Themes of subversion in 1 Peter 4:7-19
The small and humble way; the communal way
…The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
4:7-111
“The end of all things is near,” but we don’t know how near in human terms. The only way through is faith, for all the logic of the world proves us fools when we follow the advice in this letter. Peter addresses this again in his second letter, saying,
in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” …But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you…
2 Peter 3:3-9
To act from faith means to recognize that it makes no sense to do the work of the daytime when it’s three hours past midnight, but this is our righteous act: for the antithesis of sin is not the pursuit of efficacious virtue visible to the world, but to act from faith.2 As Paul says, everything that does not come from faith is sin. The results of our actions are resigned to the hands of God; He may use them or discard them as fits His design. Easier said than done, I suppose, on our part.
“When the clergyman says it in church we all understand it, and if a man tries to express it existentially during the six days of the week so that people notice it, it is not long before we all understand—that he is crazy.” — Søren Kierkegaard
3These verses in chapter 4 are another summary of the actions we’re called to perform that the world can’t understand. If you think the world understands “loving one another deeply” or “offering hospitality without grumbling,” think of how it will be comprehended when we perform these acts at the expense of ourselves, our families, and our businesses: loving the thief who breaks into your home and offering hospitality; giving the homeless man a job, knowing he will likely be more headache than helpful; leaving a lucrative job to pursue one that does more good or less harm; refusing a handout from the state. To take Peter’s words seriously will lower our socioeconomic status—there’s no way around it.
“They are surprised” when we subvert their expectations, says Peter, but we shouldn’t be. They are skeptical that we can subvert the powers through these acts of love at our own expense, but we shouldn’t be.
Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
4:12-13
“As iron cast into fire loses its rust and becomes glowing white, so he who turns completely to God is stripped of his sluggishness and changed into a new man.” — Thomas à Kempis
4Any suffering caused by our obedience of faith is reason for joy. The world suggests one response to injustice, the Bible another. How fundamental is this, and yet how little do we Christians recognize it? Civic duty and violence are the world’s way: find the “bad guys” and make them pay, replace them with the “good guys.”5 J. Bronson Barringer comments,
When one experiences unjust suffering, oppression unleashed by the powers, there is a temptation to lash out against those forces or to rebel in hopes of establishing a new order. This approach simply perpetuates the power struggles, shifting the power from one person or group to another. Peter offers no such option to Christians. He suggests an alternative way of being in the world. [4:8-11] is the alternative Peter offers for subverting the powers while avoiding being drawn into them. It is an important word because as Ellul writes, “When the church has been seduced by the ruling classes, becoming a power or being obsessed with politics, this is tantamount to its possession by the prince of this world himself.”6
First Peter is a manifesto of sorts in which Christianity is set against the powers. These powers, the ones upholding the hierarchies Christ came to destroy, are undermined by this band of aliens and strangers who claim Jesus is Lord…
Peter’s letter maintains that Christians subvert the powers not by violence, or rebellious revolution, but through the faithful witness of righteous suffering. Non-coercion and voluntary association, and the equality of persons are part and parcel of such a witness. Each calls into question the legitimacy of the powers, and exposes their sinfulness, challenging each person to glorify God rather than self.7
Just because Peter’s strategy is countercultural and counterintuitive doesn’t mean it isn’t exactly what our world needs. It is what we need, whether the world recognizes it or not! Worldly logic has us barreling toward oblivion,8 and our culture is suffering, but Peter points to acts that build the solution, that embody the Kingdom of God. It’s exactly what we need.
“In our disintegrating society, the public sphere and the sphere of intimacy atrophy at the same time.” — Alexander Kluge
Peter proposes acts of intimacy among each other, showing the world a curious, perhaps irresistible, public solution. Wendell Berry’s words on this are so fitting in the context of 1 Peter:
“This has become, to some extent at least, an argument against institutional solutions. Such solutions necessarily fail to solve the problems to which they are addressed because, by definition, they cannot consider the real causes. The only real, practical, hope-giving way to remedy the fragmentation that is the disease of the modern spirit is a small and humble way—a way that a government or agency or organization or institution will never think of, though a person may think of it: one must begin in one's own life the private solutions that can only in turn become public solutions.”9
Peter’s message is a challenging one, a convicting one. Who can accept it? To live this way is to drink the cup of wrath poured out on all the nations; it is to take part in the Eucharist, the Communion; it is to eat God’s flesh and drink His blood; it is to be poured out alongside God for the sake of a neighbor. Impossible, and yet God promises to provide never-ending manna for us to eat as we do this.10
If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And,
“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.
4:14-19
Bible quotations are in NIV. Verse addresses without a book reference are for 1 Peter.
Quote is from Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the “Philosophical Fragments” as translated by David F. Swenson, Lillian Marvin Swenson, and Walter Lowrie. Also found in pg 233 of A Kierkegaard Anthology by Robert Bretall.
Quote is from The Imitation of Christ (c. 1420 AD), translated by Aloysius Croft and Harold Bolton.
I am by no means condemning either civic action or violence. I think they have their place, but they are truly idols in the modern world in every sense of the word. The logic of those who use them most does not hold up to their own supposed scrutiny; to blindly partake is idolatry, rejection of God. We are all guilty of this very thing. It is the original sin of the modern age: by the time we are aware of our society’s evils, we are steeped in participation and shared guilt. Only through faith and by grace is there escape.
Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, pg 180. Eerdmans, 1986.
J. Bronson Barringer, Subordination and Freedom: Tracing Anarchist Themes in First Peter, pg 166-168. In: Christoyannopaulos, A. and Adams, M.S. (eds.), Essays in Anarchism and Religion, Vol. II. Stockholm University Press, 2018.
One of the most obvious philosophical expressions of this logic even has a name now: “effective accelerationism,” or “E/ACC.”
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, pg 23 in my copy (3rd ed.). Sierra Club Books, 1996.