I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Peter 1-5.

    This is the third day in a row where the passage instructs us to rejoice in the suffering we experience. However, we should strive not to do anything which would justify that suffering. The suffering we should seek is the suffering for doing good. We should be proud to suffer for doing good. There is nothing to our credit if we suffer for doing wrong, but if we suffer for doing good we are to be commended. Peter connects his instruction to rejoice in our suffering to his further instructions for us to live holy lives. The process for living such lives is to live sober lives, ridding ourselves of malice and deceit. When Peter says that we should remain sober, I do not think that he is referring to abstinence from alcohol (although I do not believe he would condone getting drunk either). Rather he is referring to not becoming irrationally exuberant. On the other hand, I do not believe that he means for us to be somber, considering that he just wrote that we should rejoice.

    Once more I struggle with the transition to the next thing I want to write about. Peter writes that we should live such good lives among the non-believers around us that, despite the fact that they will accuse us of wrongdoing, they will see our good deeds and glorify God. At least part of this applies to something I started advising my wife to do several years ago. I told her that when our non-Christian friends complained about the terrible things Christians do and say, she should say she was sorry, she hadn’t realized she was doing that. Her response was that they would say, “Oh not you, but other Christians are like that.” I pointed out to her, and told her to point out to them, the two of us are the only Christians most of those friends associate with. If we are not acting in those terrible ways, just exactly who is? My point here is that you are likely the only Christian, or one of only a very few Christians, your non-believer associates actually know. Peter is telling us to live our lives so that, when the time is right, we can ask them who do they trust more, the total stranger who is telling them how terrible Christians they have never met are, or their own judgment?