“But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for areason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,” 1 Peter 3:15
“The indestructible future glory of Christians dominates the short epistle of 1 Peter. Writing to a group of believers in a world swirling with trials – opposition and rejection, sneers and put-downs, shaming and reviling – Peter’s primary goal seems to have been encouraging his readers with the stable and assured future awaiting them at the revelation of Christ. So into their fiery crucible of suffering he injected a surprising word – a word of hope.
“Peter wanted his readers to understand that God glorified the Son in order to give us, his children, hope for our own exile. Because when we consider all the trials Jesus faced, and when we see how they intersect with our own suffering and social exclusion, we realize we’ve yet to reach the end of our own story. Just as we’ve been united to Christ in his suffering and death, we’ll be united with him in resurrection and glory.
“We need to hear and believe the promise of our future exultation in order to overcome the threat of shame and disgrace that would silence our witness. The dominant reason for our lack of evangelism in America isn’t the fear of death. We aren’t in danger of being imprisoned or tortured. Rather, we are just beginning to face, like the recipients of 1 Peter, soft persecution. We face being ignored or excluded. We face ridicule or reviling. If we open our mouths with the gospel, we run the risk of others thinking we're closed-minded or unloving. And, at least in my own life, the mere potential for such shame, the possibility of being made an outsider, hinders me from practicing bold evangelism.”
Excerpts from EVANGELISM AS EXILES: LIFE ON MISSION AS STRANGERS IN OUR OWN LAND by Elliott Clark