The Individual and Corporate Call of God
Institute for the Study of Christian Origins, ThBingen, Germany
Prague Christian Library, Czech Republic
March 2005
1. Introduction: Thank you for the introduction. Thanks to you in the audience for coming tonight, and many thanks to our hosts, Jim and Laurie Barnes, for making the arrangements for this lectureship. I would like to introduce my wife, Cherie, who is with me this week. This is my first attempt at speaking with an interpreter, so please bear with me as I adjust to the newness of the situation.
I have spent a long time working on the little book of 2 Peter, but am very glad to have the opportunity to talk about 1 Peter. I have taught this book for undergraduates and master’s students, including an intensive course at Ghana Christian University in Africa last January. At the University of Thbingen I have the privilege of co-hosting a theological colloquium for doctoral students and visiting professors. Participants read “works in progress” for critique by the group. I have read some work on 1 Peter in that forum. All of this is meant to underscore my gratitude for an opportunity to continue working on this material, as well as to give me the opportunity to say that this book is very rich, and the more I study it, the more I realize the depths of its power and subtlety of its presentation. For those who have studied this book, I hope you can come to a new appreciation of this material. For those to whom this may be new, I hope you can catch a glimpse not only of the writing itself, but of the Gospel message which is contained so eloquently in it.
The title of the lecture series is: “‘To this you have been called’:
Christian Identity in 1 Peter as Individual and Corporate, Spiritual and
Social.” 1 Peter is about living as a
Christian in a hostile environment. Each
night I plan to look at a different aspect of 1 Peter, specifically focusing on
the concept of “the call of God” as it unfolds in this little book , with
implications for Christians as individuals and as the church, as people living
in a social reality also attempt to live out the spiritual life that is our
higher purpose.
Tonight we will look
at the biblical backgrounds for the “call of God.” Approximately the first 1 ½ chapters of 1
Peter introduce the discussion with a good dose of biblical background. These verses constitute a theological
section. It sets the stage for what
happens in the remainder of the book, which is a call to appropriate Christian
living (ethics) within the readers’ social context. Theology lays the groundwork for ethics. That material we will treat tomorrow. In the third lecture, I will talk about “the
end of time” language that informs this little book, and about how we should
reflect and react to that chronological perspective. Finally, I want to state a disclaimer, which
is to say that I cannot do a thorough exposition of the text in three brief
sessions. I will attempt to do some
selective expounding of the text, and will be happy to point you to sources for
further study, as your interest dictates.
2. Method I do not want to get bogged down in a discussion of method which would surely be boring, and would keep us from our real task. But I would be remiss if I did not say a few things about the study of the New Testament in light of current discussions. (a) First, my approach to the text is initially historical. It is my belief that we must first try to understand the biblical documents, as any ancient documents, within their historical settings. As best we can, we try to understand the author’s purposes, and how the audience would have likely reacted to this material. We do this not least because Christians throughout the history of the church have believed that the Bible, especially the New Testament, is our source of faith and practice.
While I quickly acknowledge that we all bring our own agendas to the text such that there is an inevitable element of subjectivity to any study, it is appropriate to make the conscious effort to suspend our presuppositions in order that we may hear the message of text, and not just an echo of our own ideas. The Bible has been described as a book that both confirms and challenges our ideas. Ideally the text should inform and shape our theology and traditions, rather than just confirm our prejudices. For that to happen, we must listen very hard, and try to hear the message anew.
This listening and this hearing is like a journey, a pilgrimage. It is not just the study of a text, but a seeking after the mind and heart of God. Listening and hearing is an arduous journey, and we must prepare ourselves properly if we are to truly embark on a meaningful spiritual pilgrimage. In her essay, "An Expedition to the Pole," Christian author Annie Dillard writes of every believer's spiritual quest as analogous to the original expeditions to reach the North Pole.[1] Many of the early explorers were ill-prepared and naive in their expectations. Instead of extra fuel and provisions, one party brought along a large library, china, crystal and heavy silver flatware, and games. When their ship froze into the pack ice, the sailors attempted to man-haul their provisions to the Pole in life-boats dragged across the ice by ropes. Clad only in British Navy uniforms, some of their bodies were later found out on the ice. Among their effects were engraved silverware and a backgammon board. Refusing to adapt and failing to be sensitive to conditions, these explorers attempted to man-haul their humanity to the Pole.
Many Christians are like the early polar explorers, observes Dillard. We all "man-haul our humanity" with us; success has much to do with how well we adapt. God does not need our worship, our seeking, our adaptation in love to things tiresome or absurd; we need them. God does not need these things, but a life with God demands them.
Christians are not sufficiently sensitive to conditions. Like those early explorers, we fail to adapt. Dillard asks, "Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we invoke?" Many churches, she says, are like children playing with their chemistry sets, "mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning." It is madness to wear fancy clothes and hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets and life preservers. God should be offended at our silliness, our pettiness, our empty services and lifeless fellowship.
Dillard concludes that it is only the grace of God that keeps us from certain destruction. "Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing (us) to smithereens. Week after week Christ washes the disciples' feet and repeats, it is all right--believe it or not--to be people." Because of this assurance of grace, we can confidently proceed with our journey, a pilgrimage.
Our pilgrimage next takes us to a land far away, not so much in geography, but in time. To understand the historical background of our study, we must spend some time with the early Christians’ Bible, our “Old Testament” (OT). The early Christians, including the writers of the New Testament, normally worked from the Septuagint (LXX), the Old Testament in Greek. Many of the Biblical quotes in the New Testament (including 1 Peter) are taken directly from the LXX, not the Hebrew Bible. Because our modern Old Testaments are translated from the Hebrew, this means that sometimes we will read OT quotes in the New Testament, but upon looking up the reference, discover that our OT reads slightly differently. This problem comes up in 1 Peter. Suffice it to say that for the writers of the NT, the differences were not a hindrance, but were sometimes actually exploited for purposes of their argument. This they happily did while firmly committed to the idea that the Bible is inspired Scripture, despite the differences in the texts!
Though most of the NT writers were Jewish Christians, and their readers were well-versed in the Bible (the OT), we must also be acquainted with the history of the times in which they lived, which is somewhat clumsily referred to as “Greco-Roman Hellenism.” The general history of the times is important, but more important for us is the major impact which this history and culture had on the early Christian movement. The OT in Greek was one result, as was the preaching of the Gospel and writing of the NT in Greek. Greek philosophy and oriental religions existed side by side. The Roman military occupation of Palestine and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean created a pluralistic society which gave priority to pagan religions and denigrated Judaism and Christianity as “superstitions.”
Since the time of Augustus Caesar, who inaugurated the “millennial” Golden Age of the Pax Romana, Roman emperors were officially hailed as gods, and were said to be “lord” and “savior” to the people. Ruler cults sprang up around each successive Caesar, complete with temples and priests, sacrifices and mandatory community festivals. Such cult centers were widespread in Asia Minor. Many people in the provinces competed (and cities with cities) to outdo each other in paying homage to Caesar. Christians were subject to immense social pressure to conform, and those who refused to hail Caesar as “lord” and “God” were often mistreated by their non-Christian neighbors. This aspect of life in Asia Minor we will deal with in more detail in the second lecture.
(b) Second, my approach has a literary component. 1 Peter is written as an epistle (a letter), and in fact is a “general epistle,” an open letter to Christians in a large area of north central Asia Minor. Asia Minor, an area ruled by the Romans, was roughly the area of modern-day Turkey. We need to be aware that letter-writing conventions of the day stipulated that a letter include the name of the author, the recipients, and a greeting. The Christian leader Paul is credited with adapting this basic letter-writing convention and adding some specifically Christian elements. It is amazing to realize that before Paul, no one wrote “grace and peace,” but after Paul, almost every Christian letter used this greeting, including 1 Peter. Like Paul in 2 Corinthians and Ephesians, 1 Peter also includes a blessing section in the place where one would typically find a “thanksgiving” statement (“I thank God for all of you, for your faith,” etc.). This “blessing” or praise to God is especially appropriate and useful in a general letter (so also in Ephesians). While a thanksgiving was personal, the blessing section directs attention to God, and to the divine-human relationship.
While 1 Peter reflects some specific information about the audience, it is not written to one congregation (as Paul usually did), and therefore is not a response to the very specific problems Paul’s letters regularly deal with. Happily for us, this theoretically means that we have easier access to the material, in that we do not have to try to decipher what was going on behind the scenes in a specific congregation. As you will see, however, there are still plenty of questions in this regard. We are not talking about one congregation in one city, but rather Christians scattered around a large area, albeit for whom certain experiences were part of the nearly universal reality of living as outsiders under Roman rule. Ultimately, we must remember that these documents were not addressed to us, but to believers who lived in a very different time and place than we are used to. We must try to hear these texts as outsiders, hearing the message from several “distances”—time, geography, culture, and tradition. Only when we respect our distance from the text can we come to a legitimate closeness to the message mediated through the text.
3. Backgrounds. a. Peter. The apostle Peter, whose name this epistle bears, is the the same Peter who was a Galilean fisherman, recruited by Jesus to be his disciple. Peter’s up and down career is recorded for us in the Gospels. In fact, we know more about Peter than any other of the twelve disciples. Peter was capable of great heights, as well as great wavering. He is known to us as the one who jumped out of boat when Jesus came walking on the water, only to sink because of his little faith. He could confess Jesus as “the Christ, the son of the living God,” which Jesus said was revealed to him by God. Just as easily Peter could rebuke Jesus for his message, to which Jesus said “Get behind me Satan!” Peter vowed to go to the death before denying Jesus, and then proceeded to deny him three times. But Peter was not just the impetuous follower, acting without thinking; he was indeed the leader of the disciples. Despite his lack of understanding, only Peter received a new name—only Peter is the “rock.” Whenever Jesus took with him his special, inner group, Peter was always there, and is listed first (Peter, James, and John). After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, Peter was the leader of the apostles (commissioned ones), and became especially associated with the church in Jerusalem as “apostle to the circumcised.” Yet Peter’s leadership was much broader than this, as our letter of 1 Peter demonstrates.
We do not know how Peter came to be at Rome, but his presence there was equally as important as Paul’s, and in some ways more so. Later in his life Peter acquired the reputation of a reconciler and a shepherd. It is doubtful that Peter ever traveled to the churches addressed in Asia Minor, but his reputation preceded him. In this letter Peter is portrayed as the shepherd, an elder among fellow elders. He, more than anyone, had earned the right to address these people, “exhorting them and proclaiming the true grace of God.”
b. the Addressees Peter addresses these readers in very Jewish terms, calling them by names that were reserved for OT Israel. But these people were Gentiles, living in an area with minimal impact from Jewish settlers, with very limited means to hear about the one true God. Some had apparently settled in the area emigrating from Gaul (France and the western part of Germany), where Julius Caesar had waged war against the barbarians some 50 years before the birth of Jesus. We do not know the preachers who first evangelized these people, but the text says they had been converted from the futile ways of their fathers, led away from the shameful behavior of their neighbors with whom they used to carouse and engage in all sorts of inappropriate behavior. They have been called out of darkness, “into God’s marvelous light!” (2:9).
c. OT titles for Israel In the opening verses of the letter these readers are “exiles of the dispersion,” chosen and destined by God, sanctified, and sprinkled with the sacrificial blood of Christ (1:1-2). The OT prophets spoke about the grace that is theirs in Christ. They are to be holy, “for I am holy,” says the Lord God (1:16). They are a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices (2:5). They are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people (2:9). All of these titles are OT descriptions of Israel. These Gentile Christians are told that they have been called as God’s people, just like Israel was, and the OT scriptures about Israel are quoted to prove it! There is much discussion about these verses today, with a lot of questionable assumptions about what this “call of God” meant to them, and means to Christians today. There have been many misunderstandings and misapplications of these texts in the past. How should we understand these verses in 1 Peter, and how should we apply them to ourselves?
4. The Call of God: a. Biblical Backgrounds (call and covenant): The story of God’s call—God’s specific dealings with his people--begins in Genesis 12, with the call of Abraham. In a story of God’s great grace, and Abraham’s persistent faith, God called Abraham to leave his home country (modern-day Iraq), and “go to a land that I will show you.” Abraham did leave, and eventually followed God’s leading to the land of Canaan, the Promised Land. As part of his promise to Abraham, God said he would give him a land, and would make of Abraham a great nation. Through Abraham and that people, God would bless the whole world. In Genesis 17:8 God says, “And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien…and I will be their God."
Abraham believed God, but died not seeing the fulfillment of those promises. God’s promise, “they will be my people and I will be their God,” is repeated throughout the Old Testament, as God leads his people closer to their destiny. It is a mandate; it is God’s call. God recruited Moses to bring his people out of Egypt. They were not a great nation, but a tribe of slaves. In Exodus 6:7 God told Moses, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. But the story of Israel’s call (the ongoing fulfillment of the promise to Abraham), is a story of Israel’s rebellion. They disobeyed God’s covenant rules from the very beginning, refusing to “have no other gods” before him, and repeatedly breaking covenant with God. That lack of faithfulness eventually led to their exile out of the Land of Promise. The land—the most powerful symbol of their chosen relationship with God, was taken away.
As the prophet Hosea wrote, God called Israel out of Egypt, and Israel was his son. But the more God called them, the more they ran from him. Finally, in a message of desperation tinged with hope, God repented of his decision to destroy Israel, and in his grace made a way forward. The prophets spoke of a new day that was coming, a day of a new covenant. Though Israel continually broke God’s covenant and rejected his call, God in his grace prepared a new covenant. When Israel failed, God made a new way: Jeremiah 31:33 reads, “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Ez 36:28; 37:23; Zech 2:11).
In the New Testament, the call of God to be his people is fulfilled in Christ. Matthew’s Gospel portrays Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” In a powerful depiction of Jesus as God’s unique Son, Matthew shows Jesus to be the one true Israelite, the true Son of God. Jesus is the only one who is truly obedient, the only one who truly, completely answers the call of God. Whereas Israel failed to be “God’s Son,” (Hosea 11:1ff), Jesus is the true Son of God, called “out of Egypt” (Matt 2:15, Hos 11:1). While Israel failed to obey God during forty years of wilderness wandering, Jesus showed himself to be the truly obedient Son of God during his forty-day temptations in the wilderness (Matt 4:1-17). The message of the Gospels is that Jesus’ obedient sonship, culminating in his obedient death on the cross, makes possible our adoption as his children (to paraphrase Paul).
For Paul, as for the other early Christians, the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Christ are our means and place of entry into fellowship with God—the way of salvation. Through that coming to God in faith Christians—Jews and Gentiles alike—are adopted into God’s family, and formed into God’s people. The New Testament writers use several metaphors to convey this truth, as we see in 1 Peter. Connecting the Christians to God’s promises to Abraham, the apostle Paul wrote, “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’" (2 Cor 6:16; see Lev 26:12; Ezek 37:27, etc.; cf. Hebrews 8:10). Finally, in John’s Apocalypse, we hear these words of encouragement and comfort, written to Christians suffering persecution (only slightly later than 1 Peter): “He who conquers will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” (Rev 21:7). This promise is to all of us who believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
4.b. God’s Call to Christians. In the NT there is no such thing as a “solo Christian,” the proverbial “Lone Ranger” believer, to borrow an American image. To be sure, 1 Peter reminds us that the individual is indeed called. To state it another way, until one’s individual relationship with God is established, there is little reason to speak about the church—the people of God. But individuals are ultimately defined by membership in the body. The two are never separated. Believers are “born anew” (into a family), “sanctified” (set apart from the world, and set apart to new life, all within the context of the body of Christ). 1 Peter says believers are “sprinkled with the blood of Christ.” This is a reference to the OT sacrifices in which the blood of a sacrificed animal was symbolically sprinkled on the congregation of Israel. Salvation was (and is) always both an individual and a corporate reality. Together the Christians of 1 Peter were realizing their spiritual goal, that is, “obtaining the salvation of their souls.”
Many of the other OT metaphors in 1 Peter are corporate, originally predicated of Israel. Now these metaphors are asserted of the Church. Originally Jewish ideas are now associated with these Gentiles, and they are distinguished from the Gentiles around them (implying non-believing, pagan Gentiles). The Christians (= Body of Christ, the Church) are the Chosen People of God, destined for God’s glory. Collectively the Christians are a spiritual house, being built together as a functional unit, the household of God. As a collegium the Christians are God’s holy and royal priesthood, offering to him their service and themselves in perpetual spiritual sacrifices. These who were formerly “no people” are now a chosen race (but not a literal race), a holy nation (but not a nation), God’s own people (but not an ethnic group). The point of these metaphors is to show that, by God’s grace through Christ, the Christians have fulfilled the promises to Abraham. The emphasis is not upon Israel’s failure to live up to divine requirements, but upon God’s gracious gift, his creative power, that makes of “no people” a cohesive group that is “God’s own people.” The issue is not particularly one group against another (Christians vs. the Jews), but the fact that no one—Jew or Christian—can of his or her own goodness and volition live up to God’s ideals. The promises to Abraham, the reiteration of God’s call through Moses and the giving of the Law at Sinai, were never intended to be received legalistically, a set of impossibly high ideals which no one could achieve. These Christians were now called not to “earn” their new identity, but to simply be what and who it is God has made them. “For to this you have been called.”
[1] Annie
Dillard, „Expedition to the Pole,“ in Teaching
a Stone to Talk.
