Suffering for Doing Good
8 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. 9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 10 For,
"Whoever among you would love life
and see good days
must keep your tongue from evil
and your lips from deceitful speech.
11 Turn from evil and do good;
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."
Dig Deeper
One of the first things that a basketball player learns as he starts to get into the higher levels of playing team basketball, such as high school or college, is how to post up. For those not familiar with the language of basketball, posting someone up is when you go down close to the basket, with your back to the hoop and try to get your defender behind you so that you can get the ball. What takes a little longer usually, however, is for defenders to learn how to properly guard someone who is posting up. Before too long, though, everyone has a pretty good understanding of how to post up and how to try to defend against it. Posting up and playing defense against someone posting becomes a rather physical contest of the offensive and defensive players using brute force, pushing against one another to try to get the right position under the basket. It can get very physical and takes a great deal strength to be effective. I had one coach, though, that taught a very different defensive technique. Rather than engaging in the physical pushing that always takes place, he taught us to engage initially in the contact and then quickly pull back. Because the offensive player would push backwards and be used to the defensive player pushing into his back, they would usually fall or stumble backwards. The technique was very effective because it was completely different from the normal operating procedure.
Peter, in writing to a church that is on the low end of the social scale and has been, and will continue to, suffer persecution from the community around them. The fact is, they will face trials. They will face trials as a community from the culture around them, as well as the normal trials that come from life situations, from their status as slaves or masters, from their marriages, in short, from every aspect of life. When these trials come, as they will for everyone in the present age, they have a choice. They can push back against them and respond the way that everyone does, using only the weapons of the world. Or they can respond in a completely different way. They can step back from the normal way of doing things and respond with the attitude and mind of Christ. They can either remain firmly a part of the present age or step into the new creation and introduce its way of doing things to the world around them.
This is the fifth separate aspect that Peter has addressed in the Christian community as he has already brought up the attitude that should be evident within their community regarding government, slaves, husbands, wives, and now he turns his attention to their general attitude. In each of the previous areas Peter’s exhortation has revolved around coming to terms with the reality that Christians live in the new creation and so should operate quite differently than the world around them. As Paul terms it in 2 Corinthians 10:4, "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds." At every turn, Peter is trying to teach the community of believers that they should live, think, and act differently from the normal way the world functions because as the people of God they have been called to lives that follow the self-giving pattern of the Messiah and to serve the interests of others.
Rather than breaking down into a normal human community of people serving their own interests, thinking of themselves, and generally doing what is best for them and their family, this community should be different. They should be like-minded, which means that they should be of the same attitude. This is not a call for uniformity but is instead an expectation that a group of people who all have a commitment to the attitude of Christ Jesus and doing the will of God will move in the same direction. This oneness in attitude means that they will share one another’s feelings and be truly sympathetic, displaying the very opposite of selfishness which so often characterizes human communities. Sharing the same attitude and being truly sympathetic are true signs of a community that is committed to loving one another, as all Christians are.
Peter continues the counter-cultural call by urging his readers to be compassionate and humble. This doesn’t seem that odd to us perhaps, but in the first century, virtues like compassion and humility were considered signs of weakness and they were simply not valued. Thus, Peter is calling the Christian community to live in a way that was completely novel and would have been considered weak by the outside world.
Where verse 8 seems addressed primarily at life within the Christian community, verse 9 seems aimed at Christian relations primarily with outsiders. It certainly could be applied to treatment within the community if necessary. It would be common for them to be treated with evil or insults from outsiders, but the fact is that can happen occasionally within the Christian community as well, although that should certainly not be the normal order of things. Rather than operating in the system of the world, in the economy of God’s people, evil and insults are repaid with blessings. Christians are to "get even" with those who treat us unjustly by blessing them. Rather than cursing, Christians bless because we seek the higher good of others. In so do we inherit the blessing of developing and manifesting the life of Christ and the inheritance that is due to those in Christ.
To demonstrate his point, Peter, as he often does, turns to a scriptural citation from the Old Testament to make his point. This time he quotes extensively from Psalm 34 where the overall point of the Psalm is that God encircles His people and works to bring about the best for them. Those who act righteously in the life of Christ will be protected as the people of God while His face (a common Old Testament term denoting a relationship with God) will be against those who do evil. His point is that the natural tendency is to act in our own self interests in order to get good things in our lives, but Peter continues his theme that Christians will act differently. They will act counter-intuitively by doing good, and by seeking peace and pursuing it. Christians will find the blessing of the Lord by actively doing his will. These are the ones that God will protect and bring blessing into their life. Yet, and this is a monumentally important point in our day of self-serving, prosperity-focused Christianity, the blessing that God wants to bring to His children is full attainment of the life of Christ. He is far more concerned with this than Christians achieving the world’s concept of blessing and prosperity. Individuals who are focused on such earthly things demonstrate that they do not have the mind of Christ. The blessing that God wants for His people is to be like Christ, re-made into the image of God. Being like-minded and obedient will result in this, getting rich and seeking human wealth will not.
Devotional Thought
How often do you live up to Peter’s challenge here? Do you actively seek to repay insults and evil with blessing? Or do you far more often repay evil with evil and insult with insult? What are the benefits of repaying evil with evil? What is the down-side? What are the benefits of repaying evil with blessing? What is the the down-side?
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