When someone strikes us, we may want to strike back, but when we patiently endure, we convey an astonishing message by our actions. We have hope that the world does not know. We expect to win in the end because God has promised to save us. We have an inheritance that we cannot lose. This story of suffering, endurance, manifested hope, and gospel witness forms the background of 1 Peter 3:15, the touchstone verse of Christian apologetics.
If we follow Christ through difficult times, lost people will notice. If we follow Christ when persecuted, lost people will notice even more. They will detect the hope that we have and ask for its cause. They will notice because our behavior will not match what they expect from us, based on what they would do in the same situation.
When someone strikes us, we may want to strike back, but when we patiently endure, we convey an astonishing message by our actions. We have hope that the world does not know. We expect to win in the end because God has promised to save us. We have an inheritance that we cannot lose. This story of suffering, endurance, manifested hope, and gospel witness forms the background of 1 Peter 3:15, the touchstone verse of Christian apologetics.
In verse 13, the Apostle presents a general rule: good behavior invites peace, not suffering. If we do not ask for trouble, we tend not to get it; however, in verses 14–15, Peter resumes a darker theme introduced in his first chapter. God has called us to suffer and then to explain what keeps us going through bad times. Lost people will ask about our motives, and when they do, we need a ready answer.
The command to have that answer appears in verses 15–16:
In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
This apologia or “defense” supports Christian claims with arguments and evidence, taking away some of the lost person’s grounds for rejecting the gospel.
Some Christians worry about fielding aggressive questions from skeptics because they suspect that the gospel story lacks some credibility. But three facts should allay such fears. First, every lost person knows that God exists, that God has created each of us, and that we owe to God our very lives. Unrepentant sinners deny these facts in public, but the Apostle Paul assures us that they already know the truth about God, at least to an extent that takes away their own apologia, “excuse,” or defense as rebels against Him (Rom. 1:18–23). In this sense, we have an “unfair” advantage as Christians: our opponents already agree with us and must live in denial regarding these basic truths.
