The New Testament book of 1 Peter is unique in that its author, Peter the disciple of Jesus, answers the 3 most pressing, important questions we have:
What is life for?
What do we do with suffering?
How do we live?
These questions are interrelated; the answers to each inform and guide the others.
Think about the way our modern world answers these questions:
What is life for? To be happy.
What do we do with suffering? I have no idea.
How do we live? Work hard to get what you need to live your dream.
If you are like me, you begin to see how shallow and unfulfilling this view of life is. As theologians Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun frame it, when the means for life have become the ends of life, the dog has started chasing its tail: “To chase one’s tail is bad enough; to have to chase it faster than anyone else verges on madness, yet this seems to be our situation.”[1]
A FLOURISHING LIFE
Peter provides a strikingly different answer for what life is for. Life is for Glory! The ache in our souls, that longing for and knowing that life is meant to be lived for something greater than ourselves, is true! There is a Voice calling from beyond, giving us love, peace, joy, and hope. We have come to know this Voice as real and personal. The Voice speaking to us has actually “touched down” among us and lived on this earth, suffered with us and for us, and most assuredly has overcome death, guaranteeing hope beyond death. That Voice is God Himself, the “with us” God, and that scent of glory becomes stronger as we trust Him, open our hearts to him, and realize He is with us as we live out our lives on this earth. So how then do we live? Gloriously!
The Hebrew word for “Glory” means “heavy, weighty, substance,” and God is calling us to live a life of meaning and substance, tied to the anchor and substance of God Himself. As Peter phrases it, God wants to transform us so that we do “love life and see good days” (1 Peter 3:10). God desires that we begin now to have what the apostle John called “quality life” (Greek zoe), or as Jesus put it, “life to the full” (John 10:10). Miroslav Volf describes this as a “flourishing life.” A flourishing life is not a matter of “tips” and “tweaks” but rather “requires the transformative presence of the true life in the midst of the false, which requires that the true world come to be in the midst of the false world, that the world recall, recover, and for the first time fully embody its goodness as the gift of the God who is love.”[2]
PROLEPTIC LIVING
Ted Peters calls this a “life of beatitude,” or a “beautiful life” where “the blessings of the future kingdom of God are mysteriously present now in anticipation.”[3] There is a helpful word Christian theologians use to describe this type of life: Proleptic. Proleptic means something that is supposed to happen in the future is actually happening now in the present. It is the future breaking into the present. Proleptic living means “rehearsing the qualities of the [future] kingdom–peace, love, joy, freedom, equality, unity–in the course of history’s forward movement.”[4] We have seen the future in Jesus Christ, and he is still among us, bringing the qualities of the future into our present lives. As Ted Peters writes:
In Jesus Christ, God has given us a promise that the present yearning for wholeness is not in vain. Actually, God has give us more than a mere promise. In the Easter resurrection of Jesus, God has given us a prolepsis of what is to come. Christian faith places trust in the faithfulness of God and in the divine promise that as God raised Jesus from the dead on Easter so also will God bring the whole of creation to its consummate fulfillment in the new creation. The resulting life of beatitude is a life lived between the times–that is, a life lived now with the future new creation in, with, and under our present faith.[5]
PICTURES OF THOSE WHO LOVE LIFE AND SEE GOOD DAYS
The apostle Peter’s understanding of this glorious, flourishing, beautiful life is like a “light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). This is the glory and love we see in God Himself that becomes increasingly imprinted on our very lives and character. For our everyday living, Peter uses “everyday” pictures, or metaphors, to show us how to live. This is how we are to live:
- Like children. We should live like children who know that they can trust completely in the heart of their Father God. Jesus’ favorite word for God was “Father” (or in Aramaic, Abba, which means “Daddy”). We are “born again,” living our journey here with new hope in this life and for life forever. Like children, we feed on the satisfying love and Presence of our God.
- Like hopeful people. We do not live as people without hope, but as people who know we will live forever and know that God is for us and will never forsake us. A constant theme running throughout 1 Peter is hope. As Christians, we have hope not only that we will live forever with God, but that God is “with us” in every situation in our lives on this earth. He is working to “redeem” even the worst on this earth into something good that will be “glorious.”
- Like resident aliens. Foreigners residing in another country know that they will soon return home. Peter calls us “resident aliens” because this life is temporary, but we are destined for a new world. We as Christians realize that we will live forever. When you believe that you will live forever, you begin to see people, jobs, and life from an eternal perspective. Jesus’ words begin to make sense: “What does it profit you if you were to have everything in the world, and yet lose your soul?” (Matthew 6:26).
- Like holy people. Holiness is a combination of wholeness, righteousness, stability, purpose, and fullness. While holiness certainly includes moral purity, it is much more vibrant. The primary meaning of holiness is “different” or “set apart.” But the sense of this meaning is not just different from others, but different because we are devoted to someone or something. That devotion makes us unique, special and set apart from the ordinary. It is our attachment and union with the Transcendent, Loving God that continually gives us this “holiness.” Living with holiness means He is continuously developing within us all the beautiful and fulfilling attributes of God: selfless love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. This is the life we long to have. Frederick Buechner was right when he wrote, “I think maybe it is holiness that we long for more than we long for anything else.”[6]
- Like chosen people. As holy people, we are also chosen to be the “special forces” of God among the people of this world. God is training us how to live quality, enduring, flourishing lives. As we grow deeper in Christ, and as our character is transformed, we permeate the world and change it.
- Like living stones. That may seem odd at first, but Peter is telling us that we must live together. We, as Christians, are a new Temple of God in which God’s own Personal Presence, His Spirit, dwells within us and we love and live life together. We were not created to live alone, but together, in community, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, stretching in love for each other and serving each other.
- Like free people who serve. We are no longer slaves to those passions that once ruled our bodies, hearts, and minds. Now we live confidently, without fear, free to serve. Our model is Jesus, the Great Servant Leader who changed the world forever. In our families, our church, and our community, our first inclination is to serve others and build them up. When we have that kind of servant’s heart, then we are becoming like God.
You can read more of what Peter says about how to live a flourishing life in my book From Fish to Glory: 1 Peter for Daily Living, available on Amazon and at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/from-fish-to-glory.
[1] Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun, For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2019), 26.
[2] Volf and Croasmun, 150.
[3] Ted Peters, God-The World’s Future (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 2000), 372.
[4] Carl E. Braatan, Eschatology and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1974, 121.
[5] Peters, 392.
[6] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life of Sermons (New York: Harper, 2006), 242.