“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love”
(1 Peter 1:7,8).
When Jesus turned, and looked at Peter (Luke 22:61), I wonder how deeply He looked. Did he see Peter when He first called him, following Him along familiar shores and through the villages over the past three years? Then through to this night, then to Jerusalem, Calvary, the empty tomb. Then to the day of Pentecost, where Peter would stand before the people, and preached the Christ he is now denying. Did He see Peter going to Samaria, through Lydda and Joppa, and into the house of Cornelius at Caesarea, collecting all His saints. That look of love must have been a full look.
The New Testament doesn’t give us every road Peter traveled during thirty plus years of ministry. It does tell us that he was in Antioch. His first letter reaches believers scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. At the road’s end, greetings come from “the church that is at Babylon” (Chapter 5). The early church understood Babylon as code for mighty Rome. Think of the distance in those two names: Galilee and Rome. A fisherman beside the sea, now witnessing of Christ in the heart of the beast.
And in that great city, according to the early church’s testimony, Peter’s road finally came to an end. Under Nero he was put to death by crucifixion. The tradition preserved by Origen and Eusebius says that as an old man, Peter was led out to be crucified. He asked that his head would be toward the ground. He did not count himself worthy to die the same way as his Lord. We have no record of his final words. So we won’t pretend we do, or say what passed through his mind as he was crucified.
But we certainly can remember what Jesus had said to him on the shore of Galilee, three decades earlier: “another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not” (John 21:18). We are being told there, what the Lord spoke to signify what manner of death Peter would glorify God by. No angel helped him escape this time. He was carried “whither he wouldest not.” And Jesus’ words along that road were still, “Follow me.” “Feed my lambs.”
Now listen to what Peter wrote to the church: “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” Peter wrote to souls already “in heaviness through manifold temptations.” Palpable grief. He called it “fire”. Faith, fire proven, was precious to Jesus.
Perhaps, as we reflect on communion season, we can hear his words with a little more Peter behind them. Led through the door of sifting, failure, shame, through the door of pardon and restoration, to the open road of gospel strengthening. And history tells us that he would come at last to a door that did not open into another earthly morning, but that eternal day.
“The trial of your faith.” Dear one, what is it? Let Peter strengthen you. The Lord knows the storm swirling around your life: its dampness, its length, its darkness, touching that part of your heart most painfully. Some trials come all of the sudden. Others follow a familiar road through our days. We will be shaken more deeply than expected. We will discover our own little strength. Peter discovered that. Yet the faith for which Jesus prayed, would find praise and glory at the end of our sifting. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
Peter is speaking to us as a flock as well. The trial of our church’s faith comes quietly, through the voice of a world that asks for our heart, piece by little piece. We are pulled in a thousand directions until we can no longer know the certain sound of God’s Word. We begin to prize the gold that perishes. William Greenhill’s Stop Loving the World, is a searching little book for such a time as this. It asks us to consider, what of this world, has gained our hearts.
But Peter brings us further than a warning about the world. He brings us to a Person: “Whom having not seen, ye love.” He had seen Jesus. He had listened to His voice every day. In the upper room he heard Jesus, felt His look in the courtyard, and received His mercy after the resurrection. We have not seen Him with our eyes. Oh, to have that direct kind of assurance. Yet Peter says that we have a more sure word of prophesy (2 Pet. 1:19), than even His physical presence. By the Spirit, through the Word, we know the Savior who loved His own unto the end, bore their sins, rose again, and ever lives to keep you in safety.
What, then, will become of the trial of our faith? All I know is, like Peter’s, it has an end. Peter calls it: “the appearing of Jesus Christ.” The fire of trial will not burn forever, dear one. It has precious purpose. The gold we now love, will perish. Oh, Christ will appear, at our death or in the clouds, and the faith He has kept through every storm…will be unto praise and honor and glory forever.
Peter was taken farther than that young fisherman could have imagined; from Galilee to Jerusalem, from prison into the heart of Babylon herself, and at last to an upside down cross. Mile by mile, the Lord who prayed for him, kept him. He will keep us also: as single souls, as families, and as a flock together, loving the Christ whom we have not seen, until the day we see Him.