First point here is that when we’re told not to return reviling with reviling, but to bless — it’s what all Christians do, even though it was applied specifically to servants back in 1 Peter 2. “To this you were called.” And now this statement: “That you may obtain a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9).

“To this.” What’s this? Blessing instead of cursing, right? Are you with me? To this, what’s this? Bless. Don’t revile. On the contrary, blessed — for to this, this blessing, this new behavior, this new miracle, crazy wonderful behavior that causes the world to see and repent and glorify God on the day of visitation — this blessing, you were called to this. That’s purpose or goal, right? Whenever you see a “that” or a “so that” or an order that is just huge words that you may obtain a blessing.

Looking Backwards and Forwards for Motive

Which means that when you think about motives for living the Christian life — like returning good for evil — which way do you look? You look back or do you look forward? Do you look back for motive or forward for motive? And the answer is yes, right?

Because you were called to this because he died for you — that’s past. The call is flowing from the cross. You look back, you see the cross, you say, “If that’s the way my Lord is and he died for me to cover my selfishness and my rebellion, I’m going to turn to somebody else and return evil for evil” — past is important. That’s not what this is saying, right?

Now, he’s given a different motive. This is that you were called to this. That is, you were called to act this way so that you may obtain a blessing. So you should be motivated by the fact that through acting this way, I get a blessing. Future.

The Incentive to Show Mercy

Now, that creates all kinds of issues for people and for us. I raised the question here: What’s the incentive to show mercy in this verse? “Bless, for to this you were called, that you may receive a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). Now, before I raise some problems and flesh this out a little, let’s just see if a couple more verses where this is said.

“Blessed are the merciful.” This is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). “Blessed are the merciful.” Blessed. They’re going to get a blessing. Why are the merciful blessed? “Because they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

So being merciful receives mercy, right? Being merciful gets you mercy. You can see how troubling this can start to be if you’re a nice, Reformed justification-by-faith-alone person, which I am. Or James 2, this one’s even more stark and people twisted, I think: “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” (James 2:12–13).

So, no mercy gets you no mercy. Mercy gets you mercy. But “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13). And I’ve heard people say God’s mercy triumphs over his judgment. That’s not what it means, is it? I mean, look at the book. Judgment is without mercy on the one who has shown no mercy. But if that person shows mercy, then he triumphs over the judgment against those who have shown no mercy. This is your mercy here, not God’s, I think.

Test all things because I think that’s what both these verses are saying. You were called to bless and to show mercy to those people who are treating you badly in order that you might have a blessing. And so it is precisely your blessing that obtains this blessing. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” It’s you’re showing mercy that obtains this mercy.

And here those who show no mercy don’t get any mercy. If you are a merciless person, you go to hell, right? If you are a merciless person, if Jesus Christ has had zero effect on transforming you from being a selfish, unkind, mean-spirited, hostile person — no effect on that. Nothing’s changed in your life. You don’t have any disposition toward treating other people better than you did before your conversion. You’re not saved. So no mercy.

Does This Contradict Justification by Faith Alone?

But if you do have mercy like it says in Jesus’s words here, then that triumphs over judgment, which raises this question: Does this contradict justification by faith alone?

I can’t tell you how relevant this is in the world right now, because you’ve got pastors, well-known pastors, who have such a distorted view of justification by faith alone that all the verses I just looked at and everything I just said is anathema to them. It’s anathema. They will not allow Christians to be taught like I just taught you for the last three or four minutes.

Everything is without any condition whatsoever, and what’s happened is that they have taken logical inferences from core doctrines and let those logical inferences trump and cancel and silence other Scriptures.

What are the things Bethlehem College and Seminary labors to do? (How we succeed? God judges.) Is not to do that. We want so bad to take all of Scripture seriously. And if we have a core set of doctrines and there’s some implications that seem to us quite reasonable and quite logical and we find text after text contradicting some of these inferences, we’re going to back up and say, “I think we may have drawn some wrong inferences from this core doctrine. We’d just better rethink according to texts.”

That’s the mindset that we have. So my question here is one of my core doctrines is, and I don’t say it because it’s in any affirmation of faith, but because in the Bible is that we are justified, counted righteous, looked upon by God as complete and perfect because we are united with Christ by faith alone.

Romans 3:28: “Apart from works, we are justified.” And yet, I just spent five minutes arguing that if you show no mercy to your family, neighbors, you will go to hell. And if you do show them mercy, that mercy will be the path, the means by which you triumph in the last day in judgment.

Now, is that a contradiction to saying we stand righteous and are accepted completely by God on the basis of the righteousness of Christ united to him by faith alone? And of course, my answer is no. It’s not a contradiction. I don’t think the Bible does contradict itself, and therefore I love spending my life trying to put it together, which is what I do. Just want to see how it fits.

Because I think when you let text stand that seem somehow in tension with each other and push on them or push down into them, you find a common root and you make discoveries that are rich and helpful. So, let Peter talk here. Why don’t I think that his saying you were called to bless those who revile you in order that you might obtain a blessing — why is that not in the way of being accepted on the basis of Christ alone?

The Gospel According to Peter

Let’s go back to chapter one where he begins. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy.” This is where it all starts for us. “According to God’s great mercy, he caused us to be born again” (1 Peter 1:3).

Once you were not in existence as a spiritually living believer and lover of Jesus, once you did not exist that way, you were not born, you had no spiritual life, you were dead in trespasses and sins, you were a sinner. And the change, the fundamental decisive change is owing to this mercy arrived in your life, came through many different avenues for all of you. It arrived, and with great power, God’s great mercy caused you to have life.

And that life is manifest first in seeing Christ as beautiful, attractive, real, true needed, glorious, satisfying. And instantaneously in that seeing, you’re giving yourself to him. It’s called faith. And you were made his once. You were not a people, now you are God’s people.

Once you had not received mercy, now you have received mercy. And in that new existence, you have a living hope. And then everything he says in the next verses is to say it is rock solid. It’s kept in heaven — it is imperishable, undefiled, unfading. And not only is it safe, you’re safe because he’s guarding you through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. You are totally safe in him. He took you for his own. He’s got a reward for you, a blessing and inheritance out there. He’s holding on you all day long in spite of everything you’re going to make it through to the end.

All of that by God’s initiative, you didn’t earn that. He just did that for you. He brought you to that. He brought you out of deadness into life. And so all of that is still true when he says, “And now you will inherit a blessing. You will have a blessing if you bless people.” No contradiction there. There is a way that people walk who are born again, but it’s the new birth. It’s the union of a person with Jesus Christ that is the foundation of all their blessing of others.

They don’t bless others in order to get saved. They got saved by the new birth through great mercy as God united them to Christ. And now in the spirit and with new inclinations, they are prone to bless others and show mercy and thus give evidence that they are heirs of God.

And my point is that evidence is necessary, not optional, which is why you can say you go to hell without it, without saying you earned heaven with it. To get that? It’s necessary, but it’s not the decisive cause. The decisive cause brought it into being.

Obedience to the Truth

Here’s 1 Peter 1:22–23:

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.

This purification of souls by obedience to the truth is very risky language. If we had time, I’ll just give you my sketch and you can think about it. Obedience to the truth here, I think, means faith in the gospel.

I don’t think obedience here means blessing other people that you may have a blessing. I think this was the first response to the truth of the gospel and what the gospel demands is that we trust Jesus, believe in Jesus, treasure Jesus, fly to Jesus, lean on Jesus hope in Jesus. Jesus is the ground and we just hold to him fall on him. That’s obedience to what the gospel requires.

Now why do I think that? Well, the wider argument is that the way obedience is used in First Peter is that it’s obeying the gospel. But there’s a contextual reason that you can see we are to be obedient to the truth and thus purify our souls for a sincere brotherly love.

This is not the love, this is not brotherly love. This is for a sincere brotherly love. Paul said, “The aim of my charge is love from a pure conscience and sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). First, there’s faith in Jesus being awakened by the new birth, and then faith bears the fruit. “Faith works through love” (Galatians 5:6). So this little word here, “for” or “unto,” I’m not sure how it comes through in the ESV, it’s pretty clear it’s ace.

“Unto a sincere brotherly love” shows me this obedience to this truth is not brotherly love, but for the sake of leading to brotherly love. And therefore this is obedience to the truth of the gospel. And so the gospel is Christ offers himself as completely sufficient to establish your righteousness with God and to be your covering for all sin. And you fly to that by faith alone, cleaved to him. And then comes returning blessing for cursing. And the fruit proves the truth of the root and the tree triumphs in judgment.

By Their Fruit

It’s exactly the way the Sermon on the Mount ends. You will know them by their fruit. It’s the house built on sand, which is those who hear the word of God and don’t do it. And the house built on the rock, which is those who hear the word of God and do do it and the one will be wiped away in the judgment. Those who hear the word of God and don’t do it. And the one will stand in the judgment, those who hear the word of God and do do it. But it isn’t the doing that made the house firm. It’s the gospel that made the house firm. Christ made the house firm.

When Luther was debating with the Catholics over this whole issue of the role of good works in justification, he retreated to that. You will know the tree by its fruits. The fruits don’t make a good tree. They show a good tree. So be a good tree and says, go to Jesus, rest in Jesus. Find your righteousness in Jesus and then be real. If he’s your Lord, if he’s your Savior, if he’s your treasure, you bless those who curse you and thus you show that you are real. Another way to put it, then we’ll take a break is inheritances are not earned.

Inheritances are not earned, but they may be — inheritances may be suitable reward for living a life that shows you are an heir. Chips off the old block, God’s the block. Jesus is the block. Are you an heir? Well, you have to give evidence that you’re an heir. heirs are children and children have the Spirit of their Father. Romans 8:17: “If you are children of God, then you’re heirs.” Yes you are. heirs aren’t earned. I mean, inheritances aren’t earned. You get them because that’s my Father. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided.

This is why I just am so, so sad when all this talk about non-con unconditionality. There’s conditions everywhere in the New Testament for Christians getting to heaven, provided we suffer with him, with him in order that we may be glorified with him. Everybody’s going to suffer. It goes on in this chapter to talk about how our bodies are groaning, waiting for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Called to Suffer

We are called to suffer with him — when suffering comes to you, which it will, will you suffer with him? Will you stay with him? Will you hold onto him? Will you walk with him through your suffering, or will you get mad and throw him away because if he treats his children like that, I don’t want anything to do with that Father. If you do that, you’re lost.

But if you suffer with him, then you’ll be glorified with him. Just like if you bless those who curse you, you will obtain a blessing. Or, as Peter here in 1 Peter 2:2 puts it: “Like newborn infants long for pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation” — an amazing way to put it.

You are already saved. You are being saved. You will be saved. And what gives evidence that you will be saved is that you’re drinking and tasting that the Lord is good and savoring it day by day and saying, “That’s good enough. I’ll walk into any suffering with him because that’s good. What I just drank from the word about Jesus is good,” and does he grow into salvation. So my answer is no.

It is not a contradiction to justification by faith alone, but it is absolutely real that we must not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling. But, on the contrary, bless because we were called to this not only by the fact that he died for us, but by the fact that that’s the way we will obtain the blessing.

So Father, as we take a little break now, I pray that you would go to work on us very deeply and do your renewing, humbling, love-producing work as we trust in Jesus. Pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.