Lent is first and foremost about the gospel making its way deeper into our lives. Lent is a season of preparation and repentance during which we anticipate the death and resurrection of Jesus.

To call Christ Lord and proclaim God to be King is to be humbled under God’s mighty display of eternal power rather than to cower before the pale might of any earthly ruler.

If we are going to get safely through the ‘fiery ordeal’ (cf. 1 Peter 4:12-19), we need to have gospel-centered elders who lead like Jesus and gospel-centered church members who submit to them.

Joy, even while in the throes of persecution, is a foretaste of the ecstasy that will accompany Christ’s return… Those who share in Christ’s sufferings will also share in his glorification (see 2 Tim 2:12).

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.”

Though 1 Peter 3:18-22 is radically complicated, it grounds our willingness to suffer unjustly for the sake of Jesus in the fact of Jesus’s willingness to suffer unjustly in order to bring us to God.

When we remember the Story of God and our place in it, 1 Peter 3:13-17 teaches us that we should fearlessly keep doing good, not be afraid, and honor Christ in everything we do. 

This Sunday looked a bit different as we took a pause and slowed down to engage in both an ancient and Biblical practice of reading the Scriptures aloud

Ultimately, Peter’s call [especially] for wives and husbands to behave like Jesus — even when life is supremely unfair — is something that every Christian should be able to identify with