10-12: On the heels of Peter's exhortation to love one another and to strive to be a blessing to others, he quotes Psalm 34 as a proof text to show why this kind of outward living works. In song like poetry, David declares that whoever desires to love life and see good days, he should not speak evil, nor deceive others. In other words, do not let your tongue stray into self glorifying speech. Speaking evil of others or deceiving others can only have one purpose, and that is to tear others down, and lift yourself up. To slander and lie is at the root of self worship, not because it desires to hurt others, primarily, though it does. It is the root of self worship because it is necessary to prop oneself up in the eyes of others, to raise oneself to the level of the divine. And the slanders and lies always begin at home. We slander ourselves, and deceive ourselves first, when we attempt such a thing. To be a created child of God is a noble and high honor, to be received with gratitude and grace. When we lift ourselves up we are actually casting ourselves down into the mire, thereby slandering our own noble nature, and deceiving ourselves that we are something better now that we have been self-liberated from the authority of others. It is a lie, a terrible lie that has ruined many a family and many a man. Therefore Peter says, love. Do not speak evil. But this love is not the hippie bumper sticker love, that says love for love's sake. That is rubbish. When Peter calls us to love, he calls us to gospel living, which is a call to death. For only out of gospel death can true life emerge. We die to self, we die to our own passions and desires. We live unto Christ through others, and thereby find joy.
"Let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it." Again, don't be evil. To be evil is to be ugly. Evil is an adjective. Evil describes what your heart attitude is, regardless of what the action looks like from the outside. Evil is the apt word to describe everything done apart from faith in the risen Jesus Christ. So turn from it. You have been purchased by the blood of the Son of the Almighty God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. You have been cleansed. You are no longer forced by nature to act in an ugly way. Seek beauty. Seek peace with all, as far as it depends on you. Pursue Peace, real Peace. Again, we do not speak of bumper sticker definitions. Peace without justice, peace without recompense is no peace at all. If Jesus Christ had not taken upon Himself the full and complete judgement that was rightfully mine, there could be no peace. There is no reconciliation apart from confession and forgiveness. If it is true vertically speaking, it is true of the horizontal. If it is true of our relationship with the Creator God, it is true of our relationship with fellow creatures. Therefore seek Peace, the peace that is real, the peace that calls sin sin and seeks to eradicate it like a tumor. A doctor who sees an abnormal growth does not seek peace with his patient by ignoring the cancerous tissue. Peace means surgery, and now, before it grows. Therefore pursue peace, even though the pursuit is not peaceful. The pursuit will often mean strife, and struggle. Surgery hurts. Incisions bleed. But again, this is gospel. The way out of the tomb is through the grave. Do good. Seek peace.
Why? Why do all this? You speak of hurt and bleeding and dying and discomfort. Why should I pursue peace when it comes at such a cost? Why should I do good, when it might bring pain? Because the Lord watches the righteous. The Lord God sees your heart and understands the workings of your will. He who sustains us and holds us and continues to speak us into existence (whether we honor Him or not, interestingly), is the master of turning pain into joy, sorrow into laughter, mourning into a song of life. He is the one who conquered death and sat on its head. The Lord of life watches our way, and provides light and rest to those who walk according to His instructions. His ears are open to those who trust in Him. He listens to those who are in distress. He takes your feeblest efforts to do good, and pursue peace, and transforms them into works of mercy and of grace. He sees the heart, and honors the will. Those who seek to do ill, the Lord has turned against. It is neither prudent nor wise to disparage the hand that holds your life together, to dishonor the Spirit who allows your lungs the very breath they use to curse. Turn from doing evil, and hold fast to what is good. For the the Lord lifts up those who seek the good of others, those who see in others the face of God.
13-14: Who is there to bring harm if we are zealous to do good? This is Peter's version of Paul's "If God is for us, who can stand against us?" Neither question states that there will be no one standing against us, or that no one will bring harm and suffering into our lives. We live in a fallen world. Pain, suffering, sin, harmful opposition, they are not maybes but inevitables. We live in a world made by God, inhabited by people who hate their Maker. Strife and conflict resulting in difficulties are not a question of if, but of when. At the very least we have conflict happening within our own persons. Not only are our bodies decaying, paying tribute to our fallen world, but our natural desires as sons and daughters of Adam give us who are redeemed by the blood of Christ enough trouble for a lifetime. Beyond our own persons we live in communities where God is not honored as God, nor is He given thanks. People living with mutually exclusive world views will run into hardships. Pain and suffering will be a constant theme, to one degree or another. So no, the question does not mean to imply that there actually might not be anyone out there who might hurt us. Rather that God is God in all, and through all.
Peter's under layering hope here is that God, our Father, is the Author of all things. This necessarily includes any pain and suffering that might result from a life of faith. If God, our Father, calls us to do good, to be zealous to do good, and if this same Father and Author is writing into our story the pain and suffering that accompanies doing good in a sinful world, then we have nothing to fear. In the back of Peter's mind is the time he heard Jesus say, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." What can man do to us in other words? If we strive to do good in all things, and resistance rises, what really do we have to fear? Death? Pah. We belong to Him who conquered death, and made him our servant, an usher standing in the narthex of the cathedral of eternal joys. And really, thats man's only weapon. They can inflict pain, they can torture, they can do really awful things, things that should not be taken lightly. There are horrendous atrocities that occur against the Bride of Christ in this very day and age. In the final analysis, however, all they can do is scrape the surface. They cannot dislodge that which rests in the hands of God Almighty.
Therefore, do not fear. Do not let your hearts be troubled. For you are blessed in suffering for righteousness sake. For it is not your righteousness that you are suffering for. Rather it is the righteousness of the Son of Man, to whom we owe our lives, our freedom, the very air we breathe. His righteousness has delivered us, body and soul from Hell. It is His righteousness that is the bedrock of our hope. For His sake we endure all manner of things. Why? The reason is simple. It is the story that the Author of Life is telling. We are living, breathing characters in a grand drama that is unfolding in time. The great Playwright has chosen us, crafted us, and is positioning us in His story. We are simply called to live in obedience to His story, to love His story, to embrace His story. This great drama is the lifting up of the Son of Man. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. Jesus is Lord. He has been given a kingdom, dominion, power and authority in Heaven and on Earth. He is the King. And He is drawing all men to Himself. This is the story we are in. By His grace we participate in this, by living and breathing the story. Every character, if they are to be interesting, and intriguing to the reader, must endure trials. It is the means to growth and maturity. We are dynamic characters, placed in the middle of pain and suffering, not that we might get lost in it, but that we might learn to endure, learn to rejoice, learn to be content in all things. For we are being prepared for an eternal weight of glory. This preparation takes place in the sight of all men, so that they might hunger for it. So that in witnessing our response to the story they might long to know the Author. This is the basis of evangelism. It is expressed in whatever gifts we have been given, and whatever station we have been given to. As a body working together in unison through our different giftings, we disciple the nations, baptizing and teaching them to obey all that we have been commanded.
Therefore do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in Christ. He sits enthroned in Heaven, governing all things. Every moment of every day is a moment of interaction with the Almighty, a moment in which we see Him work, a moment in which we confess our dependance on Jesus.
