There are people who will treat you unjustly.
Peter knows this.
People who will treat you unfairly.
People who have power and misuse it.
People who say things about you that aren’t true.
People who hurt you and somehow manage to make it sound like you’re the problem.
And Peter says something strange about what happens when you are treated this way.
He says that when you endure suffering because you are conscious of God—
when you are treated unjustly and somehow refuse to become unjust in return—
it is a gracious thing.
A gracious thing.
Which is interesting because we usually talk about grace as something you receive.
God gives grace.
God shows grace.
God saves us by grace.
Grace comes down.
Grace finds us.
Grace forgives us.
All true.
But Peter seems interested in something else.
What happens after grace finds you?
What does grace look like once it gets inside a human being?
Maybe grace doesn’t just come to us.
Maybe grace is supposed to come through us.
Because there is a kind of goodness that anybody can practice when they’re being treated well.
Someone respects you.
You respect them.
Someone speaks kindly to you.
You speak kindly to them.
Someone honors you.
You honor them.
Wonderful.
But Peter asks:
What happens when they don’t?
What happens when someone treats you unjustly?
When they lie?
When they accuse?
When they insult?
When they wound?
When they have the power to make your life difficult—
and use it?
That’s where grace becomes visible.
Because now something has happened that should produce retaliation,
but somehow produces goodness instead.
You are treated unjustly,
and you refuse to become unjust.
And Peter says—
God sees that.
“This is a gracious thing in the sight of God.”
Which means your goodness in the face of someone else’s injustice isn’t weakness.
It isn’t passivity.
It isn’t pretending what happened was okay.
It isn’t calling evil good.
It is refusing to allow someone else’s actions to decide who you become.
And then Peter points to Jesus.
Of course he does.
Because eventually all Christian talk about grace leads us there.
To Jesus.
The one through whom all things were made.
The one who, if you want to put it this way, plugged the stars into space.
The King of Glory.
And what does the King of Glory do?
He suffers.
Peter reaches back into Isaiah 53 and tells us that Jesus committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.
And then:
“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.”
No threats.
Think about that.
Flogged.
No threats.
Mocked.
No threats.
Spit on.
No threats.
Stripped.
No threats.
Nailed to a cross.
No threats.
The one person in the story who actually possessed the power to destroy everyone hurting him—
didn’t.
Which raises a question.
What kind of power is that?
We usually think power means having the ability to make someone else pay.
Jesus shows us another kind.
The power to suffer without becoming cruel.
The power to be wounded without becoming a wounder.
The power to be hated without learning hatred.
The power to have evil done to you without allowing evil to take root in you.
Peter says Jesus “entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”
There it is.
That’s the secret.
Jesus didn’t need to settle every score because he knew who ultimately held the scales.
He could release judgment because he trusted the Judge.
And Peter says:
Follow his steps.
Not admire his steps.
Not sing about his steps.
Not build buildings where we gather once a week to discuss his steps.
Follow them.
Which means there will apparently be moments when following Jesus looks like being treated unjustly and still choosing what is good.
Not because injustice doesn’t matter.
It matters enormously.
Not because abuse should be protected or wrongdoing ignored.
It shouldn’t.
But because the person treating you unjustly does not get to determine the kind of person you become.
You belong to someone else.
And every time you refuse to return evil for evil,
every time you choose integrity when dishonesty would be easier,
every time you could retaliate but instead entrust yourself to God,
every time you continue doing good when doing good costs you something—
you step into the footprints of Jesus.
You join him there.
Not in the sense that our suffering accomplishes what his suffering accomplished.
But in the remarkable sense that our suffering can begin to resemble his.
And suddenly something invisible becomes visible.
Grace.
Maybe that’s why Peter ends this letter by saying,
“This is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.”
The true grace of God.
Not merely grace explained.
Grace embodied.
Grace with skin on it.
Grace standing in the middle of an unjust world and refusing to become unjust.
Maybe the world has heard enough Christians talk about grace.
Maybe what it desperately needs
is to see it.
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