It is not insignificant that Peter’s closing exhortation in his letter is shaped by the suffering Saviour. “The God of all grace, the one who called you into his eternal glory in the Anointed, after you have suffered a little while, he himself will restore, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pet. 5:10). Believers are called for eternal glory (Gk. doxa), united to their Anointed Messiah, but this will only be after they suffer (Gk. paschō). We follow the pattern of suffering and glory that Jesus does. This suffering is portrayed in a few different ways in 1 Peter.

Wrong expectations can shatter our hearts. It happens at a family gathering that is again marred by sin. It happens when disillusioned missionaries head home after only a year on the field. It happens when the only thanks we get for serving seem to be criticism. Suffering in both its presence and depth can take us by surprise and devastate us. If we do not rightly prepare our hearts for what comes ahead, all that is wrong in this world will so deeply hurt us that it may cause us to turn back from Christian obedience and wonder whether or not God turned his back on us.

And in a Western world in which the avoidance of pain has become ultimate, such as in the overprescription of pain medication or so-called medical assistance in dying, we can struggle to think rightly about this as Christians. Our society thinks it’s terrible to be inconvenienced, and so it is not surprising that one of the fundamental questions we ask about almost anything we do is: how can we make this less difficult?

But this misses a fundamental lesson that on a deep level we likely already know in some way: following Jesus is painful. Many other Christians through the ages or around the world can testify to this truth. John Bunyan, who speaks of the separation and hardship of his family during his imprisonment, “[it] hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of the flesh from my bones.” Or there is the Haitian pastor who has suffered under poverty and crime for his whole ministry and asks, “Are you willing to let your heart be broken for Jesus?”

But Jesus does not demand something from us that he has not himself endured. Indeed, we suffer because we follow a suffering Saviour. In light of our propensity to avoid pain, this article uses 1 Peter to explore how the Servant of the Lord’s own suffering and glory is the prism through which we should understand our Christian lives. We begin by exploring how the suffering and glory of the Servant of the Lord is the fundamental framework through which Peter understands our salvation and suffering, and then we explore how Peter calls believers to view their suffering in light of his. In closing, we will draw together several benefits which Peter tells believers to expect.

Jesus: The Paradigm of Suffering and Glory

Some form of the word “suffering” (Gk. pascho, pathema) appears over ten times in 1 Peter, which is a lot for a small book. Significantly, Peter closes his initial blessing (1 Pet. 1:1–9) with a statement that will be programmatic for his book, concerning “the salvation” or “the grace prophesied for you” (1 Pet. 1:10, author’s translation, here and throughout). What is it? Peter summarizes “the Spirit of Christ revealed to them the things prophesied concerning Christ [the Anointed], his sufferings [Gk. pathēma], and after these things, his glory [Gk. doxa]” (1 Pet. 1:11). This is a transparent reference to the Servant, for he was anointed, suffered, and was glorified.

And the mention of the Servant is not an isolated reference. In 1 Peter 1:18, Peter talks about a redemption that is not purchased with silver or gold, but rather with the blood (that is, death) of one like a lamb, the Anointed. This sounds an awful lot like the redemption which the Servant will bring about, that is, without the cost of silver, a redemption that happens through him being like a lamb (Isa. 52:3; 53:6).[1]

Even clearer is 1 Peter 2:21–25. This text, in a way that may surprise us, presses strongly into the suffering of the Anointed in order that we should understand our suffering through it. To be clear, it does not say that our deaths are atoning, but it does make that kind of suffering the model for ours. Peter points to the Servant of the Lord repeatedly: Jesus did not sin, and no guile was found in his mouth, and the same should be true of us (Isa. 53:9; 1 Pet. 2:22). When Jesus is reviled and threatened and does not respond in kind, he shows us how to live (Isa. 53:7; 1 Pet. 2:24).

However, the call to imitate ends there and Peter turns his mind to pure marvel: “he bore our sins” (1 Pet. 2:24; Isa. 53:4) and “by his wound, you are healed” (Isa. 53:5; 1 Pet. 2:24), which was the needed remedy for those who had, “like sheep, gone astray” (1 Pet. 2:25; Isa. 53:6). This text again and again shows us that Peter expects us to interpret our suffering through the lens of the suffering Servant.

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