THURSDAY September 14th
1 Peter 3:8
‘Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.’
You can tell from these verses today that Peter was a preacher for he says ‘Finally’, and yet the letter goes on into another two chapters, he is only just about halfway through!
Here he is speaking to all those he has written to and he calls them to become a people that are in unity of mind, to be a people of sympathy, a people who show brotherly love and have tender hearts toward each other and to be humble.
We will just look at these five areas to which he is calling them. You may remember when we looked at Peter’s second epistle we saw that he gave them a list of supplements or virtues to add to their faith (2 Peter 1:5-8) he told them that adding these qualities would ensure that they became fruitful and effective in the knowledge of Christ. Likewise with these five areas as they sought to live this way with each other they would be effective and fruitful.
We know from the well-known Psalm that unity is essential for the blessing of God to come upon us as God’s people, verse 1 says ‘Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!’ verse 3 closes the short Psalm of with these words ‘For there the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.’
Being in unity not only attracts the blessing of God but it portrays a positive image to those outside. Romans 12:16 reads ‘Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.’ Unity is something that needs to be found across the whole, that is across the whole of the body, in particular the Church in a local setting, we should seek to ensure that we relate with each other and with each one, not picking and choosing and showing favour to some and ignoring others. True unity means we show the same respect and honour to all others in the same way that we would expect all others to show it to us.
He also calls them to be a people who have or show sympathy. I guess we immediately think of sympathy as being linked to bereavement and it is, but true sympathy covers a whole lot more. We need to be sympathetic to those who are going through troubled waters, or to those who are suffering in ways that are causing them to be low in spirit, sympathetic to those who are worse off than us financially or socially, to be sympathetic may require us to lend an ear, to just sit and talk, to go the extra mile, to comfort and to encourage.
Paul puts it in a rather profound way in his letter to Corinth, here he uses the word comfort, read it as is then again replacing the words as necessary with sympathy, sympathises, sympathise etc.
‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.’
May we be a people of unity and a people who know what it is to sympathise with each other, we will continue in our next devotion.