What does it mean to be tested by fire (1 Peter 1:7)?

Your difficulty is not mine, very likely, and you may look at me with an envious eye and say, It is all very well for you. Well, is it? I may have testings of which you know nothing. Testings are so manifold. Because I don't visibly have something you have, it doesn't mean I have nothing at all. I may have that of which you know nothing. Indeed I am sure I have. There are manifold temptations, and we are oftentimes in heaviness through manifold temptations. We feel it. The weight of them comes- down upon us and we cannot escape the weight, and, let me tell you this, we are not intended to. We are intended to feel these things; so that we are tested by them. The test that they impose upon us works out things of value as the next verse says.

Verse 7 speaks of faith again, and every word of the verse is full of meaning. The trial of your faith is like the refining of gold; and, you observe it says, "of gold that perishes." Gold does not perish very easily. No. When they dug up poor old Tutankhamen, with all his splendid surroundings, there were things of papyrus and fine linen of Egypt, brown with age and at a touch crumbling to pieces. But there were things of gold, and they were not much affected compared with all the other objects in that famous tomb. Gold is an enduring thing but it perishes; the inference evidently being that faith does not. Faith is much more precious than gold that perishes. God treasures your faith, and that is the adjective He applies to it. In the sight of God faith is something of very, very great price.

Why does that goldsmith take all the pains and spend time over his crucible in which gold is being refined? Because it is such a valuable thing he wants to remove the dross and have it of the finest quality. God permits His people to be put into the crucible and tries them, even by fire, but it is because faith in His estimation is a thing of exceeding value. So we are going to look at our testings in the light of this, God is dealing with us for the refining of faith, and to strengthen it. The fact of the matter is, if we Christians suffer no testings we shall never be anything but weaklings in a spiritual sense: It is the very testings that make us spiritually strong.

Now I am going back for a moment to verse 6. There are two main clauses here. You greatly rejoice in the coming salvation though now "for a season" and "if need be" you are in heaviness through manifold temptations. It is a fact that we shall never be in heaviness through manifold temptations except there is a "needs be" for it. God does not test us capriciously. It is not that He delights in our testings and our heavinesss or even in chastening or rebuking or scourging; we are assured of that in Hebrews 12. So we each have to say to ourselves, If God did not see some spiritual need to be met I should not be face to face with, and under the heavy pressure of, this trial.

Secondly, we are reminded that there is a need for these sorrows, for these trials are for “a season, if need be”. The Father does not cause His children a needless tear. The needs be is to prove our faith. This does not mean to prove whether we have faith, but rather to make manifest the preciousness of the faith we have. Gold is not put into the fire to prove that it is gold, but to bring out the precious qualities of the metal. So God proves our faith by various trials to bring out the precious qualities of our faith. Faith, counting upon God in the trial, leads to submission to what God allows: faith in God enables the soul to wait in patience (James 1:3). Faith in God enables the believer to be steadfast against the attacks of the enemy (1 Peter 5:9). The soul may have true faith, but when the trial comes these blessed qualities of faith — submission, patience, steadfastness, confidence and dependence upon God — become manifest.

Thirdly, we learn that trials have a blessed answer in the coming day of glory. The manifestation of these qualities in the day of trial will lead to praise and honour and glory in the day of Jesus Christ. We are apt to think that a time of deep trial, which may prevent us from taking part in active service for the Lord, is all lost time. No, says God, it will be “found to praise” at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

He now goes on to speak of the contrast which must needs abide between the present time and the blessed end to which they are looking. The joy they have is not lessened, but in some sense heightened even, by the trial — this itself, while being only for a time, having its own necessity in the proving of their faith. This involves, indeed, the trial being felt as trial. Christians are not ordained to float over everything, as it were, without feeling it. It would have no meaning or purpose if this were so. The trial worketh, as the apostle has told us in Hebrews, "the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby." The exercise, therefore, is necessary; — it may be the being left for a while to wonder, therefore, what the trial means, — sometimes only to learn in it the patience which belongs to those who are under the Father's hand, and for whom every cup they drain is mixed by a Father's love. It is not discipline that the apostle speaks of here so much, but rather the opportunity that faith has to show itself, and to find recognition of God in the time when everything will be made manifest — a faith which is, as he observes here, "more precious than the gold that perisheth, even though it be proved by fire." The fire would not prove that the gold was not gold. It would only bring that out more certainly; and if it were not gold in the estimation of the Prover, there would be no good in the proving. God proves, that He may draw from us that which He sees is there, and which He desires to be able to put to our account; and in the joy as well as in the trial faith has to be in constant activity, Christ as the object of the heart being One in whom faith alone finds deliverance from the power of things around; "whom," says the apostle, "having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." "Glorified," the last word is — already entering into that which is to come. The joy of eternity is the joy of the present, and we receive in due time the end of faith, the soul's deliverance from all that here assails and afflicts. If we always regarded trials as the apostle teaches us here to regard them, how different oftentimes would they seem to us! The enemy would use them to create distrust of the perfect wisdom or the perfect love which is employed about us, or to fix our minds even unhealthily, it may be, upon ourselves. For, as the apostle's thorn in the flesh reminds us, even that which is true discipline for us by the way is not necessarily the result of actual failure on our part, although it does show us needs we have, to which the discipline is meant to minister. But self-occupation is never God's design in it. If we have learnt how God has already proclaimed the hopelessness of the flesh, and given us deliverance from it, the end of self-judgment itself is only to turn us from ourselves, and to occupy us with this one unfailing Object of which the apostle has been speaking — with the brightness and not with the darkness — with the glory of God already revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ, the light shining more and more upon the road which leads to Himself.

But Peter speaks not here of faith (in Christ as the object of faith) as reckoned for righteousness, but of the believer's faith after righteousness is reckoned, of faith as the power of divine life in the believer, wherein is manifested the power of the Holy Spirit Who works in us, so that we overcome the world, and all temptation. Such faith becomes more precious than gold proved with fire. The believer has to show the genuineness of his faith by his works; for as James says (James 2:14. etc.), faith without works is dead. Indeed, the power of the Spirit of God is needed at the first to enable the contrite soul to believe in Christ in Whom is redemption, even the forgiveness of sins. And so interwoven are the two principles that His power is absolutely requisite for faith and consequent peace through the work of Christ for us, as it is for holiness of life in us after we have believed in Him. Peter says the trial (proof) of your faith, i.e. of you believers. The believer is identified with his faith, his victory is commensurate with his faith; and the fiercer the fires that try, the higher the praise that redounds to Christ. Faith untried is like ore containing gold; it must be put into the furnace that the dross may be consumed. There may be any quantity of unsuspected unbelief, and therefore unholiness: all must be purged that faith unalloyed may be found unto His praise and glory and honour at His appearing. The fires which try faith sometimes expose much that we did not suspect. But God, Who gives the faith, guides the trial, and sustains the believer all through. There is the obedience of faith, and the confidence of faith; the dependence, endurance, and trust of faith. In glory we shall sing its victory to His praise. A foretaste of victory is given now; but it is known only to Him Who gives and to him who receives.

But the pathway of trial has a very bright end. "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:7). Faith's sphere is on earth, and God tries it. He never gives faith that He does not prove it; and this brings forth the fruit that will appear by-and-bye, when everything is made manifest, at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

Moreover, the very trials themselves are profitable as working in us — in our character and lives — the qualities that glorify God. Hence verse 7 declares that faith (which is much more precious than gold) being tested by the fire of persecution, will come out to the praise and honour and glory of God when Christ appears. Many a bold confessor, suffering fiery trial — even to death perhaps — may have been tempted to think that, their light being extinguished, all was lost. The apostle tells them that, on the contrary, all would be found in that day. Christ being revealed in His glory, everything to His praise and honour will come into the light and be displayed.

There are other trials which have their root in unfaithfulness. God permits such, but does not directly send them, and surely controls and guides to a gracious result, for His mercy endureth for over. Such trials become rods in His chastening hand; but when God sends trial to a faithful saint it is for the purpose of proving faith, which is more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, and of giving further lessons in the school of faith. The fruitful branch is purged that it may bring forth more fruit. More fruit is God's object. Hidden things may be in the heart of the faithful unknown and therefore unjudged. The trial is sent to disclose the hidden thing that it may be purged away. Not all trials are chastisements. We should gravely err if we judged every suffering saint to be under discipline through failure. Where there is faithfulness we often see what appears to be heaviest trials, but in truth it is for the display of the sustaining power of grace that others may see and learn.

We get light as to what the need is in a general way in the seventh verse of 1 Peter 1. "The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes." Faith is much more precious than gold, though it be tried with fire, referring to the most intense form of testing. Faith is never lost. How often it has happened that a devoted missionary has gone forth, filled with love to Christ and souls. He has been like a shining lamp for a brief hour, and has been called home. We say there must have been some mistake. Here was that devoted man, who went to China and had just begun to acquire a command of the language; it looked as if he would be greatly used of God, but he has died. All that is lost.

No, not lost; it is going to be found! It says, it "shall be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." The thing that seemed to be lost is going to be found. What a finding it will be when that hour is reached! It will be found to praise and honour and glory. Whose? That of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the hour when He appears in glory, though He will have His own glory, and the glory of the Father, and the glory of the holy angels, He will not be too great to wear a little glory that has been brought to Him by these things which we imagined were lost.

And then the absurdity of unbelief! How can that One who gave His life for us — who left His glory and came down into this world of toil and misery and died a shameful death to deliver us from eternal wrath — how can such a One ever fail to care for us? But yet we are ready to doubt, or we grow impatient under the trial of our faith, forgetting that the very trial from which we so shrink and under which we so wince is far more precious than gold, for the former is an imperishable reality, whereas the latter must perish in the using. The more genuine faith is tried, the brighter it shines; and hence the trial, however severe, is sure to issue in praise and honour and glory to Him who not only implants the faith, but also passes it through the furnace and sedulously watches it therein.