"He Himself bore our sins in His own person on the tree."

As Peter saw it - and he was there - that is the meaning of the Cross. Here, so simply stated, is the beating heart of the Gospel.

What lends the statement even greater interest is that it occurs in a paragraph where Peter is dealing with labour relations. It was his concern for our attitudes in the workaday world that prompted Peter to home in on the Gospel!

In the previous paragraph he was dealing with the Christian's citizenship; in the ones that follow he will deal with the institutions of marriage and the Church and go on to the Christian's relations with the world at large. Common to them all, as we have seen, is a plea to Christians to conduct themselves in all these realms in a spirit that befits the Gospel. What distinguishes that spirit is a certain quality described as subjection, or submissiveness. "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution," ... to the state, to your employer, to your marriage partner, to your fellow Christian, to your unbelieving neighbour.

What Peter means by this attitude of submissiveness is fully spelled out in verses 18-25 of ch. 2. The submissiveness we are to show is precisely that which Jesus showed at the Cross.

A DIVINE-HUMAN PATTERN TO FOLLOW

There Jesus "left us an example that we should follow in His steps" - literally, "put our feet down in His footprints." Jesus supplied there the pattern to which a person in Christ must be conformed. This "way of the Cross" is not a matter of merely private and inward experience; it is to be pursued in the rough and tumble of the workaday world. Taking up the Cross the way Jesus did is a very practical and everyday business. We have to do it in the council chamber, on the factory floor, at home with our wife, at the church members' meeting and down our street.

And the evidence that we are doing it, says Peter, will be supplied most clearly of all when in any of these realms we are being ill- treated, when we are being handed a raw deal. He selects the realm of labour relations as the one in which to spell it out. "Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to the kind and gentle but also to the overbearing" ... when your boss is downright unreasonable, in fact, 2:18.

Masters in Rome could be cruel. Peter speaks of the slave to master relationship because that was by far the most common form of labour relationship in his day, but what he has to say to slaves is not said because they are slaves, but because they are Christians.

Your attitude to others, he is saying, is to be unaffected by their attitude to you, whether they have it in for you or not.

THE PATTERN PRESENTED

"For one enjoys God's approval if, mindful of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly." 2:19

A surprising statement ... does God endure pain while suffering unjustly? Peter seems to think He does. God's pain is something Peter knows about, having witnessed the suffering of His Son. To soak up punishment when you have done nothing to deserve it is a Godlike, because a Christlike thing.

That is what Jesus did. God approves it; to do it is to join Him. It is to put your feet down in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, Who said that "He did nothing of Himself but only what He saw the Father doing." Not only therefore when He stretched forth His hand to heal, but also when He consented to suffer at the hands of sinners, He was doing what He saw the Father doing. And to this, says Peter - to undeserved suffering patiently borne - you too are called. It is your calling as a man, a woman in Christ. You too are to do nothing of yourself but only what you see your Saviour doing. This is what it means to be a Christian.

Peter is in no doubt, as Paul was in no doubt, that we are called to be co-sufferers with Christ: in Paul's phrase "to share His sufferings, becoming like Him as He was when He came to die." Phil. 3:10 (Paul's way of saying what Peter says here.) We are to be conformed to that image, and this calls for a thorough-going transformation in our whole attitude to life, so as to "learn what the will of God for us is." What God is concerned to fashion in us is just such a spirit as was found in His own beloved Son when He suffered at the hands of those who had it in for Him.

And now Peter describes just what that spirit was. He is, be it noted, describing Jesus as "He endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself," confronted by the evil will of men, dealing with sin. He is therefore describing our Lord's victory over evil and the manner in which He accomplished it; and the way Peter describes our Lord's victory over sin is to say that "He bore it."

Remember that there can be no true evil where there is not an evil will. Sin can inhere only in persons - in the realm of volition. It can only ever occur in interpersonal relationships, whether between men and men or between men and God.

We speak of natural disasters as "evils," but strictly speaking we should not because there is no-one behind the scenes wickedly pulling strings to make them happen to us; there is no evil will behind them. We should rather speak of them simply as calamities. Evil can occur only where there is an evil will.

i. The way evil triumphs

Now the way evil triumphs is by taking over people's hearts. It is always communicated, passed on, by one person to another.

To quote Professor G. B. Caird, to whom I owe a real debt here, evil propagates itself by a chain reaction. It is like a bad coin which is passed on from one person to another until it reaches someone who puts it out of circulation by absorbing the loss, meeting the cost. "If one man injures another there are three ways," says Prof. Caird, "in which evil can win a victory, and only one way in which it can be defeated. If the injured person retaliates, or takes it out on a third person, or nurses a grievance, the evil is perpetuated and therefore wins a victory." (G. B. Caird, "Principalities and Powers [Clarendon Press] 1956 p. 98) An evil will is reproduced in that injured person, and so advances from conquest to conquest.

With almost clinical precision Peter describes Jesus as resisting each of these ways of reacting to evil. Jesus committed no sin.

• For in the first place, there was no retaliation.
"When He was reviled He did not revile in return." The illwill of men called forth no answering illwill from Him.

• Nor in the second place did he take it out on others.
"When He suffered He did not threaten ..." He did not lash out.

• Nor did He harbour any concealed resentment.
Far from His heart inwardly turning sour, He simply lifted it trustingly to God. "He trusted to Him Who judges justly."

The spirit of resentment is one in which we reserve judgment, keep it "pending." We are biding our time; let opportunity offer and we will have our revenge. We may not appear outwardly hostile, but "there is a tiger in our tank." There was no tiger in Jesus' tank. Jesus passed it up to God.

We do not naturally react like that; we yield instead to sin: by resenting the illwill of others toward us we yield to it ourselves ... and so become its victim. "That fellow's got it in for me - I hate him." Because I have got it in for him, I am evil now with the same evil I condemn in him. Evil has triumphed in me.

ii. The way evil is defeated

There are two phases in the process whereby evil is defeated:

(a) No retaliatory response.

Evil is defeated only when the injured person absorbs the evil done to him, refusing to allow it to go any further - when he so bears it that it kindles no answering illwill in him. Only as we do this can we ever truly forgive one another. The sin we suffer is borne, in such a way that our goodwill toward the person who did it to us remains unchanged by it.

It is costly, that. It is hard. We may be tempted to say that it is more than human nature can rise to. But it is the only way that the chain reaction of spreading evil is ever halted. It dies in an undefeated goodwill. This what Paul meant when he said, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" ... with good. (Rom. 12:21) It is what Peter goes on to say in 3:9, "Do not return evil for evil or reviling for reviling; but on the contrary bless, for to this you have been called ..." ("Being called" is another New Testament phrase for being converted - your "calling" is God's call to you to be a Christian.) This is what being a Christian means.

It is thus that Christians become the salt of the earth, preventing the spread of evil's corruption. It is thus that we are called (like Jesus) to "die to sin." (Christians are to be "sinkholes!")

But it is a costly victory: it is only won at a price. It is as though you keep walking toward a person with hands out stretched in friendly appeal all the while he keeps shooting arrows into you. Most of us cannot stand to be hurt like that for long, and rather than go on being hurt, we stop loving. Love makes us vulnerable, and rather than expose ourselves to continual wounding, we put on the armour of rejection or spite - a whole suit of it if necessary. You cannot forgive without being hurt. As the Bible so vividly puts it, "without shedding of blood is no forgiveness of sins." Heb. 9:22 The writer, when he said that, was not stating a theological doctrine - he was simply making an observation of fact.

An Illustration

It may be helpful to illustrate this visually. Simple as the diagrams are, they illustrate what the New Testament says about our reconciliation with God, and our reconciliation as a result of it with others (for it is as we learn how God loves us who were His enemies that we begin to learn how to love our enemies).

1. There can only be evil where there is an evil will; it is active wills that have to be reconciled.

2. Let an open hand represent a man of goodwill and a closed fist a man of illwill.

Man of illwill ... ... Man of goodwill ...

3. Love renders us vulnerable. When illwill is expressed ... . .. love must 'take it.'

4. When we cease to 'take it' and retaliate, the evil will in the person hostile to us wins its victory in us, so we become a carbon copy of him.

When love fails … ... it turns into an answering illwill.

Evil has won its victory. Sin wins its way in the world by this process, growing into a chain reaction.

5. If the man of goodwill sustains his attitude, it will render him vulnerable. But only if he does sustain that attitude, suffering inescapably until he shames the other into a recognition, confession and disavowal of his wrong, can his goodwill overcome the other's evil will and conquer it.

When love wins its victory,
it turns the evil will into ... ... an answering goodwill.
The change of heart is repentance ......... .......... ...Trust in the other's love is faith.

In the face of hostility, suffering is love's only path to victory.

6. When the man of illwill does so answer to the other, the change of heart in him is in the Bible called repentance. And along with the repentance goes trust; the repentant person has to believe in the steadfastness of the other's love and the genuineness of his forgiveness. So repentance and faith together "rightwise" (justify = dikaiow [Greek]) the man of illwill to the man of love.

7. This is how reconciliation is achieved by Christ through His Cross; for where two enemies are opposed to each other with hostile intent, what is needed if they are to be reconciled is a man of love to interpose himself between the two, soaking up the hurt from both, until in their reconciliation to him, they become reconciled to each other in his person.

A man of goodwill interposes himself between the hostile parties .. .. standing in the cross-fire between them and soaking
up the illwill of both until he brings both to repentance and faith ... He reconciles them to each other "in himself".

This is precisely what Paul says in Ephesians that Christ does. This is how He achieves reconciliation between Jew and Gentile - v. 14, "He is our peace"; v. 15 "He created in Himself one new man in the place of two, so making peace." He did it literally at the Cross, where He stood in the cross-fire between Jew and Gentile. He went on doing it in the 'Assembly of the Reconciled', the Church, where "there is neither Jew nor Greek." (Gal. 3:28)

(b) Positive pursuit of reconciliation (Second phase)

To pick up where we left off before the illustration, the willingness to forgive, even at great cost, is not the end of the story. Not only did Jesus "bear our sins in His own person on the tree," He did something more. And He did it to the end that there might be a transformation in us - so that evil might be overcome, not only in the Saviour's struggle with it, but also in us who by reason of our sin are His enemies. It is all to the end that we, like Him, might die to sin and live to righteousness. "By His wounds He would heal us."

The love that will, unchanged, bear another's sin right up to and including actual death at his hands is a love that cannot be overcome - it remains undefeated to the end: it is a love therefore so true, so eager, so steadfast that it cannot possibly be satisfied until reconciliation with the offender is achieved, and friendship restored. Not until open-hearted goodwill and mutual trust are again flowing freely between the offender and the offended is the offender's sin "put away" from between them and the breach healed.

We completely misunderstand what Peter is saying if we imagine that it is enough to bear what others do to us without getting riled up, but then protect ourselves by having nothing more to do with them. We will never be motivated to bear their hurt like that unless there is in us a hunger for fellowship with them so great that, on beyond the bearing of the hurt, we seek fellowship with them again. The only way to cure a person's illwill, after all, is to turn it somehow into a good will. Friendship has to be renewed. There has to be a real change of heart in the person who wronged us so that trust and love flow again. Now this calls for effort. We have to pursue a very positive line.

The wrong he has done or is doing must, in the first place, be brought home to him. The rift cannot be healed without a reckoning. At the heart of all true forgiveness in the Bible there is condemnation of the sin forgiven. The offender has to face the music; he has to be convicted of his sin. To quote Jesus, "If your brother sin against, go tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother." ("gaining your brother" is the object of the exercise, note). Luke 17:3, "Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive him."

Your love, wounded but undefeated by that sin, can break down his hostility so that he is moved to an acknowledgment of his guilt and a change of heart - in Bible language, to confession and repentance. Nothing else but a genuine love for him can or will produce it. Not until he throws down his weapons and stretches out his hand trustingly to receive your forgiveness and friendship is his sin "put away."

There is nothing especially theological about the Biblical concept of the putting away of sin, as though it were some mysterious secret God alone possesses and of which we may have no real knowledge; it means exactly what we mean by the phrase, "forget it, it won't come up again between us." The Biblical phrase, "not counting our trespasses against us" means precisely what we mean when we say, "I won't hold it against you."

But if that happens, the spirit of illwill has been defeated, overwhelmed, conquered in him by our love ... and righteousness. Instead of his bad spirit affecting me, my good spirit has infected him. The good spirit wins. It has to persist through wounding to do that, but that is its way.

The other will confess then, "by your wounds I have healed." And in the process, he comes to have his forgiver's mind both on evil (his own) and on good (the other's).

It is in such a fashion that Christ kindles in us His own mind on sin and righteousness. "He Himself bore our sins in His own person on the tree to the end that we might die to sin and live to righteousness." By His wounds we have been healed. We were indeed "straying like sheep, but have now returned to the true Shepherd and Guardian of our souls." We are men and women "in Christ." The miracle of grace has been wrought in our hearts. We have been "transformed by the renewing of our minds." "Let this mind be in you therefore which you have in Christ Jesus (you who have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son), who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death."

THE PATTERN PURSUED

That is why servants are to be submissive to overbearing masters. No matter how hard a bad boss makes a Christian employee's life, the Christian employee is to bear the nastiness without letting it turn him sour, and give the bad boss good service with a cheerful, willing spirit anyway.

Neither Peter nor Paul imagined for a moment that we can do this in our own strength. Rather it is God who gives us this victory over evil through our Lord Jesus Christ. "For if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature." He is instinct with a life which is not his own but Christ's. It follows then that Christ's method of dealing with evil must be his method also - our method. As men and women in Christ we must be ready to absorb all that the illwill and the evil of others can do to us, and neutralise it with forbearing, and - when the time comes - forgiving love (forgiveness, not revenge, is pending ...).

This is the spirit of submissiveness Peter commends.

We are "to let all men know our forbearance." We are, as Paul put it in Eph. 4:1, to be "imitators of God, like true sons of their Father. Let all bitterness and wrath and clamour and slander be put away from among you, and be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." The spirit that is to fill the Church is the same spirit as the Spirit through whom Christ thus offered Himself to God.

The Church's life will be of necessity a life of suffering, but her members, being members of Christ, will endure that suffering with a fierce and secret joy because they know that that in the face of evil suffering is love's path to victory.

Says G. B. Caird, "The powers of evil have been defeated by the obedience of Christ; they are constantly being defeated whenever Christians face them in the Spirit and the power of the Lord Jesus and in the panoply of God." (ibid. p. 101) But it has to be done in the rough and tumble of the workaday world ...

• in council chambers where Christ's vote is cast by His representative there ...
• on office floors, where mean-spirited supervisors make the staff's life a misery ...
• at factory gates where Christ's man braves the pickets, and when he is subsequently victimised, helps "to complete in his human flesh the full tale of Christ's afflictions still to be endured."

For as Paul discovered on the Damascus road, Christ, though risen, suffers still in all the persecutions of His brethren. "Why are you persecuting me?" the Lord said - present tense, note: the risen Lord is not immune to suffering still.

"Beloved," says Peter, "do not be surprised by the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed."

If we fail in this, everything else we do is waste. There is no point in evangelism if the community into which we bring the evangelised is bedevilled by the same spirit of animosity and retaliation that possesses the world. It is a tragedy of many churches that when people who have been converted come in to them they find themselves in assemblies (they do not deserve the name of fellowships) where deacons and members and pastors are all at each others' throats.

That is a lie upon the Gospel. "The final victory will be the appearing in glory of Him Who once was crucified at the hands of sinners, Who has borne all the hurt of all the sin of all the world. Then, and not till then, will the Way of the Cross have its final vindication. But that way of the Cross is what God will vindicate then, and He will vindicate nothing else." (ibid. p. 101)

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