Apologetics and the Context of 1 Peter 3:15 [Class Summary]
Once again, God has blessed me with the opportunity to teach a class on Sunday mornings, this time to a group of kids ranging, primarily, from 7th - 9th grade. I’ll be posting the meat of my class summary that I e-mail to the parents of my students here on my blog. I pray it blesses you as you study God’s Word. –dan
Last week's assignment was to read 1 Peter and to figure out why Peter wrote it...what were the recipients of his letter going through, and what was it that he was instructing them to do?
The answer, of course, is that Peter was writing to the churches in Asia minor (modern-day Turkey), to encourage them to live such exemplary lives in the face of the persecution and abuse they were facing, that people outside the church should be in awe and say, "Tell me...how is it that you are able to endure this persecution without becoming bitter?" When we consider this larger context, as well as the verses immediately surrounding 1 Peter 3:15 (the verse from which we get our word "apologetics") we can get a better picture of what's going on:
Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. — 1 Peter 3:13-16
See the language of persecution (highlighted in bold)? There's a lot more in the wider context of this epistle, but I'll leave those as an exercise for you to find on your own.
Application of the text
Okay, so what's the point? I spent last Sunday talking about what apologetics is, and we can't do that without coming to 1 Peter 3:15, because it's where we get our English word "apologetics" in the first place...where the English says "give an answer" or "make a defense," the Greek word behind it is ἀπολογίαν (apologian). But regrettably, I followed in the footsteps of the popular apologists of our day who, by-and-large are neither theologians nor exegetes, but rather philosophers. So, I thought (and taught!) for years that we are called to always be prepared to be able to defend the rationality of the Christian faith: to be prepared to wield a number of arguments for God's existence, to be able to refute evolutionary thinking at every turn, to master science, and to be able to spot logical fallacies in the arguments of my skeptical interlocutors...and I applied myself to that task, amassing a fairly substantial library of dead trees on apologetics in the process. I got to be pretty good at it, too.
Then God said, "You spend a lot of time wielding the works and words of men. When do I get to speak?"
Gulp.
If only I had read 1 Peter for myself (prayerfully), and let God teach me directly from His word rather than taking the "professionals'" word on it.
Look at what Peter says here. First, and foremost, the imperative—the command—of 1 Peter 3:15 is "sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts." What does this mean? Well, as I told the kids, "There are two words in the English language that do not go well together: 'no' and 'Lord'." When Christ tells us something in His Word, it's either His way or the highway. We don't get to make up our own opinions contrary to the Bible and call Him "Lord" or "Master" at the same time (Luke 6:46).
Peter continues with clarification of what "sanctifying Christ as Lord" looks like in a rubber-meets-the-road application: "...always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you." But, in what is our hope? Is it in a "bucket of facts"? Is it in manuscript evidence, archaeological finds that point to the truth of God's Word, fulfilled prophecies, or the statistical probability that so many prophecies would come true in one man? No, of course not...our hope is not in a what, but rather in a Who, which Peter lays out in the very first chapter!
But alas, this e-mail is getting a bit long, so I need to wrap this up before you fall asleep on your keyboard and short it out with drool.
In a nutshell, Peter's saying that we should live our lives in such a way, especially through persecution and abuse, that we should stand out like sore thumbs. And when people outside the church ask us for the reason we're so "weird," we should always be willing and able to give them an answer—and that answer is in the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, that He conquered death, and has promised us an eternity with Him if we only confess with our mouths and Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead. Talk about a reason for hope!
Since Peter is focused on how we interact with the world around us, we call this "external apologetics."
Another kind of apologetics
At the end of class, I quickly had the kids turn to the epistle of Jude, where we read the first three verses. I was taught for years that Jude 3 was all about "fighting (contending) for the faith," which I was all too happy to do. But again, I stopped reading at Jude 3 (because those who taught me always stopped there). I didn't read verse 4 to get Jude's context...combatting heresies inside the church. The Greek which we render as "earnestly contend" contains the word from which we get our word "agonize," and for good reason. Have you ever had to confront someone whom you thought was a brother or sister in the Lord because he or she was not walking in the truth? It's agonizing to have to deal with situations like this.
At the root of it all, though...whether in external apologetics or internal apologetics, Christ must be not only at the center of our approach, but He must be the starting point and the ending point. Furthermore, in biblical apologetics, we don't defend the Scriptures or prove the Scriptures are true any more than a Marine has to present a verbal defense of his M4 carbine or his M249 SAW on the battlefield—the weapons themselves do the talking! As Charles Spurgeon once famously said, "The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself."
You may think that's a mighty bold or even outrageous claim, but I'll prove it to you....in this week's
HOMEWORK
The apostle Paul made five apologias that are recorded in the latter chapters of Acts:
Before the Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 22:1-21)
Before the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:1-6)
Before Felix (Acts 24:10-21)
Before Festus (Acts 25:7-11)
Before Agrippa (Acts 26:1-29)
Your assignment is to pick at least three of these accounts and sketch out Paul's approach. What was his argument in each encounter? What was his focus? Did he prompt his audience to make any decisions? If so, what were they?
Please get your answers from Scripture. Don't cheat yourself by turning to the all-knowing Google and asking for an answer there.