Straight to the Heart of Peter, John and Jude

60 bite-sized insights

Phil Moore

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780857217578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Peter, John and Jude may sound a bit like a teenage boy band, but they were men that God used to rescue the Church in its darkest hour. False teachers on the inside and persecution on the outside threatened to strangle the Christian community at birth. In a world where the Church appears to be in terminal decline, we need their letters to show us how to survive and thrive and advance.

God inspired the Bible for a reason. He wants you read it and let it change your life. If you are willing to take this challenge seriously, then you will love Phil Moore's devotional commentaries. Their bite-sized chapters are punchy and relevant, yet crammed with fascinating scholarship. Welcome to a new way of reading the Bible. Welcome to the Straight to the Heart series.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

(1 Peter 1:1)

The Jewish leaders were very good at slamming doors. In 30 AD, they forced the Roman governor in Jerusalem to drag Jesus out of the city gates and to crucify him outside the city walls. We need to hear the Jewish leaders slamming the door on Jesus if we want to understand Peter’s ministry and his letters. God had appointed Peter to be his doorman.

There’s a reason Peter is normally pictured holding a bunch of keys in religious iconography. Jesus had singled him out in Matthew 16:16–19, promising to use his confession that “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” as the solid ground on which to build his Church and as the key with which to open locked doors to the Gospel:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Seven weeks after the Jewish leaders slammed the door on Jesus, Peter stood up on the Day of Pentecost and pleaded with the crowds to “Save yourselves from this corrupt nation.” Although most English translations of Acts 2:40 take the Greek word genea to mean generation, it is often used in the New Testament to refer to the Jewish nation.¹ Peter was deliberately opening a door for Jews to identify with the true Israel of God. That’s why he commanded his 3,000 Jewish converts to be baptized in water, a ceremony reserved for Gentile converts to Judaism, as a confession that their Jewish birth had no power to save them. He urged them to confess that their only hope lay in the death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah.²

Three years later, the Jewish leaders slammed the door on Jesus yet again. They stoned Stephen to death and launched such a violent wave of persecution against the Church that the believers were forced to flee Jerusalem. While at the port of Joppa, Peter received a vision from God that convinced him it was time to open the door of salvation to the Gentiles. He confessed freely to a group of Romans in Acts 10–11 that “It is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile” but that God had instructed him to preach the Gospel to them all the same. He later told his horrified Jewish friends that “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning.” Peter’s preaching opened the door on the Day of Pentecost for the pagans, proving that “God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.”

This was too much for the Jewish leaders. It made them hate the Christian message even more. In 57 AD, they slammed the door on Jesus for a third time. Acts 21:30 tells us that “seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut.” Peter’s ministry had already changed significantly from the days when Paul was able to describe him as “an apostle to the Jews”. But now we can tell from the opening verses of his first letter that this slammed door made him open the door of salvation even wider to the people of the non-Jewish world.³

First, Peter introduces himself as “an apostle of Jesus Christ”.⁴ This does not mean that he has now disowned his role as “an apostle to the Jews”. He still opened the door of salvation to any who would listen. It simply means that he has also become far more than this. He has learned to be God’s doorman for the Gentiles too.

Second, Peter does not address his letter to a group of Jews. He writes it to Gentile believers in the five Roman provinces in the north of Asia Minor (the first-century name for modern-day Turkey). Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia had smaller Jewish populations than the two southern provinces of Lycia and Cilicia, and Peter makes it clear that his readers used to live in pagan ignorance, pagan immorality and a thoroughly pagan lifestyle. Nevertheless, he assures them that they are now the children of Abraham and Sarah: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.”⁵ Make sure you don’t miss this. It is massive. Peter is telling us that, despite the Jewish rejection of the Gospel, it was still marching on.

Third, Peter uses three Greek words that include these Gentile believers in the Jewish story. The word eklektos means chosen or elect. Peter says that God has chosen these Gentiles in the same way that he chose Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau and the Jewish nation over the pagans. The word parepidēmos means a resident alien or a sojourner. Peter says that God has made these Gentiles citizens of heaven and foreigners on earth, like the patriarchs in Canaan, like the Hebrews in Egypt and like the Jews in Babylon.⁶ The word diaspora was a technical term for the scattered Jews who lived across the Roman Empire. Peter tells these Gentile believers that they have been scattered as God’s people all across the world in order to preach the Gospel.⁷

This perspective matters, especially if you live in a Western nation and are tempted to think that the declining Church means that the Gospel has lost its power. Philip Jenkins reminds us that this is not the case in the developing world:

Until recently, the overwhelming majority of Christians have lived in white nations, allowing some to speak of “European Christian” civilization… Over the last century, however, the centre of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably away from Europe, southward, to Africa and Latin America, and eastward, toward Asia… By 2050, only about one-fifth of the world’s 3.2 billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. Soon, the phrase “a white Christian” may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as “a Swedish Buddhist.” Such people can exist, but a slight eccentricity is implied.⁸

Peter is God’s doorman and he says that, whenever people slam the door on Jesus, God always opens up other Gospel doors all around the world.

Peter has barely started his letter. He hasn’t even finished his opening greetings. But he has already reminded us that he is God’s doorman and that he serves the one who says in Revelation 3:7: “These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” Peter’s first verse shouts above the sound of many slamming doors that the Gospel always triumphs in the end.

… chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood.

(1 Peter 1:2)

It’s easy to tell where you are in the world if you possess a smartphone. By establishing the position of nearby transmitter masts, a modern phone can work out its own position through triangulation. As long as it determines the location of two or three fixed points, no matter how dark or foggy it may be, it can calculate its own position from them.

Peter wrote this letter in around 62 AD, at a time when the Church was disorientated and reeling.¹ The Jewish high priest had just broken Roman law by callously murdering the leader of the church in Jerusalem. He had taken James to the top of the Temple and, when he refused to deny Jesus, he had thrown him down to his death below. When James survived the fall, his enemies had encircled him and crushed his skull with heavy stones. James was one of Peter’s closest friends, so this must have hit him hard, but what hit him harder was the way that many Christians were panicking at the news.² That’s why he starts his letter with some urgent triangulation. Peter gives us three fixed bearings to reassure us that, no matter what, the Gospel always triumphs in the end.

First, Peter tells the believers that they “have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. They must not panic at the news that James has been killed, since their God knows the events of history long before each one of them comes to pass. They must not feel isolated and vulnerable, because this same all-knowing God has told them to call him Father. They must not doubt his love for them because, unlike a human father who only meets his newborn baby for the first time at its birth, the Lord has known them since before the dawn of time. He chose to love them and to make them part of his earthly family. They must not panic as a thick cloud of persecution descends on the churches of Asia Minor. Even in their darkest hour, their position never changes. They can still address the Lord God Almighty as their Dad.

Second, Peter reassures the believers that they have been saved “through the sanctifying work of the Spirit”. The Greek word here for sanctification is hagiasmos, which means being set apart as holy. God has therefore chosen to make them his very own people in the midst of a rebellious world. He has demonstrated this by sending his Holy Spirit down from heaven to fill them and to turn them into his earthly home. If they feel weak and fearful, the Spirit will strengthen them with God’s own power and make them brave. If they are arrested for their faith, the Spirit will tell them what their Father wishes them to say. If their possessions are confiscated, the Spirit will give them a joy that can never be taken away. If they feel like throwing in the towel on their faith altogether, the Spirit will encourage them by giving them a fresh glimpse of God’s glory. He will remind them of their own place in his plans. He will ensure that they can never lose.³

Third, Peter tells the believers that God has chosen them “to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood”. This Greek word rhantismos and its sister words are only ever used in the New Testament to refer to high priests sprinkling sacrificial blood on Temple worshippers to purify and consecrate them to the Lord.⁴ Peter is therefore telling his readers that their lives are of incredible importance to world history. They are the ones for whom the Son of God shed his precious blood. They are the ones who have been declared pure and sinless in God’s sight, consecrated as holy and obedient work tools in the Messiah’s hands.

Like a smartphone determining its position on the earth’s surface by triangulating with nearby phone masts, these three factors show us our true position in the world. When we know where we are in relation to God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit, it tells us where we are in relation to everything else too. This verse is one of the earliest declarations of the Trinity, ranking alongside the command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19 to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” but Peter sees it as far more than a statement of theology. He also sees it as a statement of geography. If we have been chosen by the Father, saved through the Son and filled with the Spirit, our position in the world is guaranteed.

You particularly need to hear this if you are a Christian living in the West. It is all very well for Philip Jenkins to remind us in the previous chapter that the Gospel is triumphing in Africa and Asia and Latin America, but what about Europe and North America? I’m sure that Philip Yancey is correct in his remark that “As I travel, I have observed a pattern, a strange historical phenomenon of God ‘moving’ geographically from the Middle East to Europe, to North America, to the developing world. My theory is this: God goes where He’s wanted” – but I’m also pretty sure that he is wrong.⁵ Is God any less my Father if I am a European? Is Jesus any less my Saviour if I am Canadian? Is the Holy Spirit any less available to me if I am German? If the answer to these three questions is “no” then Peter wants us to see that our fundamental position hasn’t changed. God has not “moved on” from our nations. We simply need to tell him that we want him and that our churches want him too. We simply need to triangulate our position correctly and to cry out for the Gospel to triumph in Western nations too.

That’s why I love the opening greeting in both of Peter’s letters. It is similar to the one used by Paul and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Straight to the Heart Series
• Introduction: The Gospel Triumphs in the End
• PART ONE: LIVING HOPE (1 PETER)
• PART TWO: PRECIOUS FAITH (2 PETER)
• PART THREE: HOLY FAITH (JUDE)
• PART FOUR: TRUE KNOWLEDGE (1 JOHN)
• PART FIVE: TRUE LOVE (2 JOHN AND 3 JOHN)
• Conclusion: The Gospel Triumphs in the End 262