In the message on Sunday (The Exile's Battle & Witness - 1 Peter 2:11-12), we considered the impact of our conspicuous godliness on our gospel mission. Peter indicates that part of proclaiming the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness is not only verbally proclaiming the gospel, but also living obviously godly lives. In 1 Peter 2:12, he wrote, Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Some of you may have wondered on Sunday how to reconcile this with something Jesus said in Matthew. Didn’t Jesus say to His disciples in Matt 6:1, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven”? Essentially, Peter instructs us to let our godliness be seen, yet, it seems Jesus warns against the same thing. So does Peter contradict Jesus here?
Maybe a more important question is, did Jesus contradict Jesus? Jesus gave that warning in Matt 6:1, but also said in 5:16, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” So does Jesus want us to let people see our good works or not? What are we to make of this?
What Jesus condemns in Matt 6 is both the motive of self-recognition and the heart of hypocrisy. So first, the Pharisees wanted to be seen to make much of themselves. But in Matt 5 and in 1 Peter 2, the objective is to make much of God. Second, the Pharisees were hypocrites. They were whitewashed tombs, as Jesus characterized them in Matt 23. They were doing outward deeds that were not indicative of inward faith. Conversely, the contexts of Matt 5 and 1 Peter 2 make it clear that the works that glorify God are not mere outward acts of piety that even the unregenerate can do, but include things like being reviled and not reviling in return, something no Pharisee could ever do.
Read the Beatitudes at the beginning of Matt 5. The qualities in the Beatitudes are the “light” that Jesus talks about in 5:16. Likewise, in 1 Peter, the idea is that we must live lives that have truly been transformed so that we are doing things that fallen people don’t do and can’t do. They can’t willingly suffer for doing good, like Jesus did. They will kick against the goads. Only the transforming power of the gospel can create consistent conduct like that. The motive is not so that anyone will look at us and say, “holy cow, you’re amazing,” but rather, so that others will say, “this gospel is true; glory to God.”
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