New Testament scholar, Ruth Anne Reese of Asbury Seminary led our clergy leader group this week in a two session study of I & II Peter and how the introductions of these letters offer good news to our unchurched culture.
She explained that we are now living between two dominant cultures which are modern and post-modern. The culture of modernity doesn't take the problem of evil seriously and the culture of post-modernity doesn't offer any hope.
Peter, in writing his epistles, offers a different worldview that on one hand, takes the problem of evil seriously, and on the other hand, offers hope. I Peter 1:3-4 states, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven for you."
In a nutshell, Peter is offering the good news that we have a living hope because of what Jesus Christ has done for us and this gives us hope for the present as well as the future.
In the opening of II Peter, the focus is on how the good news of Jesus Christ can also help us to be the people we were created to be for the benefit of others. Ruth Anne Reese pointed out that the virtues that we find in verses 5-7 were highly prized virtues of the Greco-Roman world, but these virtues need to be rooted in the good news of Jesus Christ, rather than in the pagan gods of Rome. He lists the commonly held virtues of goodness, knowledge, self-control, and mutual affection.
By relating to the culture of his day, Peter is helping his readers to embrace the good news of Jesus Christ so that they can live out these virtues through the strength of God's mercy which is a gift from God. This is the worldview that the church has to offer our modern/post-modern culture of the 21st century.
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