For our Sunday evening series this upcoming year, we’re going to have the elders preach through First Peter. We’ve never rotated through paragraphs of the same book before, and this will cover the letter from different angles. It seems like an especially timely study, full of teaching on true submission and costly, righteous suffering.
One of my favorite verses in 1 Peter is one I have to hold off using too frequently as a reminder of forgiveness.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that me might bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18)
That is not actually the entire verse, let alone the entire sentence, which extends to the end of verse 20. It introduces what is probably the most difficult and debated paragraph in 1 Peter, and I volunteered to preach that passage when we get to it. But this gospel salvo is worth celebrating.
It is also what we’re doing here at the Lord’s Table. We are thinking about Christ, the promised and perfect offering. We remember His righteousness, His unjust suffering, His payment for our sins, and we remember what we get from it. Yes, we are saved, but saved for what? Saved as in brought to the Father.
We are forgiven for forgiveness’ sake, because in our guilt we needed it. We are forgiven for justice’s sake, so that God might be just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus (Romans 3:26). But we are also forgiven for fellowship’s sake, because we were far away. “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people” (1 Peter 2:10).