The Judgment that Matters
by Edwin Crozier
Text: I Peter 4.
In I Peter 3:18, the apostle explained that when Jesus suffered once for sins, He was put to death in the flesh, but was made alive in the Spirit. Men killed Him, but God raised Him. Man’s rejection mattered little to Jesus personally. God’s assessment and acceptance mattered more than man’s. This, of course, was also established in I Peter 2:4-8, when Jesus was described as the cornerstone rejected by men but precious and chosen by God.
In this week’s reading, we are told to arm ourselves with the same mindset as Jesus and be willing to suffer. We need to be willing to suffer, as we learned yesterday, because the world around us will not be pleased that we do not walk in the same sinful excesses they do. So they will malign us. But they will give account to God. That is, they will try to hold us to account for not measuring up to them. However, Peter goes on to say God will hold them to account for not measuring up to Jesus.
Then Peter says something I find confusing.
"For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does" (I Peter 4:6 ESV).
A first thought is that Peter is commenting on the statement a few verses earlier about Jesus in the Spirit preaching to folks in the days of Noah (another quite confusing statement). Those people are all dead when Peter is writing; maybe he’s talking about preaching to them. That, however, is not Peter’s point. Peter is driving home two things at once. First, persecution sometimes leads to death. Some of those who heard the gospel and lived for God’s will had not only been maligned but also put to death. The gospel was preached to those who are now dead. Second, gospel surrender leads to life. Though these dead Christians had been judged in the flesh, as people are, because they had heeded the gospel, they live in the Spirit according to God’s ways.
The main point is quite simply this: men will judge and condemn us. They will malign us and belittle us. They may even, as they did to Jesus, trump up charges against us and have us condemned to death according to the laws of men. The gospel is preached to people like this so that when they are killed by men, they will still live by God’s Spirit. The long and short of it is this: the judgment and condemnation from people don’t matter.
Certainly, we aren’t purposefully trying to be hated. We aren’t striving to push people to want to kill us. As Peter will say in I Peter 4:15, we are not to suffer as murderers, thieves, evildoers, or even meddlers. We are not to suffer because in our Christian conduct, we are jerks, purposefully trying to get folks angry with us. If they are judging and condemning us for these reasons, their judgment will matter. On second thought, even in these cases, it is not really that their judgment matters. What matters is God’s judgment. God also judges and condemns murder, thievery, evildoing, meddling, and being a jerk. His judgment against these things is what matters.
This has always been important, but it is especially so for us today. In our post-modern cancel culture, we might easily fear the judgment and condemnation of those who will make a viral video against us, drag our names through the mud, and even get a lot of people to hate us along with them. We don’t have to justify ourselves to them. Rather, we live in the knowledge that God’s judgment is the one that matters, and we continue to live for the will of God. Not our own will. Not the will of our neighbor. God’s will. That’s the will that matters because God’s is the judgment that matters.
Even if man kills us, when we live for God, we will live just like Jesus did.
Praise the Lord!
