Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. 19 For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
In 1896 Charles Sheldon had his book, In His Steps published. It would go on to sell more than 50,000,000 copies. Some of you are probably familiar with this book as it follows the lives of certain people who, before making a decision, would ask the question “What would Jesus do?” The characters in the story would answer the WWJD question and then walk out the ‘answer’ concluding in blessings and deeper understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Of course, many of you will remember the WWJD fad of a few years back; bracelets, neckless’ worn not only by Christians but by people of all walks of life.
Is the Christian life as simple as that? All you have to do is ask, “What would Jesus do”, answer that question and you will be walking in the will of God? We would have to admit that there are many things regarding which Jesus cannot be an example for us. For example, Jesus cannot be an example for us of confessing our sins to God or of a sinner mourning over the depth of his rebellion against the Father. He cannot be our example of conversion or in the discipline of seeking wiser and more godly counsel than Himself in the face of difficulty.
Jesus also did and said things that we would probably not do or say and shouldn’t. If someone came up to you and said to you, “What must I do to be saved”, would you tell them to keep all the commandments of God? More than likely you would not say that, but on one occasion, Jesus did.
The context of verse 21 is Peter’s beginning to describe different life circumstances that provide for us opportunities to live our Christian faith, he began by speaking about government authority and then by addressing slaves. Peter wants his readers to wrestle with the reality that being a Christian, imitating the life of the Savior, sets us with a completely different way of seeing things. We view life with different interests, purpose, principles and motives than those who are not intent on following the Lamb. (Professing Christian or not!)
Perhaps nothing illustrates this so powerfully than what Peter says to slaves in this text. There is nothing of the watered-down Christianity of our day: go to church…sometimes, be nice, visualize world peace and if you really screw up, comfort yourself that God has to forgive you, because that is His job.
If that were all He had said, then what would be so radical about His life or message? Nothing. And the authorities certainly would never have killed someone who was simply saying, be nice and don’t rock the boat. What would have been so otherworldly about that? Nothing.
And nothing in such a message would have called upon those men and women to have a daily dependence and intimacy with the Holy Spirit of God…Nothing that would require one to take up his cross daily…nothing that would utterly demand that one see and trust the unseen hand and in humility realize that God alone sees around corners…and nothing that would lead a Christian to repudiate the world and the love of the world…nothing that would set apart His followers from those whose appetites are bent on destruction.
And that is precisely the apostle’s point. It doesn’t matter if you are a slave in the first century or a housewife in the 21st century, following Christ is something magical, it is something unfathomable to natural man and is bracingly different from any philosophy that has been promoted. It makes unbelievers angry, offended and even bitter and it sets the sons and daughters of the kingdom to live in a joyful detachment from what everyone else clamors to know and to have.
What is more, this life of follow the Savior, requires more bravery, more concentration of mind and will, more willingness to endure the reproach of men, more heartbreak, more loss, more sacrifice than any human being is capable, more than you and I are capable, apart from the gift of God and His gracious work within us.
As my mentor told us years ago: “A Christian, a true Christian, is someone who consciously lives and breathes and has his or her being in god and if you cannot see how vastly different must be the life of one who is, at every turn, conscious of God, from the life of one who is not, then you are not reckoning with the holiness and glory of God.”
I think we would all agree, because we too have experienced it, that the ways of our God run uphill and not according to the desires or prejudices of man or for that matter, the expectations of man. Love your enemy? Bless those who curse you? Live in humility, brokenness and dependence and joy, peace and rest will be yours? CS Lewis understood this beautifully, He wrote, “I was not born to be free…I was born to adore and obey.”
Let me conclude this week with the word of GK Chesterton in describing St. Francis of Assisi:
“It was the whole calculation…of that innocent cunning, that the world was to be outflanked and outwitted by him, and be embarrassed about what to do with him. You could not threaten to starve a man who was ever striving to fast. You could not ruin him and reduce him to beggary, for he was already a beggar. There was a very lukewarm satisfaction even in beating him with a stick, when he only indulged in little leaps and cries of joy because indignity was his only dignity. You could not put his head in a halter without the risk of putting it in a halo.”
We don’t have to ask what would Jesus do, but rather, what has Jesus done…what had He won for us and then as Revelation puts it, “Follow the Lamb…wherever He goes.”
Prayer: Gracious Father, please give me the mind of Christ and the fullness of Your Spirit, that I might sing for joy in following in the steps of my Savior. Give me courage, humility, and the virtues that are to lead the life of obedience. Help me to see behind every circumstance, the Divine smile that knows much more that I do, and help me not to think I need to know all things, but that I must trust You IN all things. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Hymn: Lead on O King Eternal