How Jesus Actually Shapes 1 Peter's Theology? | Ben Castaneda

How does Jesus shape 1 Peter?

In this episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture, Daniel Mikkelsen is joined by Ben Castaneda, Lecturer in Greek and New Testament at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, to explore how Jesus’ teaching and passion shape the message of 1 Peter and why that matters for the Christian life.

From the value of the biblical languages to the importance of the Septuagint, Ben explains how the Catholic Epistles draw on Jesus traditions in ways many readers miss. The conversation then focuses especially on 1 Peter, showing how Jesus’ teaching, suffering, and use of Scripture help form Peter’s vision of holiness, hope, and faithful endurance.

Whether you are wondering how 1 Peter relates to Jesus’ teaching, why suffering is so central to the letter, or how these themes speak into everyday Christian life, this episode offers a rich and practical discussion.

Don’t Miss the Next Episode: More conversations exploring how the biblical languages open up Scripture.

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Chapters:
00:00 Coming Up...
00:52 Meet Ben Castaneda and His Love for 1 Peter and the Biblical Languages
03:39 “Kissing Through a Veil”? Why Greek Changes Everything
06:22 Hidden Connections You Miss in Translation
11:22 Why the Septuagint Matters More Than You Think
13:47 Did the Catholic Epistles Really Use Jesus’ Teaching?
15:36 The Big Claim: Jesus Traditions Shape These Letters
23:16 Why Focus on 1 Peter? (And Why It Matters)
28:06 The Clearest Link Between 1 Peter and Jesus
30:15 Suffering Isn’t Random in 1 Peter
33:13 Are We Meant to Imitate Jesus’ Suffering?
37:06 Isaiah 53 and the Shape of Christian Suffering
40:32 Why Holiness and Suffering Go Together
47:30 What This Means for Your Life Today

Music from #Uppbeat:
All Good Folks – Aspire

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Podcast Keywords:
biblical languages, New Testament, Old Testament, Christ, bible study,  Relationship with God, learn biblical languages, Biblical Theology, Christianity, Covenants, New covenant, old covenant, language acquisition, Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew.

Transcript

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Have you ever noticed how one Peter absolutely saturated with themes of suffering, holiness and hope, but wondered where Peter got his ideas? Jesus's teaching and narrative accounts related to his life, death, resurrection, et cetera, that those play a far more significant role in One Peter than many scholars have often recognized. He's taking these and he is using these teachings to shape his community, to shape these churches, to pastorally shape and care for the people that he's writing to. And they're suffering as Christians, it's distinctly Christian suffering. are suffering. for their loyalty to Jesus because they're identifying with Him and they're refusing to give that up. This is not just pointless suffering. He is coming back and as a result, be faithful. Welcome back to another episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture, brought to you by NT Greek Tutoring, the place for personalized Greek learning in your spare time. My name is Daniel Mikkelsen. I'm your host. I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh in New Testament and Christian origins. And this podcast exists to make gems from biblical studies accessible to everyday Christians and show you how the biblical languages opens up scripture. And our aim is to increase your love for God and his word, and so you will become more joyful witnesses for his mission. Have you ever noticed how 1 Peter is absolutely saturated with themes of suffering, holiness and hope, but wondered where Peter got his ideas? Today we are going to discover how Peter wove Jesus teaching into his letters, creating what my guest calls a grammar for Christian life. And we will see how understanding these themes and this transformed both our reading of 1 Peter and our walk through suffering. To explore this with us, I'm delighted to welcome Benjamin Castaneda. I think I said that right. That's great. That's great. Ben holds a PhD in New Testament from the University of St. Andrews, where he researched focus on Jesus remembered in the letters of James 1-2 Peter and Jude. He now is the cause organizer and lecturer in Greek and New Testament at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. Ben also is ordained minister in the Free Church of Scotland, and he previously served as a pastor in Arizona for six years, where he was ordained in the Presbyterian Church of America. So he brings both the scholarly expertise and a pastoral wisdom into our conversation. And on a personal note, I actually first met Ben here at the ETS when Alistair Wilson was showing me and my friend Filip Sylwestrowicz around. But ironically, even though I've studied literally next door to ETS, we've actually first got to properly chat at the IBR Catholic Epistels We had to go to Boston to do this. exactly. Yeah, but it's kind of funny, but that's what happened. But I really enjoyed getting to know you there, And it's a great pleasure to have you on the podcast. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you very much for your invitation, Daniel. Absolutely, all pleasure is mine. Yeah, anything else you want to add? No, I've been teaching here now for uh three and a half years. So very much been enjoying my time here. Wonderful. So we will begin to talk a little bit about biblical languages, then we will move to 1 Peter, and then using and how he uses the Jesus tradition that you've been working on, and then we will basically finish with some practical implications as we always do here. So, but because this podcast is rooted in biblical languages, we always like to begin to start with your personal journey. So how did you get into biblical language? Well, I first got interested in Greek when I was a teenager. uh There was a former pastor at my church who was uh doing a Bible study through the Gospel of Mark, and uh particularly the Greek text of Mark. um And I found it fascinating. And it was really there that the seed was sort of planted. But it wasn't until I went to seminary and uh had professors who loved the languages and uh who were excellent teachers. It was there that I really started to gain facility with the languages. But that's of just sort of how it started. Yeah, amazing. And as you've been reading the biblical languages, how have you experienced that they open up scripture for you? my Greek professor, uh, would tell, you know, have a saying basically that, uh, reading the Bible in translation is a little bit like kissing your wife through a veil. Uh, it's just not the same. Um, and, knowing the biblical languages has been incredibly helpful both, uh, for my work as a pastor, uh, while I was, when I was doing, crafting sermons and, uh, caring for people, but then also as well. in the seminary too. uh really just forces, knowing the biblical languages forces you to slow down and take notice of what's going on in the text. And so this is partly a familiarity thing. I grew up going to church, uh attending Bible studies, listening to sermons, reading the Bible on my own. And as a result, I think I've just became over familiar with it and how it had sort of just been traditionally understood and um Knowing the biblical languages and reading the Bible in its original languages really forced me to come to grips with it and just open doors that I didn't even know were there. um And it's been a tremendous joy to do that, to show some of those gems in sermons, but also as well in the classroom teaching my students. Yeah, that's amazing. There are so many things, some people say that is on every single page. Yeah, you always realize that there's something more there, that there's new treasures to be mined, to be like the scribe in Matthew who takes out of the storehouse things old and things new. uh And that's what I want to teach my students to be, partly through a knowledge of the biblical languages. Yeah, carefully studying scripture. Yeah, so can you give us any examples of how original languages open up scripture for you? Yeah, a good example of this is when you read something like uh Jacob's surprise blessing of Ephraim rather than Manasseh in Genesis chapter 48. The English tradition there, uh going at least as far back as the King James version, it tends to translate chapter 48 verse 19, something like, through your seed will come a multitude of nations. uh But that's not what the Hebrew says. uh It says that his seed will become malo hagoim, uh the fullness of the nations. And that's when you realize that actually sounds a lot like what Paul says in Romans 11, uh when he said, verse 25, I think it is, that he says a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the nations comes in. uh it's just realizing that Paul himself is doing interpretive exegesis of the Old Testament, working perhaps his own translation of the Hebrew and bring that into Greek. uh And just as another example, a New Testament example uh from Jesus uh in Matthew chapter seven, as he's winding down the sermon on the mount, Jesus says to his disciples, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. uh That's Matthew 7.21, and he says the same phrase again, Lord, Lord, that double title, κύριε κύριε uh in verse 22 as well. And that unusual title uh in the English, it can come across just as uh there are these people on the last day who will come to Jesus and who will appeal to him, Lord, Lord. And actually in our English translations, it puts a comma in between as well. And so it's just an appeal to Jesus, you know, sort of like, let me in, let me in. But that phrase, I think, is coming from its use in the Septuagint. I was just talking about this with a student actually today in class, uh that this phrase is used 18 times in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament. And often it's used to translate this underlying Hebrew phrase, Adonai Yahweh. uh And it's a standard phrase for people addressing God. uh And so one instance where this happens is Psalm 130, uh which in English, it's a Psalm 130 in English, Psalm 129 in Septuagint. uh But it's there, it says, Lord, if you should mark iniquity, Lord, who could stand? In the Septuagint, it's, uh if you should mark lawlessness, Lord, Lord, who could stand? κύριε κύριε And Jesus says to these people who are coming to him saying, Kuria, Kuria, he says to them, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. That's ἀνομία (anomia) in the Greek. It's ἀνομία (anomia in the Septuagint of Psalm 129, and then ἀνομία (anomia in Matthew 7. And so knowing the original languages actually helps you see this is an implicit claim to divinity here, that people are coming to him and saying, Lord, Lord. But you wouldn't get that. if you're just reading the English. Exactly, It's quite an interesting thing with this particular... I actually was first familiarized with that particular way of wording in... actually. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I was watching something, a debate between some... Muslim. Okay. And he was trying to argue that in the reconstruction of Q that doesn't mean what it is. I don't think you can reconstruct Q anyway, but it was kind of interesting that he tried to use this to say that this is not how things... actually using some arguments from Jason Stables and so on. They're trying to say that, this is a Christianized version of this. But the thing is that you don't have anything that can prove that. It is trying to make an argument from silence, really. And so people have been trying to find a not-divine Jesus for over 100 years, at least. And no one has succeeded yet. Yeah. I agree. And because you can't argue from what we don't have. And the earliest sources we have all claim that Jesus was divine. And all seem that that was exactly what he claimed. that was what he got him crucified. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah, know. Completely. Yeah, that was part of God's plan as well. It is very interesting. I think there's a really exciting example of what biblical languages can help us see. and I agree. I do think that there are uh very much uh these, a lot of it has to do with connections between this Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, and the New Testament. And I definitely think that among pastors and in our seminaries today, the Septuagint is underutilized um and not appreciated enough. Yeah, I think it's very important. when we get, like, the church gets predominantly Gentile, it actually is quite interesting that they were well aware that there was sometimes the Septuagint had done, like, abbreviating stuff and stuff like that. They were well aware of that. So there might have been it, although we don't have much proof of it. It seems like at least Jerome it's not just someone pops off of nowhere wanting to learn biblical Hebrew. Learning Hebrew is probably first... There's us that's called it biblical Hebrew at that time, that was just what it was. So, because they knew that there were things in the Hebrew Bible that had not come across in translation for many different reasons. So I think it's very important to work with both. And that's also what... people who does a lot of Septuagint scholarship, do, work with both. I uh agree entirely. And ah it's not just simply something that think that happens in the Gospels or in Paul, but also in James uh and 1 Peter and a number of these other texts. They're very consciously interacting with uh the Septuagint in ways which are very... um It's insightful interpretation, obviously, in light of Jesus and his death and his resurrection. Yeah, I actually just recently did an episode with Ed Glenny on that. Okay. So it's one of the previous episodes. I don't know exactly how many I've before for this particular one, but I did one that was published in January. Okay. No, sorry, December 2025. Okay. With Ed, we actually go through one peter on this particular question about how he's using the Septuagint That's wonderful. Yeah, so people can go back and look at that and they want to know more about how this works. So to focus our discussion a little bit, go moving to what made you interested in Jesus' teaching and how that's applied in the Catholic Epistles or general Epistles, depending on how you're... Yeah, I'm much more of a fan of Catholic epistles rather than general epistles for various reasons which we don't need to get into right now. I'll tell you this, I didn't grow up thinking I'm going to go write a PhD on the Catholic epistles. way I came across it and really became interested in the topic was because I was reading preparing to do a PhD proposal and was reading a lot of different resources in preparation for that proposal and uh came across a footnote where someone mentioned that uh more work needs to be done on Jesus traditions or Jesus's teaching uh in the Catholic epistles. I was like, why not, this is exactly what I want to do. so it was actually while I was in the process of writing that PhD thesis, that I actually became much more interested in the topic because I started to realize that Jesus traditions, which is basically just simply a uh technical way to talk about Jesus' teaching or the accounts related to his life, that those are pervasive throughout the Catholic epistles, throughout these letters, and really shape what I think that the authors are doing, their theological argumentation and also other kinds of argumentation as well. in these letters. So that's how I kind of became interested in it. Yeah, fascinating. interesting. Yeah, because my interest in my own topic came through a debate that was public m in Denmark about resurrection. it's interesting what makes people like. So steer into a particular topic. So the title of your PhD is Remembering Jesus in James Peter Jude. The function of Jesus tradition in epistolary argumentation, what does that actually entail? Good question. ah Basically, I argue that Jesus's teaching uh and uh narrative accounts related to his life, death, resurrection, etc., that those play a far more significant role in James and 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude than many scholars have often recognized. text, each of those texts draws on Jesus traditions and weaves it into its rhetoric. in a way that's in service of whatever each author is doing. But particularly, they do theological things with these teachings and traditions. They do practical things. They also do polemical things as well. So one of the things I did in the PhD is map this diversity of the different ways that each of these authors are using Jesus's teaching. So for example, a lot of folks have noticed that James refers a lot to the Sermon on the Mount. James uses a lot of Jesus's uh discourses, particularly uh he says things which sound a lot like you get in uh the Gospel of Matthew. But surprisingly, and although lots of scholars have noticed that, uh surprisingly no one that I came across actually asked the deeper question of why. uh Why is the author of James doing this and how are these traditions actually functioning in the letter itself? uh And so I argue that uh James uses Jesus's teaching a little bit like building blocks to construct a particular theological portrait of Jesus, uh which if you know the book of James itself, Jesus only mentioned twice, James 1.1 and James 2.1. uh And so a lot of scholars say, going all the way back to Martin Dibelius in his landmark commentary, which is now published in the Hermenea series, he says James has no theology. uh, uh, yeah, oh, well, but it seems to me that the use of Jesus traditions in James is, um, portraying Jesus implicitly as a messianic King, uh, who authoritatively interprets the Torah, bringing about the inauguration of the new covenant where the Torah is written on the heart. And I also think that James uses Jesus traditions to portray him, to portray Jesus as the agent of eschatological judgment. That he's the one who brings salvation for God's people by and through then judging those who oppress him, oppress them. oppress the people that he's writing to. uh So James is doing specifically very deep theological things. Learning New Testament Greek can be a real challenge. If that's been your experience, I've put together a free PDF guide called Why Learning Greek Could Be a Struggle and How to Move Forward. Inside you'll find the most common pitfalls and my simple three step framework to help you start reading Greek with more confidence. Get your free copy today by clicking the link in the description below or the pinned comment. Now back to the episode. uh 1 Peter or First Peter, I'm American, so I say First Peter, but now I've been here for so long, I start saying 1 Peter as well. It focuses on Jesus's suffering in particular, Jesus's teaching about suffering. And I think in particular incorporates uh traditions related to Jesus's passion. um, his own death, they are, uh, reconceived and reconfigured in the logic to serve as the grammar of the Christian life. Um, I think we're going to come back to that in a moment. So let me just then say briefly, what I think is going on with Jesus is Jesus traditions and Jude and two Peter. Um, so, uh, Jude and two Peter are much more polemical in their aims. They have false teachers who either have slipped in themselves or who are bringing in deceptive teachings in 2 Peter, they're, as a result, polluting the church. There's some real deep, serious issues that are going on there. so Jude, for example, he recalls the teaching of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse in Jude 17 and 18, saying that in the last days, scoffers are to arise. And this tradition is then incorporated into 2 Peter. And 2 Peter creatively reuses it, redeploys it alongside other parallels to Jesus' teaching um specifically for the purpose then of undermining the eschatological skepticism of these false teachers who are denying that the parousia is going to happen. Jesus isn't going to come back. It's been so long. Can we just move on? And 2 Peter says, actually, no. We can't. uh In fact, Jesus himself said this kind of thing would happen uh and in key places uh relates what he's doing to what Jesus said. uh So there are diverse ways in which these different authors are using Jesus' traditions. But I think there's also something in common that holds these epistles together uh is the fact that They use Jesus' uh teaching and Jesus' traditions as a lens, a hermeneutical lens through which they interpret the Old Testament, actually. And this is where, so they are uh pulling from very consciously places like the Septuagint, or if it's one through three, John, I think, perhaps drawing on the Hebrew there. But uh they are uh using things that Jesus said or just the Jesus narrative itself. as a lens through which they are understanding and reinterpreting the Old Testament. So for example, Jesus' teaching about the love command becomes an opportunity, I think, in James, James 2.8, he quotes Leviticus 19.18, the second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. But in the context of James 2, he seems very clearly to be understanding it in the way in which Jesus taught it. um pulling from Mark Matthew or, know, maybe it's just oral tradition. I didn't come to any kind of firm conclusions in my thesis as to whether these authors are using uh written gospel accounts, uh Q, I don't, anyway, that's a whole nother topic. And then, uh or if it's oral tradition, so. um fair enough. We don't have to get into the weeds of that today either. good, thank you. Because I think it's more how it's applied in the first place. I do have some methodological question, but I'll get to that in a minute. em Because I think it's important to know how to distinguish things. We would like to focus on 1 Peter for the conversation today. em makes this letter particularly interesting in the study of the Jesus teaching or the Jesus tradition. Okay. That's applied in the letter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So um what I think uh in terms of what 1 Peter is uh doing with it, I think that what he is doing is drawing upon memories of Jesus that have been passed down, uh again, either by oral tradition, literary traditions, whatever. But he's taking these and he is uh using these teachings to shape his community, to shape these churches, these nascent groups of Christ followers in these different provinces mentioned there at the beginning of the letter that he is using these consciously to pastorally shape and care for the people that he's writing to. And this is one of the things that I really appreciate and love about 1 Peter is that so warm and pastoral. He truly cares for these Christians that he's writing to. are suffering. They are being persecuted. and he wants to encourage them and build them up in their faith. He wants to say, this is not meaningless. oh What you're doing is just like what happened to Jesus. And he pulls on some of the, again, narrative traditions about Jesus's passion in particular to help them understand and make sense of the suffering that they're going through. Yeah. And I think that now I want to ask is like, how do you determine whether it's Jesus teaching? Or for example, an application of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint. Yeah. So I think there's a couple reasons. this was a key methodological question. ah I was having to come up with criteria by which ah I could measure ah the likeness of what you find in the text of 1 Peter to other places, which talk about Jesus' teaching and condensed Jesus' teaching. Mostly it's the Gospels. Occasionally it's James, where there's some similarities. But I came up with things like lexical agreement. And obviously, again, just another caveat, all we have are these literary traditions, these instantiations in the text of things that uh Jesus potentially is saying. And so these are, the best we can say is that these are parallels. They're not allusions to or anything like that. ah But I came up with things like lexical agreement. um Are there... places where there is significant, either in terms of number of words or uh specific, unusual, words, rare lexemes, uh that where 1 Peter and say the gospel of Matthew are agreeing and putting these words in Jesus's mouth, uh as it were. uh And so the greater the number of significant shared words and the greater the rarity, the more likely it is that these parallels are genuine. uh things like conceptual agreement, uh are there different uh topoi that are shared? uh Jesus says a lot of things about suffering, for example, again, in the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Luke, and uh in 1 Peter as well, you have uh lots of discussions of suffering, and I think we'll probably dig into that a little bit more later. But are there distinctive combinations of ideas or motifs or related imagery? uh I also came up with structural agreement. uh To what extent do they share uh similar structure in terms of just the way the words are on the page or that maybe things are connected thinking about discourse connected with καί (kai) or γάρ (gar), or οὖν (oun) and uh are that so are there significant words? Are there significant concepts? Are there significant parallels in the way in which the words are organized syntactically, which might signal that there is conscious shaping of tradition. um So, um yeah, those are some of the ones. I came up with others as well. But those are the three main ones. em Yeah, so the next question would be that which text do you think is alluding to Jesus' teaching most clearly in 1 Peter? in terms of like which gospel or things like that? What is like what? I see what you're like within 1 Peter, within 1 Peter itself. I mean, most clearly everyone, the one everyone points to in which there's virtually no disagreement is 1 Peter 2.12. uh 1 Peter 2.12 says, it's very clearly, I think, connected to, uh it's Matthew 5.16, if I'm remembering correctly, uh where, Matthew, sorry, 1 Peter 2.12 says, in this way, let your light shine before people in order that they might see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven. Matthew 5 16 says, again, my own translation, have your conduct among the Gentiles as honorable in order that with regard to the very thing that they slander you as evil doers by watching your good works, they might glorify God in the day of visitation. And ah so there's this um very clear, I think, connection between the text of 1 Peter 2, 12 and Matthew 5, 16. um And it's things like that where there's so many words in common. ah The structure is the same. The intent is the same, like in terms of rhetorically what they're doing in the context. There's a day of visitation that's coming, a day of judgment. And so as a result, display your good deeds. before uh the watching world. And in this way, you are uh pleasing God or glorifying God. Or as Matthew has it, your Father who's in heaven. uh And that then provides sort of an anchor for thinking, well, maybe there's other places as well throughout the text of 1 Peter where Peter is pulling on other things that Jesus said. Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. It's quite interesting because 1 Peter is very strong as a eschatological letter. There's lots of eschatology, it's pointing to the last days, Jesus' return. It's like in the opening of the letter, it's everywhere in the letter, really. It really is. It really is. I was just writing an essay, part of which was on 1 Peter, in which I was looking at 1 Peter's eschatology and, or aspects of it. And it is everywhere. It's so eschatologically motivated uh right from uh one, well, I think there's, very clear indications in 1 Peter, 1.13 and 14. And then you get it again and, uh off the route, yeah. Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah, and how do you think that that focus plays into the application of Jesus' teaching? I think that one of the things that, one of the places where it comes into contact is uh that uh you are willing to, well, one, uh you are in a world where you're going to experience persecution and suffering because you are living in a different way. You're living in a new narrative, as it were, one shaped by your uh love for and trust in Jesus. And Jesus said, told his disciples that uh just as he would suffer and be persecuted, those who follow him too will suffer and be persecuted. And I think that that comes up very clearly, particularly in chapter four. uh In chapter four, uh 12, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial. When it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But then, uh, 1 Peter 4.13 but rejoice as you share Christ suffering. So he's very clearly drawing upon the narrative arc of Jesus's life, humiliation, and then exaltation and saying, this is what you should be expecting too. But what makes it worth it is the eschatology. What makes it worth it is. This is not just pointless suffering. This is not just a waste. He is coming back. He is coming. Judgment is at hand. This is 1 Peter 4, 1 Peter 4, 7, where he says, the end of all things is at hand. The end of all things has drawn near. And as a result, be faithful. Know that this is going to be worth it in the end, that you will be approved before God, that you too, just as Christ suffered and then was raised and exalted, you too will suffer, but exaltation is... Yeah. Yeah. I think when I was looking through this, em I didn't think so much about the verbal links, but I think that the application of Jesus' suffering is quite clearly drawing on this. Like, beginning of chapter four, he died and he wants to fall for you. The one who has suffered is then done away with sin. Kind of language where he's clearly making a parallel to why you should stop sinning with Jesus. And particularly, particularly as well, if you do then, if you are encounter suffering, I'm, I'm persuaded on what Travis Williams says about this passage that if you, uh, if you are suffering, um, that means that particularly there there's particular habits and customs, common among Gentiles, particularly thinking about social gatherings and, uh, civic associations and guilds and things like that. These meetings. at which there'd be feasting and drinking and idolatry. He's saying, you're new. You are changed. You are different now. You are a nation, know, a kingdom of priests. You are a spiritual house being built up for the worship of God. Obviously they're drawing upon Exodus 19 and some other places. so, he's very much, he's interpreting Old Testament. and Jesus' teaching and saying, this shapes your whole life. uh And as a result, you too need to persevere. Know that this is hard, this is difficult, but as he says in 3.15, honor Christ as Lord uh and have a defense ready so that you can answer everyone when questions arise. Why are you uh living this way? Yeah. And I think it's also early in the letter. I don't remember if it's chapter three or is it late end of chapter two where he's... it also seems like past Jesus suffered kind of language. Oh yeah, this is in 2.21, I think it's 2.21 where he says, yeah, Jesus suffered in this way. And so you need to follow in his steps in particular. so this is, he provides the pattern for humiliation and then exaltation, but then also he does something which we could never do. He dies as 3.18 says, once for sin. ah He dies fully and finally to do away with it, ah dying and then himself rising. give us. Yeah, it's not that we are supposed to imitate his suffering, I don't think. Yeah, we are, we are, we not, we are, but then we're also not because we can't, we cannot die for each other's sin. Only Christ could die for our sin. And this is, if I remember right as well, I thought my head, it uses half acts there. You he died once for all. This is a finished kind of act on our. I think that's correct. I think I really remember that as well. It's once a fall. It's a different word that used in Hebrews, I think. There's also something about it, but that's another discussion. But if I remember correctly, I might be wrong because it's just from the top of my head. But I think there's some very interesting things in the way that he is applying the suffering. m that he's saying is more like a, I think, I'm persuaded by Katherine Hockey, that it is sort of more like a, what's the word, solidarity with Christ's sufferings, because you suffer, because of your relationship. It's not that we are imitating his suffering. Yes, yes, I agree. I agree. uh Grant McCaskill, says something like, uh Peter is not calling for conscious, or he's not calling for uh mimesis, imitation of exemplary suffering, but for consciousness of participation ah in a foundational event that gives significance and moral shape to your suffering. uh And so in that sense, you're suffering like Jesus. uh as his follower, as someone who likewise has this hope held out before him. Yeah. But then the question would be like how, because it's clearly suffering and persecution, very linked in one way or another. But how does that relate to Jesus, the Jesus tradition or to Jesus' own teaching? Yeah, so this is where I think that 1 Peter 2, again, 22 in particular through 24 is really fascinating because it's here and a number of scholars have seen this, Achtemeier, Elliott, again Williams and Horrell in their recent commentary and Horrell actually wrote a very key essay on this idea. But just noting that in these verses in 1 Peter 2, 22 through 24, uh Peter is pulling very clearly from Isaiah 53, uh but he has these phrases, either words or phrases that are being pulled there, but he reorganizes them in light of the passion account. So he uh takes these building blocks, these tools from Isaiah 53, but then puts them in the course of these verses sequentially following the same kind of pattern that you get in the gospels with regard to Jesus's suffering and death. like for example, 1 Peter 2.22 is almost a direct quote of Isaiah 53 verse 9 that Jesus didn't sin, he's sinless. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth. And the idea is that then Jesus didn't sin, there was no deceit. Like a sheep before it shears is silent. He didn't say anything against those who were accusing him. ah And so uh David Horrell points that out. The consistent testimony of the passion narrative is that of Pilate. There is nothing worthy of death done by him. ah And so Horrell connects this with. Uh, the suffering servant motif in Isaiah 53 and, uh, Morna Hooker, who more broadly is against, uh, seeing allusions to Isaiah 53 in the New Testament. Uh, she says it's, it's really clear here that, uh, uh, 1 Peter two is interpreting Isaiah 53 in light of Jesus. Uh, and it's, it's fascinating. I mean, you have the shepherd, you have, again, sheep, it's just, it's fantastic. It's great. Very rich. pretty cool. eh If you can use that word in that context. think it's okay. I tell my students, don't let technical jargon get in the way. oh I think it's okay to say it's really cool. Yeah, so I think an interesting question here is, would be, think at least, I'm asking it. um So why are suffering and holy life, living and Jesus suffering so closely connected in this letter? I think that really that goes back to, I think, uh going to uh Katie Marcar's work actually on divine regeneration in 1 Peter. uh She points this out that in 1 Peter chapter one, he says, you you have been begotten. Well, first of all, 1 Peter one opening verses has this Trinitarian reference. You have a reference to the father, reference to the son, reference to the Holy Spirit. but then says that you have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and this ah theme, a motif of divine regeneration, you have been begotten by God through the work of Jesus, by the spirit man. ah That this means that you have uh entered into a new category. You are a new creature in his sight. uh And then 1 Peter, verses 16, I think it's 1 Peter 1.16, which then goes to Leviticus 19 again, where he says, just as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your manner of life, ἀναστροφή (anastrofē), And he says, just as you must be holy as I am holy, quoting Leviticus 19 verse 2. the fact that there is uh They are new creatures in Christ ah means that they must be holy. uh And interestingly enough, outside of Paul, uh 1 Peter is the only text in the New Testament that uses ἐν χριστῷ, the in Christ language. uh And he says, it's fascinating, 1 Peter's argument, I think a key facet of its argument is that he's saying you are no longer part of the world belonging to this Gentile way of life. You are no longer Ta ethne, you are no longer part of the nations. Rather, now you are en Christo. This is your location now. You have been placed into Christ. You participate in Him. And in Him, you have now been made children of God. Therefore, be holy, just as God who has given you new life and made you new creations is And how is that connection then with the sufferings? Yeah, and that I think there is where that narrative logic that he is um goes to and resources the narrative arc of Jesus's life and says, uh takes it and uses it and provides it uses it as an interpretive matrix upon which they can interpret their own suffering and their own uh their own experiences of pain and sorrow as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think I agree with that. I think that 1 Peter is using like saying, you are now different than the world and it will inevitably make you suffer. And that is a good thing if you're relation to Christ. That is a thing. It is better to suffer for good, for doing good as 1 Peter 3 says, than for doing evil. It's like, yes, that's true. That's true. But if you do good, then you will suffer. There are potential indications in 1 Peter 2 that maybe, you know, this shouldn't be the case because the emperor, for example, you know, those in authority are supposed to be those who are uh punishing evil and uh promoting what's good. But the implications are under the surface is that doesn't always happen. And this is why he says in 1 Peter 2, that you're to honor the emperor, but you're only to fear God. You don't fear the emperor. You don't fear what he can do to you. ah And again, I agree with Travis Williams that there likely are clues that there is some kind of legal uh implications, repercussions of their loyalty to Jesus. um that it's not necessarily purely just sort of informal off-the-cuff verbal slander. Yeah, I think Travis's work on persecution is very fascinating. It's an entire episode for itself, think. But I think I want to point out this, because I think it's quite interesting how it's related in the sense that this... like it's not just about the legal and maybe they'll be persecuted but it's because they are rejecting to do is normal in in in roman pagan wealth like we have much i think it's much later than than one peter but we have the letters between emperor Trajan and yeah and Pliny where he's like what should i do with these weird people yeah i will i found out if i do this i will put it through this trial and and and they will and find out if they are the real Christians. oh This is why 1 Peter 4 says that they're suffering ὡς χριστιανός They're suffering as Christians. It's distinctly Christian suffering. are suffering for their loyalty to Jesus because they're identifying with him and they're refusing to give that up. And that means living, sticking out like a sore thumb, as we would say in America. You are distinctive and living distinctively and that is causing friction. between you and the culture around you. Yeah, and sometimes they'll persecute you sometimes it's legal trial. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's just, you know, this uh form of βλασφημέω (blasfēmeō) that's used in uh 1 Peter 4 verse 4, if I remember right, that because the time that's for doing the Gentile kind of things is in the past, instead you're to give that up. You're no longer to be doing that. Instead, you're to be living the rest of the time for the will of God. τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ But that means that they're going to malign you. That means they're going to... because you are different, because you're not fitting in. um And I think that's something that as Christians should be expected. This shouldn't be a surprise, as again, 1 Peter 4. Yeah, I think that leads to our favorite question or at least our traditional question here at the podcast is, how can we, can the listener or viewers of our conversation today apply this to their everyday walk with cry? I think that this is, again, incredibly pastoral, incredibly practical. uh Living for Jesus in the world, until he comes back, means that we will suffer. um We will suffer. It's not going to look the same way in every place, every time, every location. Circumstances and situations are different. But if you're living consistently as a Christian, you are going to be different. Yeah. from the world around you, from the culture around you, in some significant ways. And that is both uh an opportunity, you're able to give a reason for the hope that's in you, but at the same time as well, that will cause social relational tension and friction. uh And it's an opportunity then for declaring, where is your hope? Where, why are you willing to undergo difficulty, hardship, even suffering for the sake of Jesus? Well, it's because I have been born again with this specific hope, a hope which is, as 1 Peter one says, you know, reserved in heaven for you kept there, guarded and protected. Um, it's, it's, it's this hope of the renewal of all things, um, uh, full of that, just as Jesus was raised from the dead. So too will we be raised from the dead. That's where we find our security, our identity, our comfort. Yeah, and that's why he says, then you will... I can't remember the phrase from the top of my head in 1 Peter 4, 13, where he says, then you will rejoice with joy, exalted joy. It's very difficult to translate that. yeah, yeah. It's a fantastic image. is, it's an abundance, exuberance of joy. Yeah, it's χαρῆτε ἀγαλλι... and then it's the participle ending I forget. Yeah. Thank you for this conversation. You're welcome. Thank joining me on the podcast. very welcome. Thank you again for inviting me. I appreciate our time together and being able to chat about these things that I spent a few years of my life researching. yeah, thank you. Thank you, thank you for being here. Yeah. Until you guys, see you in the next one. But before you go, if you enjoyed this podcast and you want more people to see it, please subscribe and leave a like. It really helps us create more episodes like this one. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one.