Strengthened for Suffering - Pt 2

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. (1 Peter 3:18-22 ESV).

Christians suffering for their belief has been the norm for nearly two thousand years. If that sounds unbelievable, it is probably because you, like most Americans, are insulated from the bigger world outside our own country (about 5% of the total) and outside our own American era (about 5% of the last 6,000 years). For most of the world and for most of history being a Christian has not been safe. Imagine doing evangelism in a context where you could not make any promises to people that things would go better for them on earth, but that if they believed what you offered, they would be risking their lives. That was normal in the context of this letter, and in most of the places of the world most of the time, including today. Without being maudlin or hyper-dramatic, let me cite one example. Evangelical missionaries entered Cambodia in the 1920s. By the time they were expelled in 1965 there were about 600 believers. Between 1965 and 1975 during the civil war the Christian population soared to an estimated 90,000. It was an amazing work of God. But when the Khmer Rouge took control and Pol Pot unleashed his fury on the nation, most of these Christians died or fled the country. Even in China, where the Christian Church has grown to nearly 97 million people, the political climate has changed and it is beginning to be forced underground again. The gruesome pictures and videos are not aberrations. It is normal not abnormal for Christians to be hated (cf. Matthew 24:9). There is a warning here for us in America. The atmosphere seems to be one of acrimony, rancor, and mean-spiritedness as if the liberal, humanistic, secular, relativistic cultural elites have taken our Christian world from us. I think the time is right for a heavy dose of the teaching from 1 Peter. He is laboring in this letter to say that we are aliens and exiles here and that it is NOT surprising when the cultural powers that be revile Christianity. So in this text today, and in the whole letter, Peter is laboring to help us be ready to suffer, if God should will it. That is why verses 18-22 were written. Tomorrow we will look at some ways to practically prepare for suffering. Today, would you join me in praying for those not as fortunate as we are in America, those who are now suffering because of their faith in Christ?