Zinnias are one of my favorite garden flowers. Like last year, I planted a dozen or so zinnias from seeds, delighting to watch them grow into their leafy towers adorned with colorful fist-sized blossoms along the front and side of my home. Living things grow. It’s so beautiful! Now, however, fall’s chilling frost has done its withering work and all that remains are brown, dry husks and shriveled flowers. Death is ugly. What a stark contrast to the beauty just months ago. Growth is so relevant to all areas of life, especially our Christian life. We want to grow. We get this nagging feeling of wrongness within if we’re not growing. We yearn to thrive in our knowledge of God and flourish in reflecting Him as His image bearers in the world. Yet the world which surrounds us like chilling frost threatens our spiritual advancement by a myriad of allurements, distractions and oppositions. The passions of the flesh are actively waging war against your soul (1Pe 2:11). In the church there’s no shortage of podcasts, sermons, books, articles, you name it, that point out biblical methods to grow as Christians. The answer for how to grow up into our salvation indeed originates at the headwaters of our New Testament. Who’s better qualified to instruct us how to grow and flourish in our faith than Peter, the man who started off as unstable as water and ended up the rock that Jesus said he’d be?
Peter’s vision of Christian maturity, the “end of our faith” as he called it, is a saved soul that loves and rejoices in Jesus with joy inexpressible and full of glory. Among the “tribes” of Christendom today, each has its own way of promoting spiritual growth, whether singing or revival or the sacraments. Surprisingly, much of what’s commonplace today isn’t what Peter majored on. I am calling attention to Peter’s lost legacy. My hope in presenting this deep dive into Peter’s letters is to articulate this more excellent way that beautifies and develops the whole Christian life.
A key to understanding the heart of 1 Peter comes by the way the letter begins: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” Knowing who’s behind these words helps frame our understanding of what’s to follow. A brief sketch of Peter’s story and its salient points should suffice to paint a picture of the life that dyed the words. Peter’s fascinating life could be examined by several different approaches. Many have traced his failures to reveal the Lord’s grace in pursuing us. Peter’s life makes for an excellent study on spiritual transformation, what we call sanctification or personal holiness. You can see how God made a raw fisherman into the godly man he became. What I want to do, however, is pay close attention to what shaped Peter’s unique burden that breathes in his letter. It’s this God-shaped burden in Peter’s heart that molded the words of this letter to which we turn our attention to.
Peter first encountered Jesus by invitation of his brother, Andrew. When Jesus looked at Peter, He said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas,” which John then translates into Greek as Peter (Jn 1:42). Both Cephas and Peter mean “rock.” So Jesus christened him with that name “Rock.” Looking at Peter in the Gospels though, he looks anything but a rock. He’s making mistakes. He’s putting his putting his foot in his mouth. His naive bravado comes crashing down when he denies the Lord three times. He does not seem like a rock. But Jesus said, “You will be called Rock.”
The mature Peter of his epistles is not the same bumbling, foot-in-the-mouth newbie we see in the Gospels. This seasoned veteran has learned much from his failures and been transformed into the “Rock” that Jesus foresaw he would become. Peter had seen a lot of amazing things. Miraculous catches of fish. Blind eyes opened. Bread multiplied. Dead raised. Jesus ascending to heaven. Peter had also done a lot of impressive things. Walked on water. Preached and three thousand souls were saved. Healed the sick simply by his shadow passing over them. Raised the dead. At the end of it all, what looms large on Peter’s heart? What singular burden emerges from all his life experiences that he must release before finishing his course? This burden is tightly intertwined with how it was that he became a rock. He’s going to let us in on his little secret. The way Peter became a rock is the same way that you and I will become a rock—stable, mature, and sound in the faith. So let’s peer into the formative stages that shaped his burden. Peter’s becoming the rock that Jesus foresaw pivoted upon this next life experience.
While itinerating around Judea, they come to Caesarea Philippi where Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” The crowds were saying this, that, and the other. Peter pipes up, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus gushed, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:15-18). What rock was it that Jesus built the church on? Of course, here’s where we get into the debates. Was Peter the rock or was the revelation of Christ the rock? We’ll spend a bit of time examining this because it’s vital to a proper understanding of 1 Peter. Here’s an instance where it’s vital to realize that anything that’s really important in the Gospels gets fully developed in the Epistles. Jesus’ words and actions in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are seeds that come to full bloom in the Epistles. In general God deepens our understanding of the Gospels in the Epistles, whose express purpose help us understand the meaning behind Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Beyond dispute the Epistles teach us that the Church is founded upon Jesus Christ alone. “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1Co 3:11). Now, upon that foundation, we see that the household of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph 2:19). Acts informs us as to what the apostles founded the Church upon: “And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus” (Acts 5:42). Peter is included in that “they” who ceased not preaching as Jesus the Christ, a proclamation rooted in that revelation he’d received from the Father.
The apostle Paul proclaimed the same foundational pattern: “From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets” (Acts 28:23). Acts closes with Paul “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). If there were any shadow of doubt upon what the church was built upon, Paul makes crystal clear: “Him [Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Col 1:28). “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1Co 2:1-2). “And on this rock I will build My church.” We are not left in doubt by Acts and the Epistles what rock the apostles established the church upon. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2Co 4:5). Paul was not the rock. “Was Paul crucified for you?” (1Co 1:13). Nor was Peter was the rock. Though Peter was crucified upside down, it wasn’t for your salvation. Jesus alone saves. In their apostolic mission they saw themselves as servants of the Rock, Jesus Christ the Lord of all. The unified voice of the apostles was that the rock upon which the Church was built was this revelation of Jesus as the Christ as promised from the sacred writings of the Jewish community.
So this revelation, this God-orchestrated revealing of Jesus’ true identity, is what the Church is built on. For the Church to be built, God must perform a miracle. Flesh and blood is incapable of revealing this. It takes God to open one’s eyes to see who Jesus truly is. That’s the foundational bedrock that the Church has always been built upon. This is Peter’s burden at the end of his life. So it’s no wonder that the revelation of Jesus Christ stand as towers among the words that introduce the letter. How will the Church grow even in times of testing and trial? It’s going to be through this revelation of Jesus. That’s what we’re going to look at.
Jesus concluded the Caesarea Philippi discussion with this mysterious commission to Peter. “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:19). What were these keys to the kingdom? You’ve probably seen funny caricatures of Peter standing at the gate of heaven with the keys to let people in. We have a more sure word from the Bible, though, to help us understand their meaning. How did these keys play out over the course of Peter’s life? What do keys do? Well, they open doors. Keys of the kingdom then open doors for entrance into the kingdom of God. So we see Peter at Pentecost opening the door of faith in Jesus as the Messiah, which enabled three thousand Jews to enter into the kingdom. Later on in chapter 10 of Acts, we see him again using the keys, this time opening the door of faith in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. With both Jew and Gentile Peter had the unique privilege among the apostles to first use the keys of the kingdom. These keys that provided access to God’s kingdom were those revelations of Jesus from Nazareth being the promised Christ of God. Peter’s proclaiming the true identity of the long awaited Messiah was what opened the doors for people to be saved and to enter into the kingdom of God. As we inspect 1 Peter, we’re going to see that these keys that first got us in is also what keeps us growing and flourishing.
Our last sighting of Peter in the Gospels is on the shores of Galilee, his “stomping grounds.” Jesus had a fire going on the beach with breakfast ready to be served to hungry fisherman who’d had a bad night. In the warmth of that charcoal fire, the Lord mercifully reinstated Peter’s commission as His apostle. That left a permanent mark on Peter’s soul. “Do you love Me, Peter?” “Yes, Lord.” “Then feed My sheep.” Those words were branded on his soul. Those words, “Feed My sheep,” were something he couldn’t shake. They burned hot inside of Peter until the end of his days. Before he could leave this earth, they compelled him to leave a permanent testimony to the sheep, God’s people, on how to be fed. This permanent record stands as proof of Peter’s genuine love for Jesus. What Peter says expressly in his second letter is implied in the first: “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder” (2Pe 2:13 ESV). These reminders are the crux of what the apostle must share. This could not be forgotten. It had to be written down for posterity.
A Chinese proverb advises, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Peter was burdened to ensure God’s sheep knew how to be fed for a lifetime. How are we as followers of the Good Shepherd to be fed? What food will actually nurture to full maturity a people called out of darkness and into His marvelous light? How practically is this rock that we’re built upon supposed to operate in our lives? This is what his letters, both 1 and 2 Peter, are about. To these questions of utmost importance we now turn.
Glory Unveiled: Discovering Jesus 