Salvation Summaries

Should Christians expect to be persecuted for their faith? 

The Christians that Peter wrote to were experiencing persecution for being a Christian.  This can be seen in the following verses.  

• 1 Peter 4:12-16   12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.  13 But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.  14 If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.  15 If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler.  16 However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. 

• 1 Peter 4:19 So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.

While it is clear that these Christians, who lived nearly 2,000 years ago, were being persecuted for their faith, that doesn’t mean that Christians will be persecuted today, does it?  The answer is “yes.”

As I mentioned in my introduction of 1 Peter, Voice of the Martyrs (https://www.persecution.com) regularly reports on the persecution and suffering that today’s Christians are experiencing in places like the middle east (Iran, Pakistan, etc.), northern Africa, North Korea and China. Some of the Christians here are burned, maimed, shot, imprisoned and killed.  Much of the persecution is from radical Muslims and to some extent communist atheists.

I would guess that many of you who are reading this blog are quite surprised to learn about this persecution overseas, since our national news media has largely chosen not to report it.  The media recently made one exception to this though, as President Obama – likely under pressure from many Christians here – publicly called for the release of American pastor Saeed Abedini, who is being tortured in an Iranian prison for being a Christian.

But you don’t have to live overseas to be persecuted for being a Christian.  In this country, there are some radical Muslims, and growing numbers of agnostics and even atheists (I would guess most of our national media, most college professors and even many school teachers are agnostic with respect to their faith, with a smaller percentage being atheist or Christian), who don’t physically persecute Christians here, but instead ridicule, intimidate and shun them on account of their Biblical beliefs, whether it’s being pro life (rather than abortion), limiting marriage to one man and one woman, or believing in creation rather than evolution.  Further, Christians are often portrayed as lacking in intelligence relative to non-Christians, and refusing to believe in science given their belief in creation (though please note that Christians believe in science too).  

So, why are Christians persecuted for their faith?  Before I answer this, let me ask you a question.   To what extent do you see people of other religions – Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. – being persecuted for their faith?  By and large, you don’t.  Christians, and Jews, are viewed negatively by a growing percentage of the world population, with Christians receiving nearly all of the persecution among religious people today (though millions of Jews have been persecuted in the past).  Simply put, the people who persecute Christians despise the Christian religion, and this includes the people who practice it.  

“But why would they despise Christianity and the Jewish religion?”  I believe that it all goes back to Adam and Eve, when they were tempted in the Garden of Eden.  Who tempted them?  Satan. Why? Satan hates God, and all that God stands for.  God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, an the Holy Spirit are the God of the Christian religion only, and Satan (who is real, just like God is real) and his demons (which are real too, just like angels are) will do everything possible to deceive and mislead people so that they don’t seek the Lord and become a believer.  Satan would despise and hate the Jews too given the love that God had for these people.  Does this mean that Satan could influence certain people to create other religions that lead people away from Christianity (and thus astray)?  I believe so.       

Are Christians responsible to “witness” to others?

One of the reasons I started this blog was to help Christians become better equipped to witness to non-Christians.  There are many dear, loving, and kind people that I know, both friends and relatives, who do not appear to be (or who are not) Christians at this time.  Out of love for them, I want them to know what it means to be a Christian, or saved, and what this in turn means about their chances of going to heaven. I simply can’t stand the thought of people “not making it” to heaven, and ending up in the only alternative to heaven, which is hell.  They simply must be told, and know, the truth. For them to be told, Christians need to understand salvation “in and out,” so that they can be well prepared to effectively witness to others (and answer their questions) about the Good News of God’s salvation.  This is what Peter wanted for the Christians he wrote to.

1 Peter 3:15-16 15 But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

If Peter, a believer, wanted Christians then to be prepared to witness to others, especially to those who sincerely ask questions about the Christian faith, then I believe it is reasonable to assume that today’s Christians should be prepared to do the same.

Does baptism save you?

There is a verse in 1 Peter which says that baptism saves you. Does this really mean what it says, and does this baptism refer to water baptism?

1 Peter 3:18-22 18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, 19 through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison 20 who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also– not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand– with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

I’ll say up front that this is another one of those verses that I’ll need to “come back to” after I study other books of the Bible on salvation and its connection to baptism, as I don’t fully understand what Peter is saying here.  Why, for example, does he even introduce Noah into his line of reasoning?  What does baptism have to do with Noah’s ark?  Yes, water was involved, but those in the ark didn’t get wet (unlike those who are baptized with sprinkling or immersion). What is the “pledge of a good conscience” and how does this relate to faith?

Here is what I understand these verses to mean now:

1) Noah and his family were “saved through water” – this does not refer to their spiritual salvation, instead, it simply refers to their being saved from physical death (drowning in the water).  Please note that the verse does not say or imply that Noah and his family were baptized.

2)  Baptism in these verses is not referring to being baptized with water (“not the removal of drift from the body”) but rather to “the pledge of a good conscience toward God” and “the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  Does this mean that baptism includes a verbal pledge to believe in and obey God, and to believe in Christ’s resurrection from the dead?  Possibly, but I won’t know for sure until I research this issue more.

CONCLUSION

In 1 Peter, we learned that God saved the Christians to whom Peter wrote; the Christians had no role in their salvation.  While it would seem appropriate to believe that God saves people today in the same way He saved those in 1 Peter, more verses on salvation need to be reviewed before concluding this.

According to Peter, a person is born again by God and through God’s word.  Being born again means receiving a new birth, a spiritual birth, and with it you receive assurance of eternal life in heaven.  As we will learn in the book of John, a person cannot go to heaven unless he or she is born again. Some may argue that this is too exclusive; that there are many roads that lead to heaven, but I showed in Part 2 of 3 the fallacy in this line of thinking.

Christians are to live holy and good lives, in part so that non-Christians can see how they live and want to learn more about the God they worship.  Christians cannot live holy and good lives just by sheer effort or commitment though.  They can only do so by having the Holy Spirit within them, and faith.

Christians were persecuted for their faith in the days of Peter, and they are persecuted for their faith today, even though you rarely (if ever) hear about this (from national and local media).  That people of other religions (excluding the Jews) are not persecuted for their faith tells you something about why believers in God are persecuted.

Christians are responsible to be well prepared to witness to others, and in a gentle and respectful way.  One of the reasons I created this blog was to help Christians be better equipped to do just that.

I had to “punt” on the last question of whether baptism saves a person, because I do not yet fully understand the set of verses on it.