About this sermon
1. Silence the slander of sinners by your sanctity (v. 12).
2. Goad the godless to glorify God by your good deeds (v. 12).
Sermon transcript
Dear ones, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We continue our consideration of 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter’s first epistle. And again, this evening we are in 1 Peter 2, verses 11 and 12. I’m going to begin reading at verse nine to fill out the context a little bit, but our focus tonight will especially be on verses 11 and 12. 1 Peter 2, verses 11 and 12, you’ll find that on page 1204 in your Pew Bibles. So let us hear God’s holy word. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the proclamation of his word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we would ask once again that by your spirit, you would cause our attention to focus on this portion of scripture. We pray that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. Once again, we would ask that you would set a guard over my lips, enable me to speak only that which is faithful and edifying and true to your word.
And we would pray, Lord Jesus, that you would be present this evening in the proclamation of your word, and that by your spirit you would cause your word to find a lodging place in our souls. We ask these things, heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. If you’re following along in your sermon outline, you’ll notice five words, actually, I’m sorry, six words to be listening for, the words honorable, slander, witness, visitation, glorify, and works. Well, dear ones, our passage for this Lord’s Day evening represents a new section of the epistle of 1 Peter, a section which basically stretches from chapter 2, verse 11, all the way through chapter 3, verse 12. Now remember that in this epistle, Peter has been seeking to encourage and to fortify Christians and Christian churches which face the prospect of severe persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so he’s seeking to build them up, he’s seeking to encourage them, and he’s also seeking to instruct them about how they are to go about living godly lives in the midst of an ungodly and hostile world. And up until this point in his letter, the Apostle Peter has focused mostly on reminding these believers of the spiritual privileges and the saving blessings that they have received in Christ. And he also reminds them of their identity as the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, one aspect of our identity in Christ is that we are sojourners and exiles, or translated in slightly different ways in other translations. Some translations say we are pilgrims or sojourners and pilgrims, aliens and strangers, and so forth. But we are sojourners and exiles. In other words, we are outsiders in relationship to this present evil world.
Starting in verse 11 of our passage for this evening, Peter begins to flesh out the implications of our identity as sojourners and exiles in this present evil age. And here Peter turns from focusing on his reader’s identity to providing them with instructions for godly living in the midst of a hostile, ungodly setting. And although Peter continues to keep our Christian identity close at hand, he begins to draw out the practical implications of our identity in Christ and how that identity should impact the way that we live our daily lives in the midst of an unbelieving world. And in verse, as we considered on the last Lord’s Day evening from verse 11, as sojourners and exiles, we believers are to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against the soul. Some translations like, for example, the New International Version translates passions of the flesh more interpretively as sinful desires.
That’s what the passions of the flesh that Peter is referring to are. They are our sinful desires. And by the way, this implies that we Christians, even after we are born again, we continue to have sinful desires. And what are we to do with these sinful desires? Well, we are to continue to put them to death, we are to repent of them, we are to mortify them, and we are to abstain from indulging them. They’re still there, and we pray against them. We pray that the Lord would replace those sinful desires with ever-increasing desires for holiness and righteousness. But we are to avoid indulging our sinful desires. And one major key to living a godly life in the midst of an ungodly world, as those united to Jesus Christ, is first of all to put to death our own sinful desires and inclinations. that which is described by Peter as the passions of the flesh.
Well, that brings us to the second part of our passage, verse 12, which we’ll be especially focusing on this evening. So let’s look at verse 12. In that passage, in that verse, we read these words. Peter says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, or as the New American Standard Version puts it, keep your behavior excellent, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. What do we learn from this passage? Well first of all, beloved, we learn that we are to silence the slander of sinners by our sanctity. Silence the slander of sinners, hostile sinners, those who want to paint you and me as Christians as evildoers. silence their slander by a life of sanctity, by honorable conduct. You see, one of the twofold purpose of a godly life, which is mentioned by Peter here, is the silencing of the slander of hostile unbelievers.
One of the realities of living as a Christian in this fallen world is that sometimes we will have to put up with unjust and slanderous criticisms from the godless and unbelieving. That’s just a fact of life. And God doesn’t promise us that this life will be, you know, comfy and cushy and easy. We will face opposition. We will face persecution. We will face hostility from those who are haters of God and haters of His Word. Now, of course, it really shouldn’t surprise us when unbelievers slander and mudsling us with false and uncharitable accusations and with attempts to paint us out as evildoers. That shouldn’t surprise us. After all, why do you think that our Savior was crucified? From a human standpoint, Jesus of Nazareth was the most kind, compassionate man. He healed the sick. He raised the dead.
He cast out demons. He multiplied loaves and fishes. He showed kindness to those who knew their need and came to him for healing and mercy. and yet he was crucified. Why do you think our Savior was crucified? At least in terms of the human circumstances surrounding his death. We know from God’s Word what the divine plan was. It was God’s sovereign decree and will that Christ go to the cross to die for our sins. We know that from the divine perspective. But what historical earthly circumstances did our sovereign God use to lead Christ to the cross. Well, friends, our Savior was crucified on the basis of false accusations. And as His followers, we should not expect to be treated any differently by the unbelieving world. We should not be surprised when those outside of the church and those outside of saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ paint us unfairly and slander us and mudsling at us.
Again, that doesn’t mean that we are just to sit back like doormats and take it however. No, far from it. You say, well, wait a minute, are you saying, Pastor, that we are supposed to return evil for evil? That we are to, when people curse us, that we are to curse in return? No, that’s not at all what I am suggesting. But I believe, beloved, that our passage for this evening lays before us a holy aggressiveness that we are to engage in, in replying to, in responding to the slanders of evildoers. You see, how is it that we as believers are to approach overcoming this slander from the wicked? How is it that we are to silence the slander of the godless? By living honorable lives, lives of integrity, goodness, love of neighbor, lives that abound in what Peter describes in verse 12 as good deeds.
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable or excellent, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, They may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. That’s far from being a doormat. That’s far from being passive when we face the slander of the wicked. Instead of returning evil for evil, or instead of just sitting back and taking it, we reply to evil by doing active good. Not to gain salvation, of course, salvation is by grace, not by works, through faith in Christ alone, but out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation, and out of a desire to be a faithful witness for Christ in the midst of this hostile, evil world. In the words of another apostle, the apostle Paul, in Romans 12, verse 21, Paul writes, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with what?
Good. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Don’t use the tactics of the devil to fight the devil. It won’t work. That’s not how it goes. Beloved, we should have it as our goal to live such consistently godly lives that the slander of the godless will be shown to be false and empty. As Dr. Simon Kistemacher puts it in his commentary, he writes, Christians should strive for such exemplary conduct that slanderous accusations of unbelievers remain groundless. It is grievous when unbelievers have grounds for speaking evil against us. When we are engaged as professing Christians in evil behavior and the wicked call us out for it, that’s a shameful thing. But when they call us out and seek to paint us as evildoers, when we’re simply seeking to live honorable, godly lives in obedience to Christ and out of love for neighbor, then their slanders will be shown to be groundless.
Now notice how Peter words this exhortation here in verse 12. He says his focus here in this verse is on our conduct, our outward conduct, how we comport ourselves, how we behave out there in public. And certainly the Word of God has much to say about the attitudes of our hearts and so forth, but here the focus is on outward conduct, keep your conduct among the Gentiles. Who are these Gentiles that he is speaking about? Isn’t Peter writing to a group of Gentile Christians? Well, yes, the original recipients, the original readers of 1 Peter were mostly Gentile Christians, believers who had been converted to Christ from a pagan background. Well, then what does Peter mean when he’s referring to the Gentiles? keeping your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Well, the Greek term here for Gentiles is ethnesin, and it can also be translated as nations.
It’s the word from which we derive the English word ethnic. And I think it’s very telling that Peter is using this terminology here to describe, he’s using it as a general term for unbelievers, for those outside of the covenant people of God. In Old Testament times, if you lived under the Old Covenant, you would describe unbelievers, those outside of the covenant people, as Gentiles, non-Jews. And that Peter is using that same language here to describe these unbelievers. And what does that imply? That implies that Peter’s audience, that implies that even Gentile Christians are part of the true Israel of God. A true Jew is not one who is outward, as Paul writes in Romans 2, nor is circumcision a matter of the flesh, but it is of the Spirit. And so, again, Peter is subtly here, I believe, reminding and encouraging these readers to remember their identity as the true Israel of God, the true people of God, those who belong to the spiritual temple, the spiritual house of God, as living stones in union with Jesus Christ, the living stone, as we read back in verse four.
And so he says, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. When we are out there in the world rubbing shoulders, if you will, with unbelievers, our attitude should not be, oh well, they’re just lost, they’re just unbelievers, they’re pagans, I don’t have to care about what they think, I don’t have to care about how they evaluate me. You should care, you should care a lot. because you represent Christ, you represent His church. You’ve heard the cliche probably, you’ve heard the cliche that goes, for some people, the only Bible that they will read is you. We are living epistles. We advertise Christ, we either do so in a good way or a not so good way. Friends, this passage helps to speak to the manner of our Christian witness. The focus of this passage is on our Christian witness to unbelievers, especially to unbelievers who are inclined to be proactive in their hostility against the church.
There is a general hostility among all unbelievers toward the people of God, but in most cases, it’s a hostility of indifference. but there is a hostility that comes to the surface in acts of actual persecution and active hostility. How are we to behave in such circumstances? How is it that we believers are to respond to the slander and hostility of unbelievers? And sometimes that can be very upsetting when we hear what the hostile world says about us as the church and about us as believers, and it makes us angry. How are we to respond to such slander, knowing that it is unjust and unjustified? Are we to respond by pushing back? Are we to respond by returning slander for slander, evil for evil, cursing for cursing? You say, well, no, we’re supposed to return good for evil, but what does that look like?
Does that mean, for example, that instead of cursing back, that we are to respond by giving them an evangelistic sales pitch, or maybe handing them a gospel tract and talking some theology with them? There are certainly appropriate occasions for sharing the gospel with others. but usually when you’re dealing with someone who’s hostile to the church and hostile to the gospel, getting preachy doesn’t work. And again, there are appropriate occasions for passing along gospel tracts, good Christian literature, but notice Peter doesn’t say, hey, when the unbeliever slanders you, preach the gospel to them or give them some good Christian literature. One of the things that I would challenge you as you read, especially as you read the epistles in the New Testament, note how many times the epistles tell us as Christians that we are to go out and actively evangelize.
Certainly we as the church, corporate, are an evangelistic witness for Christ. We are, and the church is, to send out those who will preach the gospel. But the main focus of our Christian witness, as revealed in the New Testament as the people of God, is our behavior, our conduct, how we behave. And so we respond to this hostility not by returning tit for tat, not by pushing back or slandering in return for slander, nor by simply preaching. Rather, friends, from what the Spirit reveals in this passage, one of our chief means of silencing the slander of hostile sinners is through our behavior. through honorable conduct. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. Or again, as the New American Standard Version puts it, excellent, speaking there to excellent behavior. And this is convicting to me. Is my behavior, is my conduct among unbelievers, is it really honorable?
Is it really excellent? Believer, can this be said about you? By the grace of God and in reliance upon the indwelling spirit of God, are you seeking to live a life of such meticulous integrity, a life so full of good works and overflowing with charity and kindness that even your unbelieving family members, even your unbelieving neighbors and coworkers would not be able to bring a just charge against you, even if they wanted to. You say, well, pastor, I have to admit, I don’t always conduct myself well before unbelievers. And by the way, this doesn’t just mean your conduct necessarily out there in face-to-face relationships with neighbors, coworkers, and so forth. This can also include the way that you conduct yourself online. How do you conduct yourself on social media? How do you interact with other believers, and especially how do you interact with unbelievers, hostile unbelievers on the internet?
I have to share with you, and I say this as one who has not always conducted myself perfectly in that sphere, that certainly there are some grievous examples of how Christians do not engage in honorable conduct in their engagement on social media, and that’s very sad, and it’s a very poor witness for Christ. Well, what are we to do in response? If you say, Pastor, I have to admit, I don’t always conduct myself honorably before unbelievers. I’m not always one who is characterized by excellent behavior. What are you to do? Well, confess your failures to the Lord in repentance, Confess your failures in repentance before your gracious Heavenly Father and plead with Him to bear the fruit of His Holy Spirit in and through you with all love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
And be willing to swallow your pride even before unbelievers and say, you know what, I’m sorry, I messed up. I should not have spoken in this way or written in this way. I have not conducted myself honorably and I ask your forgiveness. That in itself can be a powerful witness. One of the ways that we can witness to the grace of Christ before unbelievers is to show our unbelieving family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, a spirit of humility, a spirit that’s willing to admit it and own up when we mess up. That spirit is so rare today. So often today, especially in our divided culture where people get polarized and dig in their heels to their positions and say, no, I’m not going to apologize. I’m not going to say that I’m wrong. It’s a refreshing, it’s a breath of fresh air to see someone who’s willing to say, yeah, I shouldn’t have written that.
I shouldn’t have made that comment. I did not conduct myself in a manner that revealed the fruit of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I did not manifest the fruit of the Spirit in that interaction, and I’m sorry. May we all seek to obtain and to maintain a blameless reputation before the outside world. And after all, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, remember, we bear the name of Christ before a watching world. We represent Christ, his gospel, and his church before a watching world. We are witnesses for Christ, whether we try to be or not, because we bear his name. And we’re either good witnesses or bad witnesses. And so friends, whether we like it or not, our conduct will reflect upon the reputation of Christ and His church, either for good or for evil.
May our gracious Lord grant that our lives and our conduct in this world will bring praise and honor to the name and reputation of Christ, to His gospel, and to His church, and not shame and dishonor. Brothers and sisters, let us conduct ourselves honorably. Let us not give our Savior a black eye in the eyes of the world. So we are to silence the slander of sinners by living sanctified lives. But next, and this is my final point, goad the godless to glorify God by your good works. Let us goad the godless to glorify God by our good works. Verse 12, keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see what? They may see your good deeds and do what? Glorify God on the day of visitation.
Now what is Peter talking about here? What does he mean when he speaks of glorifying, of these folks glorifying God on the day of visitation? What is this day of visitation? Is Peter here referring to the final judgment day? Is the day when God will visit, come to this earth and visit wrath upon the wicked and visit vindication upon his elect people? Is that what it’s referring to? Is Peter referring to the final judgment day when all will bow the knee and confess Jesus as Lord? Well, perhaps that’s one way to understand this terminology. After all, the scriptures often speak of the judgment day, of God’s judgment as a day of visitation. When the scriptures speak about God visiting people, sometimes God visits people in wrath and judgment. But at other times, we read of God visiting people with mercy and grace.
So what’s the day of visitation that Peter is speaking of here? It could be referring to the final judgment. But friends, I’m more inclined to agree with those scholars who understand Peter here to be talking about the day when God visits the wicked with his saving, converting mercies. After all, what does it say? that we are to conduct ourselves honorably, that those who seek to slander us as evildoers may see our good works and do what? That they may glorify God on the day of visitation. Consider this language, glorifying God. Now there is a sense in which even the wicked will glorify God on judgment day. They will glorify God’s justice because he will visit his righteous and holy wrath upon them. But glorifying God is usually in the scriptures presented as an activity of believers, not of unbelievers.
You know the answer to our first catechism question, what is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That’s an activity, that’s a believing activity. If this interpretation is correct, then what Peter is saying is that our life of good works as believers should make such an impact upon unbelievers, even upon those who slander us and are hostile toward us, that it is used by our sovereign God as an instrument in his hand to goad them on to conversion. But whichever interpretation you think is correct, how important it is for all of us to let our light so shine before men that they may glorify our Father who is in heaven. Again, beloved, keep your conduct among the Gentiles, among the unbelievers, honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds. and glorify God on the day of visitation.
And may God in his mercy grant that he would visit them, even those who are hostile towards his gospel, that he would visit them in grace and mercy and bring them to their knees in true faith and repentance. Do you believe God is powerful enough to do that? He certainly is. He did it with the Apostle Paul, remember? Paul, Saul of Tarsus, breathing fire against the church, a Christ-hater, one who hated Christ and Christ’s people, going out to arrest and persecute the believers, and he was stopped in his tracks. The Lord Jesus revealed his grace to Saul and turned him into the Apostle Paul. The Lord Jesus also restored sinful Peter who had denied Christ three times. God is a powerful God. And God, our sovereign, gracious God, has the power to convert even the worst of sinners and to bring them to faith and repentance.
May God use us and our witness for Christ as an instrument in his hand for the conversion of the wicked. Amen. Let us pray. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we acknowledge before you, Lord, that we fall short in our Christian witness. We do not always conduct ourselves honorably before unbelievers. Forgive us for the times when our witness for Christ is not what it ought to be. We thank you, Lord, for your grace that forgives even a poor witness for Christ. Please empower us to bear faithful testimony to Christ by our holy conduct before a watching world. And use us, O Lord God, as instruments in your hand to bring unbelievers, even those hostile to the faith, to change their hearts that they might repent of their sin and embrace Christ as their very own Lord and Savior.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. And all of this is made possible because of the resurrection victory of Christ our Savior. Let’s rise as we close our time of worship this evening and we’ll sing together 364, alleluia, alleluia, 364.
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