December 22, 2019 Bible Study — Remaining Faithful In the Face of Suffering

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

In this letter Peter has several themes he returns to again and again.  I believe he he does this because these ideas are intertwined with each other.  He primarily focuses on doing good and publicly acknowledging Christ even when it means suffering.  In fact, he writes that doing good and publicly acknowledging Christ will lead to suffering, at the very least in the form of ridicule.  In addition Peter emphasizes the importance of loving one another and having humility.  These latter are the primary expression of what Peter means by “doing good”.  It would be easy when reading this letter to think doing good for our fellow believers would satisfy what Peter means when he writes that we should “lone one another”.  However, we should remember that Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”