The New Testament
everywhere presents a multi-faceted view of God in all his perfections. What we are prone to separate the
writers of the New Testament hold together. God is both loving and wrathful. He is both full of mercy and ready to judge. He is both incomparably kind and
manifestly severe. In Peter’s
first epistle he also demonstrates this robust view of God as he recognizes him
as the Father whose mercy brings joy and the Father who is a judge to be
feared. Reflecting on these
attributes can bring balance and perspective to our approach in prayer in
worship. Failure to honor this
balance as found in 1 Peter can lead to truncated and distorted views of God
that adversely affect our Christian walk.
Peter begins his
first epistle with thoughts of God the Father. The phrase “according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father” is loaded with covenantal significance.[1] It speaks of God’s covenantal affection
upon the believers. In verse three
Peter praises “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This praise focuses upon the Father’s
mercy displayed in the guarantee of future salvation which we have hope of now.[2] In light of this the recognized
response on the part of believers is that they “greatly rejoice.”[3] The Father’s mercy has provided salvation
in Jesus Christ and Peter acknowledges that even though the recipients of his
letter have never physically seen the Lord Jesus they nevertheless love him and
“greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.”[4] Wayne Grudem speaks of this joy as “so
profound as to be beyond the power of words to express” and then adds:
It thus reminds us of the value of
singing and other kinds of music in worship, for music often provides a vehicle
for expressing the fullness of joy in a Christian’s heart in a way that is much
more effective than spoken words alone.[5]
Thus, the flow of thought is the
Father giving mercy that produces joy in his people.
Later
in this first chapter Peter again brings up the notion of God as Father. In verses 17-19 Peter writes:
If you address as Father the One
who impartially judges according to each one’s work conduct yourselves in fear
during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with
perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited
from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and
spotless, the blood of Christ.
Here the call for believers is to
recognize that their Father is the one who will judge their works in an
impartial manner. In light of this
reality believers are to live their lives “in fear” while they are on earth. Schreiner helpfully comments in
regards to the nature of this fear:
Abject terror certainly does not
fit with the joy and boldness of the Christian life. Reverence, however, can be watered down so that it becomes
rather insipid. Peter contemplated
the final judgment, where believers will be assessed by their works and heaven
and hell will be at stake…There is a kind of fear that does not contradict
confidence. A confident driver
also possesses a healthy fear of an accident that prevents him from doing
anything foolish. A genuine fear
of judgment hinders believers from giving in to libertinism.[6]
The flow of thought here is that our Father is also the
judge so the appropriate response is a proper fear.
What
is noteworthy is that God is portrayed as both Father and judge with
corresponding responses of joy and fear.
Schreiner captures this dynamic when he writes:
What is remarkable here is that
God’s tenderness and love as Father is mingled with his judgment and the fear
that should mark Christians in this world. Apparently Peter did not think that the two themes negated
each other but are complementary.
The relationship we have with God is both tender and awesome.[7]
Holding these aspects of God’s
revelation in balance can be difficult.
There are some who so stress the father aspects of God and its
corresponding joys of intimacy that all notions of God as judge are subverted. There is also the corresponding error
in which some believers can so stress the judgment of God and his awe-inspiring
holiness that all that is left emotionally to experience is fear. The evangelical church, at times,
suffers from both of these limiting perspectives and is, therefore, adversely
affected in its worship and life.
An
over-emphasis on the kindness of God to the exclusion of any idea of God as
judge is documented in Tanya Luhrmann’s book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship
with God.[8] As a trained psychological
anthropologist Luhrmann spent four years in and among two different Vineyard
churches in an attempt to understand their notions of spirituality. Luhrmann sees a view of God reflected in
the Vineyard churches (which she takes to be representative of evangelical
churches as a whole) that is distinctive and is indicative of a shift in American
Christian spirituality stemming from the counterculture movements of the
1960’s.
The remarkable shift in the
understanding of God and of Jesus in the new paradigm churches of modern
American Christianity is the shift that the counterculture made: toward a
deeply human, even vulnerable God who loves us unconditionally and wants
nothing more than to be our friend, our best friend, as loving and personal and
responsive as a best friend in America should be; and toward a God who is so
supernaturally present, it is as if he does magic and as if our friendship with
him gives us magic, too. God
retains his holy majesty, but he has become a companion, even a buddy to play
with, and the most ordinary man can go to the corner church and learn how to
hear him speak. What we have seen
in the last four or five decades is the democratization of God—I and thou into you and me—and the democratization of intense spiritual experience,
arguably more deeply than ever before in our country’s history.[9]
Luhrmann shows how this view of God
is reflected in the Vineyard churches of which she was a part. She documents how the pastor urged
people to set out a cup of coffee for God so they could talk to God. This pastor encouraged his people to
“hang out” with God, ask God for advice on small details, and to take God to
task when the people thought God was out of line.[10] This also led to women having “date
night” with God.
The women would set aside the
night, and they imagined it romantically: it was a “date.” They might pick up dinner or set out a
plate at the table, and they imagined their way through the evening talking to
God, cuddling with God, and basking in God’s attention.[11]
This is a manifestation of a
profound overemphasis on the “intimacy” of God. This vision of God also impacts the evangelical Contemporary
Christian music industry.
Rarely do you hear of his judgment;
always you are aware of his love; never, ever, does a song suggest you fear his
anger. He is a person: lover,
father, of course, but more remarkably, friend. Best friend.[12]
This quest for intimacy and
friendship with God to the exclusion of all strains of God’s judgment also
leads to songs that “are almost sexual, with a touch so light that the
suggestion could slip past.”[13] In this vision and version of God that Luhrmann
documents something has gone awry.
The perspective of Peter in which God is judge and fear is a proper
component of the Christian life is gone—smothered under the quest for intimacy.
At
the other end of the spectrum are those Christians for whom God is nothing more
than a judge. There is no sense of
his Fatherly pleasure. He is a
distant God in terms of love but his judgment looms large. Such conceptions of God engender little
joy. Klaus Issler aptly comments:
Distortions in our God-image can
prevent us from receiving God’s gracious love—in effect, rendering various
aspects of God’s character as nonexistent. For it is hard to assign the word love to a relationship with God when God feels like a judgmental parent who criticizes us without any
display of affection, or like a legalistic police officer who makes us toe the
line whether we like it or not, or like a distant relative who never seems to
show up.[14]
Perhaps a good barometer of whether
such a distant view of God is taking root is the presence of joy in the
believer’s life. Peter speaks of
this “great rejoicing” in reference to salvation found in Christ Jesus.[15] The sending of the Son by the Father is
the supreme demonstration of the Father’s love.[16] Reflection and meditation on this is
what will sustain joy. Even in the
context of 1 Peter in which the fear of God is being urged there is more than
just the mention of God as judge.
Verses 18-19 connect the thought of “conduct yourselves in fear” with
“knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things…but with precious
blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” As Peter Davids reminds us, “Their
reverential awe before God, however, is not based simply on their recognition
of judgment, but on deep gratitude and wonder at what God has done for them.”[17] The work of Christ in shedding his
blood for the sins of his people becomes a focal point of rejoicing in the love
of God. Without this
cross-centered spirituality the doctrine and experience of the love of God is
truncated and, perhaps, even missing.
Believers
are ever prone to extremes. This
manifests itself in our view of God and his relationship to his people. First Peter gives us a different, more
unified perspective on God. God,
according to Peter, is both a loving Father who has had profound mercy upon his
people and will save them to the uttermost. This produces deep joy in the life of his people. This same Father is also the impartial
judge and his blood bought people are exhorted to live with a wholesome fear
before the Holy One. These are not
contradictory perspectives but, rather, complementary truths that should inform
the worship of God’s people.
Perhaps the Psalmist captured this unified perspective best when he
urged the people to, “Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling.”[18]
[13]
T. M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back,
5. This erotic turn in Christian
worship would not be unprecedented in the history of the church. Leon Podles in his work The Church Impotent: The Feminization of
Christianity (Dallas: Spence, 1999) details how the “bridal mysticism” of
the Middle Ages took on nearly explicit erotic tones in terms of its devotional
literature—see pages 102-108.
