Dear Family at Christ Community,

     This Sunday we will gather together to celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ over death and all of its associated powers. Our focal text will be 1 Peter 3:18-22 which contains one of more complex set of verses in the Bible. Martin Luther’s comment on 1 Peter 3:19-20 captures the complexity in his confession that, “A wonderful text is this, and a more obscure passage perhaps than any other in the New Testament, so that I do know for certainty just what Peter means.” Though scholars have not improved much upon Luther’s confession in the last 500 years, we do know that God intended for His people to be comforted by what these words ultimately means. I. Howard Marshall in The IVP New Testament Commentary Series: 1 Peter offers us this comfort:  

…the incident (in 1 Peter 3:19-20) is mentioned primarily to assure the readers that Christ is superior to all powers and that believers have no need to fear them.

     This reassuring declaration of Christ’s lordship over all that we might fear is also offered to us in the Lord’s Table. The broken bread proclaims that sin and all its associated powers of guilt and shame have been defeated in Christ on our behalf. Our sins past, present, and future have no eternal say over us. Christ’s declaration of our adoption by our Abba Father resounds much louder and more clearly than any noise our sins could make. The offered cup announces that bonds of death have been broken in Christ’s resurrection. We walk in newness of life in the power of the resurrection that has already begun for us. As Romans 8:38-39 so beautifully reminds us, “…neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

     Meditate this week on these profound promises and truths. Give thanks for what it truly means for Jesus to be Lord of all. Ask the Lord to show you your fears and anxieties knowing that He is not the God of fear and that He longs to be with and comfort His people. Offer forgiveness where you are able so that they too might be free from the power of sin and death. Come expecting God to be at work among His people!

In Christ,
Cameron