Peter has made many wonderful claims about who we are in Christ. Now, he urges us to abstain from inordinate desires. He gave us a solid, self-interested reason for abstinence in verse 11: these passions wage war on our souls. Yesterday we studied the various directions from which these sorties on the soul come in the study Wage War. In a previous study, Inordinate Desire, we covered the passions themselves. Today I want to look at verse 12. In it Peter expounds on our conduct and gives us an externally focused motivation for abstaining from worldly desires, our witness.
9 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. 10 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.
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 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.
1 Peter 2:9-12
Can I get a witness?
Peter has just urged us to abstain from worldly desires, in part because they wage war on the soul. Now, he bids us remember our witness. Does that term sound funny in your ears? When I was a kid, it was still fairly common to hear people discussing the importance of our witness. Probably it was more common to be talked to about your witness, rather than our witness, now I think of it. It is an easy thing to preach, maybe. But, it is perhaps more difficult to keep your own witness in mind, especially as you go about each day’s mundane duties.
Defining terms
First, in this sense, by “witness” I do not mean going out and speaking the gospel to unbelievers. That is certainly called “witnessing.” But, I am not talking about that necessarily, although it very well may be that your witness includes witnessing. Confused?
Confused, would we?
So, what in the world does witness mean? Is this the 1800s? Well, to answer the second question, no. (That was easy!) Now, to answer the first question we have to look at a Christian motivation that many – even, and especially in the Church – have misused, abused, inflated, and even denigrated. Briefly, then, each person’s witness is the sum of all of his public behaviors. Put it another way, your witness is the picture which is painted by your daily conduct and displayed to the world around you. Unfortunately, with the rise of social media, and the fall of social forgiveness, these days we are seldom judged in public by the sum of our conduct across a life. Instead, many are judged solely on a snapshot of their conduct captured in a single moment.
You cannot have a private witness
Peter calls us to an honorable witness. He is expounding on the notion of abstinence from fleshly passions. He is telling us that our behavior has consequences beyond ourselves and our souls. Christianity is not a private religion. If you are a Christian, you are not one only when you are at home in the bathroom. You are not only a Christian while attending worship. Christianity is not like a nice jacket you wear once a week. It is also not like a secret indulgence of which you partake with curtains drawn and doors locked.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 5:14-16
Witness is inescapable
If you are a Christian you have a witness. I have a witness. This is inescapable. People around us see our behavior as we go to work, pick the kids up from school, buy groceries at the store, wait in line at the post office, eat at restaurants, etc., etc. You and I are always in view of someone. And, if we are Christians, we are Christians on display for whomever happens to see us. What we display is our witness. What’s more, what we display whether admirable or deplorable is our Christian witness. Does that seem sobering? It should.
A confounding witness
For his part, Peter has great cause to urge us toward honorable conduct. What is it? For one, it is so that when the people of the world around us speak ill of us they will be wrong. This reminds me of a Proverb, just without the hunger.
21 If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat,
Proverbs 25:21-22
and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,
22 for you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the Lord will reward you.
In this Proverb, we see a Christian witness. A man has an enemy. Instead of attacking him or mocking him, Solomon tells us we should feed our enemy. What happens? The enemy does not become your best friend. Instead, the enemy is confounded. It sets fire to their minds. They cannot understand this behavior. Similarly, I think Peter is saying this. When we are being publicly scorned or shamed for our faith, our witness – our good deeds done daily – will be cause for the godless to glorify God.
I know we need to get to this odd phrasing regarding when the godless will glorify God. Peter clearly doesn’t say, “Every time you do something nice, people who hate God will instead turn and give Him glory.” He actually says, “when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” So, we do need to deal with this odd phrase, on the day of visitation. But, I’d like to side-step that for now to deal with something I mentioned above.
When witness goes awry
I mentioned earlier that the concept of witness has been “misused, abused, inflated, and even denigrated” by the Church. How so? Well, in my own lifetime, I have heard it used (the phrase “seen it wielded” seems more appropriate for some of these) in different ways. I have seen it used as a cudgel for beating children over the head.
And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.
Luke 17:1-2
Wrong emphasis
Here’s an example. When I was a child and newly come to faith, I had many a Sunday School teacher cite the verse above. Then they would say something like, “So if you are a bad example to your friends, or brothers and sisters, it would be better if you were dead.” They wanted to ensure we maintained a good witness, sure. And, I am not arguing the verse above is untrue, or that it should not be read to children. Far from it! But, I am saying that telling a nine-year-old that, should they misbehave and in anywise damage their witness, they would do better to kill themselves was a bit heavy. And, as a child I really did imagine myself with a great stone tied to my neck, standing at the top of a precipice and looking down on the waves.
Was it for my own good? Well, God has certainly used it. For myself, I don’t shy away from reading this verse to my own children, but I don’t ever encourage them to consider suicide when making their daily decisions.
What if you wreck your witness? (An autobiographical goat path)
What if you wreck your witness? Since I have just quoted Luke 17, I should probably pause for an autobiographical aside. I have mentioned this before, time to time. But, throughout my teens, twenties, and early thirties, I had a number of periods in which I lived a prodigal son sort of lifestyle. It wasn’t that I threw my faith away entirely, but I was passive about it. I did not seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Instead, led about by “feelings” I drifted here and there. As far as “righteousness,” knowing I was in the wrong, I constantly berated myself, and felt that the part of me with all the bad names for the rest of me was righteous. Of course, none of me was righteous except that which God had justified in Christ.
Along the way, I made shipwreck of my faith, as the apostle would say, and definitely wrecked my witness. So, what then? Should I have strapped on a millstone and leaped into the sea? I admit I had at least one dark day a dozen years ago where I genuinely considered it. But, if I had already hurt people around me with my actions, how much more so would I have if I had gone through with it?
Joyful, dutiful, Christ-centered life
Did I have a dramatic breaking in of the Spirit which turned my mind against the millstone and toward Christ? Not exactly. If anything I was granted an irresistible determination to heal whatever wounds I could in the relationships around me. And, knowing that meant an end to passivity and a beginning to real work, I resolved to put in the time. I stopped reading motivational nonsense and began reading the word. My wife and I read books about Biblical family and marriage together (not the motivating kind, either.) We made worship and prayer and reading the Bible priorities. We didn’t seek signs or wonders, but prayed the word of God and the will of God for our family. Lo and behold, real Christian life – joyful, dutiful, Christ-centered life – began to manifest itself within our home.
Televangelist
Back to misused witnesses! Then, there is of course the classic American “witness” of the televangelist sort. This witness proclaims promises both Biblical and otherwise, claims to perform miracles, etc. This sort is big on claims, but usually small on keeping conduct honorable. Rather than being motivation for the godless to glorify God, these witnesses are the sort of charlatans which convince non-believers that Christianity is just another snake oil made mostly of hooey.
The “by example-only” witness
Here’s another one. I addressed this in Show Forth! under the heading Remembering a goat path to nowhere, but this one comes from a popular push in the Evangelical world from 20 or so years back. Not sure of the movement’s dates, or if it even had a name. It went something like this: Your witness alone should be the mechanism by which you lead people to Christ. In other words, you should share the gospel with others by your actions only, and never with words, unless someone specifically says to you, “You seem different, do you have a faith that you happen to practice?”
This is of course completely counter to scripture. Romans 10:17 says, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. And, how would one hear the word of Christ by me holding a door open for an old lady at the supermarket? Now, that doesn’t mean I should go around slamming doors in old ladies’ faces, shouting, “Jesus loves you!” Clearly, just as Peter would urge us, we need both honorable conduct (please, do hold open doors), and sharing the gospel.
The spirituality heresy
Another popular misuse of witness is that of “spirituality.” It is the sort that says, “As long as you feel the love of God, and experience overwhelming sorts of sensations in worship and in your prayer group, you are basically Christ himself come again.” This is a pretty popular one. It is primarily driven by emotion. It involves a lot of talk about “spirits.” Everyone is spiritual, and being touched by either the Holy Spirit, or being harassed by various spirits – by which they mean demons. These folks are constantly naming the various spirits that they claim are troubling other people. They also claim all kinds of “revelation,” usually of the sort that says, “God revealed to me that I simply haven’t been loving myself enough.” (I have actually heard this from baker’s dozens of people.)
These self-appointed gurus do not love reading the Bible. In prayer group, they point out that they have a friend who actually does read their Bible. They feel their friend is probably under the influence of “a religious spirit,” and they ask the group to pray for the Bible-reader’s release. In my experience, these folks do not have much longevity in the faith. When they face tragedy and hardship, as we all do, they have no end of the number of named demons they pray against. But, since their faith and witness are all bound up in feelings, they tend to give up on the whole shebang when they have officially felt rotten for long enough.
Again, modern day Evangelical spiritualists are not likely to cause the godless to glorify God.
How should we then live?
We have in our Bibles (and why, dear reader, not look in your Bible if you would seek revelation?) clear guidelines for conducting ourselves honorably. If we are to have a Biblical Christian witness which makes unbelievers glorify God it must come from God’s word. Here, then, are a few verses to get us started.
Back to the basics
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
Deuteronomy 6:1-7
Blessed is the man
Psalm 1:1-2
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
The greatest commandment
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:28-31
A new commandment
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
John 13:34-35
Live quietly, work with your hands
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
1 Thessalonians 4:9-12
Pray
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. 3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
1 Timothy 2:1-4
Raise generations in the faith
4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Jeremiah 29:4-7
So, we have above some clear marching orders. If we would orient our lives toward God, anchored in Christ, lead by the Spirit – not by feelings but by the word of God, I believe we would have an efficacious witness. I believe that were we to put into practice the commands of scripture cited above, we would raise generations of Christians who would indeed cause the godless to sit up, take notice, and glorify God.
Finally, if you (like I did) have found yourself your own worst enemy and have made a mess of things, take hope. Christ is the answer to your difficulties, even (and especially) if your primary difficulty is yourself. Do not look for Christ in feelings, in ecstatic worship, in “holy laughter,” or any of the other monkeyshines out there for sale. Read the Bible. Seek God’s word. Attend worship. Serve God’s people. Raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. God’s will for your life is right there. You can have a real and effective witness.
