1 Peter: Is All of This Worth It?预览

Around thirty-five years after Jesus Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, one of His closest followers, Simon Peter, wrote a letter from Rome to churches spread across the northeast corner of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). It is a letter of encouragement and exhortation. To be a Christian in this time and place meant rejecting common cultural practices and embracing a new way of living. Being a follower of Jesus wasn’t the cool thing to do. In fact, in Rome, Nero was blaming Christians for a fire that it seems he might have started. Not only blaming them, but actively killing them. That kind of persecution hadn’t yet spread to this part of the world, but it was coming. By the time the apostle John would write the book of Revelation (AD 90), these churches that received Peter’s first letter would be experiencing their own intense persecution. 

ASK:

-What words or phrase stood out to you as you read this letter for the first time? 

-How would you describe the tone of the letter?

TAKE A NEXT STEP: 

On six different days of this study you will read or listen to all five chapters of 1 Peter. Why? Because letters are meant to be read all at once. A messenger would have brought Peter’s letter to the church and read it aloud to the gathered church. Each time you read imagine that you are a new follower of Jesus in one of those churches in a region that is hostile to your faith. Ask yourself: What is Peter’s letter teaching me? What is it teaching all of us who make up the Church?