[sunday meditations]

1 PETER 1.6-7

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the 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.

In this you rejoice. The source of Christian rejoicing isn’t found in some euphoric worship-induced high, nor taking giant gulps of the Spirit as if he were a super-spiritual dose of THC. No, the source of the Christian’s rejoicing—a rejoicing which is done in the Spirit and celebrated in worship—is centered upon the Christian hope: our future inheritance and total salvation. In the midst of suffering and trials, a Christian’s joy, and thus his or her rejoicing, is founded upon a concrete and clear vision of the future; in other words, the Christian hope. Having written about the Christian’s inheritance, which is a living hope, St. Peter now takes this eschatology and makes it relevant.

Knowledge of eschatology isn’t there just so we can feel smug about having (what we believe to be) an accurate understanding of the future; rather, knowledge of eschatology should prod us towards greater rejoicing, greater devotion to God, and greater love for one another. Also, knowledge of the future should inspire hope and courage in us as we go through life’s trials and tribulations. This aspect of understanding eschatology wouldn’t be lost on Peter’s readers: already they were experiencing persecution in minor forms, and the threat of mortal persecution crouched like a panther outside the door, ready to pounce. And while we may not be facing martyrdom under an anti-Christian government, we, too, have our own trials and tribulations, and we, too, as Christians, are called to focus on eschatology in the midst of such difficult times.

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Trials & Tribulations: Not Just A 1st-Century Reality. There’s a tendency to super-spiritualize everything we read in the New Testament. Mere mention of persecution becomes martyrdom; obedience becomes a blind adherence to arbitrary rules and regulations; heaven becomes an immaterial realm; trials and tribulations only count if they’re in relation to persecution. While trials and tribulations in 1 Peter certainly carry the undertones of persecution, we would do well to take off the blinders and envisage a wider scope for the word.

Everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike, experiences trials and tribulations. Trials can take on any form, and the root wherein trials come to life lies in the difficulty. Trials can be good (in the sense that one experiences hardship and difficulty doing the right thing) and they can also be bad (in the sense that one can experiences hardship and difficulty in, and especially after, doing the wrong thing). Trials encompass every aspect of life: situations, circumstances, relationships, conflicts, everything can become a trial. There’s no need to make a spiritual beast out of the thing: we experience trials when we fall under financial strain, when a loved one betrays us, when we’re diagnosed with a debilitating disease, when our lives don’t pan out as planned, when regret, disappointment, and tragedy assails us at every turn.

“Trials & Tribulations” don’t refer only to those things which happen to us because we’re Christians. Any hardship that befalls us—be it physical, social, mental, spiritual, etc.—is a trial by virtue of it being difficult. What might be a trial to one person may draw forth nothing but a hapless shrug from another; how we perceive things in our lives directly correlates to whether or not these things become trials & tribulations. When Christians experience trials & tribulations, these take on new meaning as they fall into the realm of testing.

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Trials & Testing: An Integrated Match. All of life, not least trials, tests us. Our responses to trials—whether the responses be psychological, social, personal or communal—bring out our “true colors,” revealing where our loyalties and allegiances lie, showing our true characters. The art of self-deception is mastered by everyone; we may proclaim loyalty to God—or to a spouse—but when we flirt with other gods (or other people), we show that our loyalties may not be so strong; and when we give ourselves over to other gods (or engage in an affair), it shows that we were not so committed all along. Our character doesn’t exist in a vacuum, simply being “highlighted” by our responses: our responses themselves can “make or break” our character, though a better word for this may be evolution. Our responses to trials form our character. Hardships and suffering always change us, either into bitter, inwardly-focused creatures or into the type of creature whose suffering, coupled with trust and faith in God, radiates the sweet scent of God himself.

St. Peter writes that trials test our faith. Trials test our faith in that they’re a litmus-test of our faith’s authenticity. Self-deception is an art-form all human beings have mastered. Trials, and our subsequent responses, show us the kind of people we really are. An inauthentic faith in Christ will collapse, and an authentic faith will endure. One’s loyalty to Messiah will be shown genuine (or disingenuine) by the decisions one makes in the midst of trials. The person with a weak or non-existent faith will not endure the trials; the one whose faith in Jesus is strong and secure will endure. Endurance, the Bible tells us, is the appropriate response to testing (see 1 Cor 10.13, Heb 3.6, 4.14, and 10.23; throw in Rom 5.3-5 for good measure).

The likening of faith to gold tested by fire clues us in to yet another aspect of testing. Just as testing reveals the condition of our faith, so in those who endure, it intensifies and deepens that faith. In the ancient world (and in many places today), the ores of precious metals, such as gold, would be melted in a fiery furnace. The end result would be the “weeding out” of the impurities, resulting in a purer metal. Just as the “testing” of gold results in a purer gold, so the testing of genuine faith results in a deepening faith. So we find that when Christians undergo trials (of whatever sort they may be), the result is two-fold:

The condition of the faith is revealed. Authentic faith will persevere. Inauthentic face will crumble in the face of trials and tribulations.

Genuine faith is deepened. Remember how our responses to trials play a role in the development of our character? Likewise, the response of endurance in the midst of trials—an endurance which is built upon devotion to and trust in God, as well in rejoicing in the midst of the promise of hope’s fruition—forms our character and faith into one that is more submissive to, loyal to, and trusting in God.

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Trials & Testing: The Eschatological Perspective. St. Peter writes that this testing, which he hopes will both ratify and deepen the Christians’ faith, will result in “praise, glory, and honor” at the revealing of Jesus Christ. Indeed, St. Peter’s point in this verse isn’t so much about testing but, rather, what Christians have to look forward to when Jesus appears. To understand what Peter means, we must unpack the last phrase.

The Rapture: a phrase which caught the western world by storm following the infamous “Left Behind” series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The fictional series took place in the future following what’s called the “rapture”: when Jesus takes all his faithful into heaven with him while the world boils in its own private hell. While this eschatology is considered by many to be air-tight, countless scholars shake their heads in a refusal to submit to what such theologians judge to be an inaccurate understanding of “the End Times”. One’s belief about Jesus’ “return,” as it were, colors a portrait of what St. Peter is talking about. If one takes LaHaye and Jenkins’ position, the text seems to imply that following the rapture, and our admittance into heaven, we’ll be doted-upon with all sorts of honors while the rest of the world scratches their heads in confusion while plummeting into a seven-year period of unending misery. The New Testament talks about Jesus’ “return,” but reexamination of the texts has shed light on some of the errors within LaHaye and Jenkins’ understanding. While entire books have been written on the subject, space provides us with only enough room to cover the basics. When we speak about Jesus’ return, “return” may not be the best word to use. Throughout the New Testament, and especially in the letters of Paul, two Greek words are used to refer to this monumentous future event: parousia and phaneroo.

Parousia is a word that carried both secular and religious undertones. In its religious context, the word drew forth an image of a god revealing his (or her) power in healing. This is how most Greeks understood the word in its religious sense, and Jewish people adopted this usage, too: the ancient Jewish historian Josephus sometimes used this word when he wrote about God coming to the rescue of burdened, defenseless Israel. The secular context operated within the sphere of royalty: when a person of royal status (or of high political ranking) visited a state, colony, or province, the word used was parousia: the king or emperor would come in his parousia, or “royal presence.” St. Paul uses this word in 1 Thessalonians 4.17-18, and the image he implants within his readers/hearers is an image of Jesus—the world’s true King, Lord, and Emperor—coming to visit earth just as Caesar might make a visit to Colossae or to the provinces of Asia Minor. Caesar wouldn’t visit a colony just to show that he was present; generally, his visits were orchestrated to deal with problems in the colonies; thus we have an image of Jesus coming to the created order—over which he rules—and dealing with all the problems present within it.

Phaneroo is a word St. Paul uses in Colossians 3.4, and St. John uses this word in 1 John 2.28 and 3.2. While parousia speaks of a “coming” (to deal with the problems) or to a “royal presence,” phaneroo speaks of a revealing. The thinking goes like this: Jesus is reigning bodily from heaven. The promise we have isn’t that Jesus will suddenly appear in our present world order like a mysterious spaceman plummeting from the stars but that when Heaven and earth are married (as Revelation 21 pictures), Jesus will “appear”: he won’t “come,” in the sense of making geographical movement (such as coming to earth from Alpha Centauri, the nearest start to us other than the sun, which some older theologians speculated to be the location of heaven); rather, he will “appear”: what has been there the whole time but which has been hidden from our physiological eyes—the lordship and reigning of Jesus the Messiah—will become visibly apparent. Intricately tied to the “appearing” of Jesus is the consequential “appearing” of his people, the church: when Jesus appears, being made known in all his glory, so the church (one of heaven’s many secrets) will be unveiled, revealed to be what it has been all along: God’s people, his new humanity.

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An understanding of these two Greek words and their meanings gives us a glimpse into the return of Jesus: it is the unveiling of Jesus as he is—the world’s true King, reigning from Heaven—as he comes to earth to deal with all its problems. There’s no hint of people being “carried away” from earth to let the planet drown in its own well-deserved misery. There’s only the picture of justice: the King returning to deal fully and finally with the world. It is a one-time event intimately connected to all the other End-Time events, namely the resurrection of the dead, the Great Judgment, and the Consummation. Jesus’ appearing/coming will inaugurate the last moments of the present evil age and the beginning moments of a world born anew, and he will play the key role of bringing God’s eschatological promises to pass. All of this no doubt swirls in the understanding of the Asia Minor Christians, and the Greek word Peter uses sheds more light on the subject. The word he uses in 1.7 comes from the Greek word apocalypse.

If you’re like me, the word “apocalypse” invokes images of gunfire and napalm (from the hit movie “Apocalypse Now”) or images of the End of the World, brought to striking detail in such recent movies as “Armageddon,” “2012,” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” This Greek word, surprisingly, doesn’t refer to any such things. It literally means a “lifting of the veil” or “revelation,” and it refers to the unveiling of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era of falsehood and misconception. Used here, the “revelation” of Jesus Christ thus becomes the “lifting of the veil”: the present evil age, consumed with misinformation, misbelief, and pretentious falsehood, is suddenly shown what has been true all along: that Jesus Christ really is King, that he really is the Savior of the World, and that, in line with this, Caesar (who called himself Lord and Savior) is just a parody and a sham.

When this happens, when Jesus is revealed to be who he is for all the world to see, the result will be, for those who belong to him, “praise, glory, and honor.” It’s easy to become trapped in the pursuit of trying to understand what all these words mean and thus trying to find a way to make sense of them. Perhaps the best way to understand what St. Peter is saying is to take the simple route: when Jesus appears (and thus when the church is revealed to be who the church truly is, the people of God) the result will be that Christians are showered with praise, glory, and honor, both from God and from the unbelieving world. While this may sound heretical to some—“Aren’t Christians just as due for judgment as everyone else?”—the New Testament paints a portrait of Christians not only being vindicated at Jesus’ appearing but also participating in the judgment itself (for example: 1 Cor 6.2). No doubt Peter has in mind the Christian doctrine of glorification, when God’s people are made completely and wholly human at their resurrection.

Peter’s point can easily be lost in the midst of all this backtracking: “When trials and tribulations strike, endure! If you endure, then you’ll be richly rewarded when Jesus is revealed before the world!” He isn’t telling the Christians to endure because if they don’t, they’ll face harsher wrath and a steeper purgatory from God; he’s telling them to endure because if they do, they’ll be rewarded! We who endure hardships and difficulties have the same promise and the same encouragement.