Beloved, take not [as] strange the fire [of persecution] which has taken place amongst you for [your] trial, as if a strange thing was happening to you;
Peter writes to believers already in the fire, and his first word to them is one of affection, not rebuke. His instruction is simple: do not treat the burning as out of place. But that raises hard questions. What is this fire? Why does God allow it? What is it meant to prove?
The fire Peter names is not general misfortune. It is hostility aimed at believers because of Christ. One writer points out that it does not always look like a furnace:
Persecution today may take a different form; it may be refined, without physical violence, and may come from sources you would least expect, but it will be no less real. Today there is a danger that opposition and persecution for the truth's sake will take us by surprise.
Peter tells them not to be surprised. That assumes they already knew what to expect.
There lay before these early Christians a "fiery trial," and it was indeed already upon them. It very soon became, as we know, an actual trial by fire. They were not to treat it as "some strange thing." This remark teaches us that suffering from the world is the normal thing for the Christian... We may easily come to regard a life of ease and pleasure in the world as the normal thing for us, and persecution as very abnormal. Then, when persecution comes, we feel wronged and shocked.
The same writer traces what this costs the church:
This wrong view of things, and the "softness" that shrinks from "hardness," largely accounts for the great weakness of today. Only a small minority of Christians will stand up for anything, or stand out against anything in the world. A weak spirit of compliance and compromise is in the air. We avoid suffering, but we lose power and joy.
The verse says the fire comes to test them. So what does a real test require?
Christians were not to think the trial they would pass through strange. It might be a fiery trial, one they would feel — and it could only do its work by being felt. A trial is meant to try... We are not to be taken out of the path He walked, and so not out of the circumstances that made that path what it was.
The puzzle is a moral one. The person who avoids sin and seeks God's will is the one who ends up in the fire.
The believer refrains from lust, seeks the will of God, walks in self-control and watchfulness, and seeks in all things that God should be glorified. That such a person should be allowed to pass through a fiery trial might appear a strange thing. It would, however, only appear strange to those believers who viewed the trial in connection with themselves. But look at the trial in connection with Christ — the One they believed in, who had become precious to them, and whom they loved. Then it would no longer appear some strange thing that could not be explained. For the Christ the believer follows is a rejected Christ, who suffered in this world, and whose name men insult.
Peter had been tested himself. That is what fits him to steady others — and his readers had one help he did not have when his own trial came.
Who then was better fitted than this apostle to strengthen the hearts of his brothers when the fire came among them to test them? They should not count it strange, but an honour from God. They had what the apostle did not have when he was tried: the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, as the fruit of Christ's finished work.
So what does the fire say about the person in it?
Therefore we are not to count it strange — foreign to the sphere of faith — when a fiery trial comes; it is God's way of strengthening faith... And when it comes, it is because God in grace has given faith able to bear it. And this is how saints are honoured. Not to be tried, not to have our faith put to the test, is to treat us as babies. The burden is for the shoulders of the strong.
- Beloved — the verse opens with a word of affection. The warning not to shrink under fire comes from Peter's heart to theirs.
- Fire — the trial is persecution for confessing Christ, crude or refined. It has to be felt, since a trial nobody feels cannot test.
- Normal — suffering from the world is the standard Christian experience, not a break in it. Treat it as abnormal and compromise follows, costing power and joy.
- Perspective — measured against yourself, the fire makes no sense. Measured against a rejected Christ whose path you walk, it makes complete sense.
- Honour — to be tested is to be trusted with a burden fit for the strong. Believers face it with the Holy Spirit within, which Peter did not have when he was tried.
but as ye have share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice, that in the revelation of his glory also ye may rejoice with exultation.
Peter writes to Christians under fire, and he does not promise them escape. He tells them their pain is a share in Christ's own sufferings, and that joy comes twice: now, and when His glory appears.
The trial only looks like an accident if we forget whose road we are on. One writer contrasts their fiery trial with what they had expected from their own Scriptures:
How perplexed they must have been! They read their own Scriptures and remembered the promises made to Israel about earthly blessings. And here they were, suffering want and hardship, persecuted and slandered by those around them. He writes to them not to think it strange when they pass through fiery trials. It is not some strange thing happening to them. It is the path the Shepherd went, and the sheep must follow Him. He suffered; it is the believer's privilege to suffer with Him.
Sharing Christ's sufferings has a limit. What He bore for sin, He bore alone. We receive the healing from it; we do not stand in it with Him:
Christ suffered for sin so that we would never have to. His wounds heal us; we do not share in them. What Christ suffered when God forsook Him in wrath, He suffered alone. He did it so that we would never taste one drop of that dreadful cup, which we could not bear. But we are to have a part in the sufferings Christ bore for righteousness, and in those His work of love brought on Him — poor and feeble as our faith is.
Earlier in the letter Peter had commended suffering for doing good. Here he lifts the ground higher. The suffering is now a share in what Christ Himself went through:
Here he goes beyond suffering for righteousness and for doing good. In keeping with the fiery persecution they faced, he reminds them of this: as far as they share, or have fellowship in, the sufferings of Christ, it was theirs to rejoice. Then, when His glory is revealed, they may rejoice with exultation too.
The two halves of the verse belong together. What we share now settles what we will share later:
The sufferings and reproach of Christ have their answer in glory. In the same way, those who suffer for His name's sake will share His glory on the day He is revealed. If the saint takes in the blessedness of that coming glory, it will lead him, in the middle of trial, to "be glad also with exceeding joy." Every bit of suffering that God may allow His people to pass through for Christ's sake is a pledge of coming glory.
Notice that Peter says His glory, not ours. The joy he promises is joy over what happens to Christ:
The Lord endured the cross because of the joy set before Him, and He thought nothing of the shame. In the sufferings of this present time, the saints are always to keep before them the joy they will have when their Lord is revealed in His glory. It is not here the glory that we shall have, but our joy in the glory that He shall have. Still, we know that He will share the glory with His co-heirs.
Peter calls for joy twice: joy now, and joy when the suffering is over. (The phrase "with exceeding joy" below comes from an older translation of this verse.)
We are to rejoice now, while the suffering goes on. Then we shall clearly be conquerors in front of our enemies. But the day of Christ's glory is hurrying on, and then we shall be glad "with exceeding joy." … His supreme glory will crown His supreme sufferings. It will be our honour and joy to share in both. Which shall we see to be the greater honour in that day?
This joy is not the pursuit of hardship for its own sake. The reason for rejoicing lies outside the suffering, in what it connects us to:
What truly sustained the soul of the Christian was the thought of suffering for Christ and with Him, not philosophical theories… Scripture plainly says that the cross is our outward link with Christ, as eternal life is the inward one. For this reason alone, believers are told even to rejoice in trouble. There is no hint of any grim delight in increasing one's burden of sorrow.
- Shared — the fire is not a strange thing but the Shepherd's own road; the sheep follow where He walked.
- Shared, but bounded — He bore the suffering for sin alone, and it heals us; His suffering for righteousness and love is ours to share.
- Shared with a Person — Peter goes past suffering for doing right, to fellowship in the sufferings of Christ Himself.
- Shared as a pledge — every bit of suffering for His name promises a matching share in His glory.
- Shared in joy — rejoice now, in the middle of it. Rejoice with exultation later, when His supreme glory crowns His supreme sufferings.