them. Do good to those who do evil to you – why? – so that you can inherit life and good days for yourself.
If you struggle with being motivated to respond with kindness when people hurt you, just like everything else in the Christian life, it boils down to trusting in one of God’s great and precious promises. (In this case, the promise to bless you with life and good days.)
Trusting God’s Promises
I hope you do not think that is selfish – to seek blessings for yourself and to have life and good days as a motive. If you think it is selfishness to have that as your motive then you cannot be a Christian. The only way you can become a Christian is through trusting God’s promises, and God promises to bless those who trust Him.
It is not selfishness because the most God-honoring thing you could ever do is trust God. And you know you are trusting Him when the things He promises really do motivate you. If someone said, “If any of you show up here this Saturday at 10:00, I promise – I’ll make it worth your while” – you can tell whether people trust him or not by whether that promise motivates them to want to come. And you can tell whether you really trust God or not by whether it motivates you when you hear Him say, “If you do this thing, I’ll give you life and good days.” And what is the thing you have to do to get that? Keep yourself from returning evil for evil, and pursue peace.
Does that mean you are earning this blessing? No – you are inheriting it. You do not earn an inheritance. You are given an inheritance. But it is possible for there to be conditions on getting an inheritance, and that is what this is.
And what Peter is saying here is nothing new. Verses 10-12 are all quotations from Psalm 34. I think Peter must have been spending a lot of time in Psalm 34 just before writing this book. Ten different times in this little book of 1 Peter you find language from Psalm 34. The promise of life and good days for those who repay blessings for insults goes way back. That has always been a concern in the heart of God.
Life and Good Days
So what does life and good days mean? That is the promise that is supposed to motivate us. And obviously it will not motivate us unless we actually know what it is.
Life
The word “life” in a context like this refers to life as it should be. Living is the opposite of dying. When a person is dying, he is decreasing in five areas: strength, health, growth, energy, and sensation. Life is when you are flourishing in those five areas. And spiritual life is when you are flourishing in spiritual strength and health and growth and energy and sensitivity. That is life.
Good Days
Good days is a very similar concept. It refers to life as it ought to be. Joyful days, fulfilling days, satisfying days, delightful days, profitable days - fullness of life. So life and good days are really at the core of all our desires. Every tear you have ever shed in your life has been because of your deep, profound desire for life and good days. Every moment of depression or sadness, every feeling of despair, every bad mood – all of it happened because you have a powerful desire for life and good days, and you perceived that desire as not being fulfilled. When your craving for life and good days is not fulfilled right now, that causes sadness or anger. When it looks like your craving for life and good days is not going to be fulfilled in the future, that causes depression. And whatever it is you desire most – the appetite that is driving that desire is the appetite for life and good days. So when he says, “If anyone loves life and desires good days” – that describes everyone. Everyone is on a mission to have a life of good days.
But most people are seeking it in ways that will not deliver. They think it will come through money, so they devote themselves to getting rich, and when they finally have all the riches they find that they still have lots of bad days. People look to getting married as the ticket to life and good days, and they get married and find that there are still bad days. It might be a certain level in their career, it might be an athletic achievement, fame, physical pleasure – lots of things in this world promise life and good days. But one by one you attain those things and discover, “Nope, this doesn’t guarantee good days.” There are countless things in this world that promise life and good days and do not deliver. But Peter is giving us something that will deliver. He is going to show us a way that really will bring life and good days.
How to Get Life and Good Days
10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. 11 He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.
Turn from Evil
How do you have a life of good days? First, turn from evil. This idea of turning is a very strong concept. It goes beyond just simply resisting temptation. Turning is a directional idea. The Bible describes all our thoughts and actions and attitudes and affections as a kind of movement or traveling. Every time you carry out some action, every time you have a thought or feeling, you are traveling in some direction. Those thoughts and actions and attitudes move you toward some destination in your life. Turning away from something means ceasing movement toward that thing and moving in the opposite direction instead. And that turning involves your whole being – thoughts, attitudes, desires, words, etc.
Suppose someone got mad at you and that person turned against you. If you told someone, “That person has turned against me” – that means more than just, “That person didn’t show up at my house.” If they turned against you – that would describe their attitudes and feelings and intentions. That is the kind of turning against that this is describing. If we want life and good days we need to turn against evil in that way. If I am tempted with some sin – whether it be some huge, gross immorality, or just some little thing that is not even evil in itself, but I just know it is not something God wants me to be doing right now (like, “I know God doesn’t want me to click on the TV right now,” or “I know God doesn’t want me to spend time thinking about this problem right now”) – anytime I know for sure that something is not pleasing to God, big or small, I turn my whole self against that thing. That is what this phrase means.
How many times do we see some sin, move a little closer, scope it out, and linger, and consider it, think it over, and then slowly draw away, and then congratulate ourselves on resisting temptation? That is not turning. The goal is to be revolted by that evil and run at the first sign of it, and slam the door on access to that sin if you can. That is the way to good days – when someone hurts you, instead of turning against that person, turn against an evil response.
Evil Speech
And in particular - evil speech. We need to turn against every form of revenge or retaliation, but Peter singles out speech as being especially significant. He did that once before, back in chapter 2 when he was showing us Jesus’ example of non-retaliation.
1 Peter 2:21 Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not insult in return; when he suffered, he made no threats.
Peter makes a point to say that not only did Jesus not commit any sin in general, and he did not retaliate in general, but specifically, He made no threats, did not insult them, and no deceit was found in His mouth. It is especially significant that Jesus did not even retaliate verbally.
Very often in Scripture our speech is singled out, because speech is such an accurate indicator of what is in the heart.
Matthew 12:34 out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
The reason you say the things you say is because of what is in your heart. It is a lot easier to speak than to act. There might be a sin in the heart that a person never acts on just because he does not have the opportunity, or he wants to avoid the consequences, or it would embarrass him, or whatever. We have all kinds of restraints on our actions, but not as many on your speech. And so if the sin of retaliation is in our hearts, it usually finds our way out of our mouths at some point. So Peter makes a point to show us that there must be no verbal retaliation.
10 For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil
Deceit
And then he gets even more specific. Not just evil speech, but Peter singles out one particular kind of evil speech.
… must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech.
And again, Peter did the same thing back in chapter 2 with Jesus’ example.
1 Peter 2:22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth."
Both times he mentions deceit. Deceit is one of the forms of sinful speech we are most prone to when we have vengeance in our hearts. When someone hurts you, and in your flesh rises up a vengeful, retaliatory kind of attitude that just wants to hurt that person in some way, one of the main ways we do that is by deceit. You talk about what he did to you, and it becomes like a fish story (“The offense was this big!”). Every time we talk about it we tend to fudge the language in a way that makes them look a little worse. You exaggerate a few things here and there – just little, minor details, just so people can understand how sinful he really is.
I think a lot of the time this is not even really a conscious decision. It is not that you are thinking, “I’m just going to lie about him.” It is just that you are letting your feelings run unchecked while your mouth is moving. And your feelings are against him, and so what comes out of your mouth ends up just having a bias against him. Little details that actually reflect well on him, somehow you just leave those out. And when you are deciding which word to use in your sentence, you default in the direction of the word that causes the listener to be a little more prejudiced against him. Instead of saying, “He disagreed with me,” you say, “He just wanted to argue.” Instead of, “He started to raise his voice a little,” you say, “He was yelling at me in front of everyone.” You pick wording that makes the person look worse.
On top of that, we start assuming bad motives for everything. He sends you an email questioning what you did, and you say, “He sent me this angry email.” Did he tell you he was angry? “Well, no.” So how do you know how he felt? “Because I’m like God and can see into the hearts of men and discern their motives.” Any time you assume bad motives, you are putting yourself in the place of God. And any time you talk to someone else about it, and you act like you know what the person’s motives are, you are being dishonest. That is deceit.
And it is easy to rationalize. You think, “It’s pretty close to the truth. It’s a harmless little exaggeration.” And you do not think it is any big deal. But the reality is, those kinds of lies destroy relationships, and they can destroy a church. So if you want life and good days, you will strive to turn against any kind of retaliation, including verbal retaliation and every form of deceit.
Conclusion
This is the household of God. And our Father wants harmony in His house. That starts with the attitudes of harmony: undying, brotherly love, sympathy, empathy, compassion, deep humility, and harmonious attitudes. And when there is a failure in those attitudes, and someone destroys the harmony by sinning against you, priority #1 is to restore that harmony. And you do that by turning against retaliation and deceit in your heart and repaying that evil with blessing. And if you need some motivation to help you be willing to do that, realize that God called you to this. He called you to a life of suffering evil and injustice and abuse and responding with kindness and love and blessing. And that way of living results in life and good days from God.
And that is not all. We have not even gotten to the best part. This really becomes thrilling when we get to verse 12, because that is where Peter shows us the delivery method for this blessing of life and good days. When God decides to give you life and good days, in what form does that come? The answer to that question is absolutely thrilling. It involves God’s eyes, ears, and face. And I wish we had time to delve into that right now, but I’m afraid our time is gone. So if you can possibly be here next week, I would strongly urge that because verse 12 is one of the most important principles in the whole Christian life. And I believe it is the most essential motivation for resisting sin that there is. So I hope you can make it next time. But until then, maybe it is a good thing that we have a week in between so that these principles from today do not get lost in the glory of verse 12. So let’s spend the next seven days with our eyes fixed on the promise of life and good days, so that through faith in that promise we might have the attitudes of harmony and the humility and love that restores broken harmony.
Benediction: Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
1:25 Questions
1. Think of someone (a believer) in your life right now toward whom you are lacking the five attitudes of harmony in verse 8. What could you do to work on developing those attitudes toward that person?
2. What forms of retaliation are the most tempting for you? (Yelling, silent treatment, cold shoulder, gossip, deceit, etc.)
3. The promise of life and good days is supposed to motivate us to respond in a kind way when people hurt us. The problem is, we rarely remember that promise in those moments. What memory cue might help you think of that promise at the moment when you are offended?
