Gentle, Reverent Answers

Dri­ving home from work yes­ter­day, our local Chris­t­ian radio sta­tion was broad­cast­ing a ser­mon by Dr. Adrian Rogers on 1 Peter 3:15, a text I’m quite famil­iar with: “but sanc­tify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to every­one who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gen­tle­ness and rev­er­ence”. I’ll have to be com­pletely hon­est about that last part, the part that says “with gen­tle­ness and rev­er­ence,” I had never really paid much atten­tion to it until Rogers brought it up. For exam­ple, when I do quote 1 Peter 3:15 (which is quite often), I do so in the con­text of some dis­cus­sion on whether or not Chris­tians should engage in apolo­get­ics. What I end up quot­ing looks some­thing like this: “always being ready to make a defense to every­one who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you”. It seems I’ve been unin­ten­tion­ally trun­cat­ing Peter.

As obvi­ous as the answers might seem, I found myself ask­ing what Peter means by the words we’ve trans­lated as “gen­tle­ness” and “rev­er­ence”. If I didn’t know the Greek, I think I would prob­a­bly look at this phrase and think some­thing along the lines of “meekly” and “respect­fully”. In fact, even though I didn’t tend to notice the end of v.15, this is some­thing I’m always striv­ing for (on a per­sonal note, my great­est strug­gle is writ­ing in such a way that I don’t come off as con­de­scend­ing). Con­trary to my thoughts, the real­ity is quite dif­fer­ent–rev­er­ence is quite a seri­ous thing to Peter. You see, I looked up these words in the Greek and the word we trans­late as “gen­tle­ness” is the Greek word praÿtes (you’ll have to excuse the spelling, Word­Press is being nit­picky), mean­ing exactly what I would expect it to mean “mild­ness of dis­po­si­tion, gen­tle­ness of spirit, or meek­ness”. On the other hand, the word we trans­late as “rev­er­ence” is the Greek word pho­bos, mean­ing “fear, dread, ter­ror or that which strikes ter­ror”. Not what I was expect­ing at all, but it makes sense. Think­ing about it, it’s very inter­est­ing to me that wrapped up in the con­cept of rev­er­ence is also fear; I might imag­ine respect and fear for a king or some one in a posi­tion of author­ity, or God. Though truth be told, I’ve never really had to revere any­one aside from God, and it’s very easy to for­get that I fear God if I’m being hon­est with myself. What I usu­ally tend to do is cre­ate a dis­tinc­tion between the rev­er­ence of God and the fear of God. The two never seemed to coa­lesce in my mind. To say it another way, my rev­er­ence lacked the appro­pri­ate, asso­ci­ated fear.

Now when I approach 1 Peter 3:15 I’ll have a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of what I’m read­ing. Now that I’ve cor­rected my under­stand­ing of the con­cept of rev­er­ence; and now that I have a fuller under­stand­ing of 1 Peter 3:15, I believe I can come to a num­ber of con­clu­sions. While it’s true that 1 Peter 3:15 calls for us to respect the per­son who is ask­ing for an account of our hope, we’re also called to answer somberly with the appro­pri­ate respect and fear (rev­er­ence) God is due. When peo­ple ask us why we have the hope that we have, we’re answer­ing — I believe, any­way — one of the most impor­tant ques­tions some­one could ever ask for in such a ques­tion we’re given the oppor­tu­nity to spread the Gospel. To be asked such a ques­tion and treat it flip­pantly is a very irre­spon­si­ble thing in that it might per­haps show that we don’t care for other peo­ple and ulti­mately don’t care for God.

In any case, I’ve quite enjoyed this and even if the above is inad­e­quate, I think it’s some­thing I’m going to do reg­u­larly. That is, pick a book (of the bible) and go through it verse by verse–I imag­ine there’s quite a lot to learn. In the mean time, this is what I have to offer (for now).

Related posts:

1. Answers, not quite, increas­ingly superficial
2. The Search for Answers and Meaning