Peter offers several important truths about how believers should approach suffering in this broken world.

In early September, Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star turned podcaster, hosted the podcaster “historian” Darryl Cooper on Carlson’s show “Tucker on X” on the social media platform. Carlson, who has hosted the show since Fox severed ties with him in 2023, introduced Mr. Cooper as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” It is rather appalling that such a major media figure would stoop so low and honor a man with such a perverted view of history. Both Carlson and Cooper are peddling deceit and lies and calling it “history.”

In light of Christ’s suffering, we are to die to the old life and live a transformed life in “these last days.”

British historian, Fay Bound Alberti, co-founder of the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, writes that, “By the 21st century, loneliness has become ubiquitous. Commentators call it ‘an epidemic’, a condition akin to ‘leprosy’, and a ‘silent plague’ of civilization. In 2018, the United Kingdom went so far as to appoint a Minister for Loneliness. Yet loneliness is not a universal condition; nor is it a purely visceral, internal experience. It is less a single emotion and more a complex cluster of feelings, composed of anger, grief, fear, anxiety, sadness and shame. It also has social and political dimensions, shifting through time according to ideas about the self, God and the natural world.”

Jesus provides the pattern of suffering for the sake of righteousness.

In 1968 presidential candidate, Hubert Humphrey, declared: “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.” As a Christian, it is difficult for me to disagree with that statement.

Peter issues a call to righteous living in the midst of acute suffering and persecution.

If you believe that there is no God to which you are accountable or that there is no God who has provided redemption for you, you will live your life quite differently than one who affirms such propositions. Consider the famous British philosopher of the 20th century—Bertrand Russell, one of the founders of analytic philosophy. One of his most famous books was Why I Am Not a Christian. For Russell, there was no God.

Peter explains the virtue of submission in the wife-husband role responsibilities.

As I have studied the Gospels over the years, I have been struck by how many times the text speaks of Jesus being “moved with compassion.” Jesus manifested compassion when He saw the crowds, responding with acts of healing (Matt. 14:14; 20:34; Mark 1:41), provision of food (Matt. 15:32), and teaching the word of God (Mark 6:34). Jesus not only modeled compassion; He also taught on the virtue of compassion, including the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:23–35), the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37), and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32).