Painful joy through testing of faith
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2010 · 24 January 2010
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Christianity is a life of painful joy. The Old Testament commands us to delight ourselves in the Lord (Psalm 37:4) and to serve the Lord with gladness (Psalm 100:2) and to rejoice before the Lord our God in all our undertakings (Deuteronomy 12:18).
Jesus commands us, "Rejoice and leap for joy for your reward is great in heaven" (Luke 6:23), and he tells us, "These things I have spoken to you that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full" (John 15:11).
The apostle Paul commands us, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice" (Philippians 4:4). He says that he is a worker with us for our joy (2 Corinthians 1:24) and that he lives for the advancement and joy of our faith (Philippians 1:25), and in 2 Corinthians 9:7 it says that God loves a cheerful giver.
He tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is joy (Galatians 5:22). And so it is with the other writers of Scripture. The message is: Christianity is a life of tremendous and abiding joy. Now Peter picks up this great theme in verse 6 and shows us two great reasons for joy, and in the process, why it is painful joy.
1. The Promise of a Great Future. Let me just remind you of the first reason since that's what Peter does at the beginning of verse 6. He says, "In this you greatly rejoice." The word "this" refers to the first reason for great joy. It refers back to what we've seen in verses 3–5.
Verse 3: God caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection from the dead. Verse 4: God is keeping an inheritance for us in heaven that can't perish or soil or fade. Verse 5: God is keeping us for that inheritance.
There's an inheritance and believers are the inheritors. And the first basis of our joy is that God is keeping both: He is keeping the inheritance perfect for us; and He is keeping us in faith so that we will in fact not make shipwreck of our faith and lose the inheritance.
So in verse 6 Peter says, "In this you rejoice." The first reason for our joy is the great future God promises us and his unswerving commitment to keep it for us and us for it. In other words, our joy is based on the happiness of our future with God and the certainty that we will make it there.
Christian joy is almost synonymous with Christian hope. That's why Peter says in verse 3 that we were born again into a living hope; then verses 4 and 5 describe the content of that hope; and then verse 6 begins, "in this you rejoice." In this you have living, vital, life-changing hope; and in this you rejoice. Our hope is our joy.
2. A Design for Our Troubles. The second reason is that God has a design for our distresses in this life. This is what verses 6 and 7 are about—God's design for our distress.
These troubles themselves have a part in getting us ready to enjoy the inheritance to the fullest possible measure. We don't just look beyond these difficult times to the sure hope; we look at God's design in these struggles and see how God is working these misfortunes together for our good.
Let's look at this design in verses 6 and 7. First, where do I get the idea that our disasters are designed by God for our good? I get it from the phrase "if necessary" in verse 6 and the word "so that" in the beginning of verse 7.
Verse 6 says, "In this you rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials." What kind of necessity is this? Who or what is making the distress of these trials "necessary"?
The answer is God. Peter makes it plain that Christian distress only happens if God wills it. For example, in 1 Peter 3:17 he says, "For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil."
You might suffer for doing what is right; you might not. The ultimate choice is God's. "If that should be God’s will," means maybe we will or maybe we won't. Or again in 1 Peter 4:19 he says, "Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good."
In other words, Peter is teaching that the sovereign will of God governs all the distresses that happen to us and, therefore the design in them is not ultimately the design of evil men or the design of Satan (which are real enough!), but is a design of God.
So when Peter says in verse 6, "If necessary, you have been distressed by various trials," he means, "If God deems it necessary." But why would God do that? This leads us to the word "that" or "so that" in the beginning of verse 7.
This gives the reason why God would deem it necessary that we be distressed by various trials: "that [or so that] the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
What this verse does is spell out the design of our troubles. His design is that our problems would refine our faith the way fire refines gold so that when Christ comes back, the quality of our faith would win praise and glory and honor.
Then does God will our suffering and distress? Now I know that this raises a painful and troubling question. We are not playing games here. We are talking about the realty of your life and my life this very day.
Does God will the break up of your marriage? Does God will your cancer, your homosexual orientation, the rebellion of your child, the loss of your job, the threatening chaos in Haiti and Afganistan and Somalia?
I will give you my answer, which I believe to be the biblical one, based on texts like 1 Peter 3:17 and 4:19. The answer is No, God does not will it, and Yes, he does. No, in the sense that he does not delight in pain for its own sake; He does not command sin or approve of sinning.
But Yes, He does will that these things be, in the sense that He could prevent any of those things but sometimes does not, but rather guides them, because of His designs are higher than the destructiveness of sin or the deceitfulness of Satan or the painfulness of suffering.
When Christians suffer for doing right, sin is happening to them. But 1 Peter 3:17 says that sometimes God wills that this happen. He does not endorse or approve sinning, but He can and does will that sinful acts come about for His own holy designs.
When Christ was murdered on the cross, it was also sin, but God willed that it happen: "It was the will of the Lord to bruise him" (Isaiah 53:10). And by that will we are saved.
There are five elements of God's design in our troubles. Now in this divine design in our difficulties, we must learn what these elements are. Because knowing this is the means we can have joy even in and through our problems.
1. Various Trials. In God's design, our distresses are made up of various trials. Verse 6b: "if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials." The point is that the variety of ways that we experience distress is great and is related to our condition.
So in God's design it is "necessary," He says, to use a wide range of trials. There is not just one kind of trial in view here. God paints with many colors, there are many dark and many bright. And in the end the canvas of your life will be glorious, if you entrust your soul to your faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19).
2. Brief troubles. In God's viewpoint, all my distresses are brief. Verse 6 again, "In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials."
Brief is very relative, isn't it? If you say, "He can hold his breath a long time," you mean two or three minutes. That's long for breath-holding. But if you say, "He's been working at this company for a long time," you mean perhaps 15 or 20 years.
So it is with the phrase "little while" in this verse. Compared to others and compared to a lifetime on earth, your distresses may last a long time not a little. But compared to eternity, compared to the inheritance imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, they are only for a little time.
Peter shares James' perspective on this life: "You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away" (James 4:14). Compared to the length and greatness of the future God has planned for you, all the distresses of this life are very little in deed (cf. 5:10).
3. Grievous Trials. In God's design, our trials are grievous. They are distresses. The word in verse 6 ("you have been distressed by various trials") means grieved, sorrowed. It's not double-talk when Peter says, "In this you are rejoicing, though now for a little while in this life you are grieved."
You are rejoicing though you are grieved. We know this is not a mistake, because Paul said he experienced this very thing. In 2 Corinthians 6:10 he says he lives "as sorrowful [same word] yet always rejoicing."
In God's design for our trials there is a place for real, authentic grieving and distress. But this experience is fundamentally altered from the way the world experiences these things. We know there is a Godly design in it all. Unbelievers always blame ‘mother nature.’
And so our root stays planted even though the branches thrash in the wind. And the leaves remain green and the fruit keeps growing because our roots go down by the stream of God's sovereign grace, and we trust him for a good design.
4. Like Refining Fire. In God's design, our distresses are like the fire that refines gold from its impurities. Verse 7: "that the proof [or genuineness] of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
Near Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold and tellurium occur mixed as tellurite ore. The refining methods of the early mining camps could not separate the two elements, so the ore was thrown into a scrap heap.
One day a miner mistook a lump of ore for coal and tossed it into his stove. Later, while removing ashes from the stove, he found the bottom littered with beads of pure gold. The heat had burned away the tellurium, leaving the gold in a purified state.
When gold is melted in the fire the impurities can be removed. When the refining fire is over, the gold is even more valuable. So it is with your faith in God. You’ll have stronger faith and you will trust His promises.
We all still have many impurities. There are elements of murmuring and pessimism (I speak from painful experience). And there are tendencies to trust money and position and popularity alongside God, dirt mingled with the gold of faith.
These impurities in our faith hinder our fullest experience of the goodness and greatness of God. So God designs to refine our faith with the fires of trial and distress. His aim is that our faith be more pure and more genuine. That is, that it be more utterly dependent on Him and not on things and other persons for our joy.
One of the best illustrations of how this works comes from the experience the apostle Paul. In 2 Corinthians 1:8–9 Paul described this very refining design of God in his distress.
"We do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life [that's the fire]; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead [that's the gold]."
God took away from Paul an ordinary prop of safety and let him feel an almost overwhelming sense of human abandonment. This was the fire of 1 Peter 1:7. Not because God didn't love Paul, but because God saw Paul's faith as gold worthy of refining.
5. Our Faith Receiving Praise, Glory, and Honor. Finally, in God's design, the result of this refining is that our faith will receive praise and honor and glory. Verse 7: "that the proof of your faith . . . may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
When Jesus appears in glory, two things are going to happen. His glory will be magnificently reflected in the mirror of our faith. He will be the trusted one and the hoped-for one and the rejoiced-in one. And the more refined the gold of our faith, the more clearly his worth will be reflected.
But since God exalts those who exalt Him, He will give praise and honor and glory to our faith. He will say in Matthew 25:21, "Well done, good and faithful servant." He will give us (as Peter says in 5:4) "the unfading crown of glory."
And we will finally realize that the design of God in our distresses has a wonderful spiritual goal. All of that has been the providential working out of His love for our own good and the extraordinary sharing of the very glory of God himself.
Do not be distressed in your trials and do not lose heart, God Himself is working in you and around you to accomplish His goal of making you more like Him, Amen?