So What Do I Do When I Am Unjustly Treated? - Part B
Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 2:21-25
Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter
-
Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles
So, What Do I Do When I Am Unjustly Treated?
Airdate: 10/06 –10/07/26
Programs: 2372 and 2373
As we come into God’s word now, I wanted to let you know that we’re coming into first Peter chapter three, and we’re basically gonna spend all of May and a little bit of June dealing with the subject of marriage and gender roles and the role of the husband and the role of the wife, modesty. These are all things that Peter addresses in chapter three. And so if you want to think of May as marriage month, come and let’s let’s you know, marriage is in the news lately. Have you noticed? Is there a little confusion in our culture about what marriage is?
You bet there is. And so where is that truth gonna be declared and taught if not in the church? And so we are going to be addressing that and letting Peter guide us in biblical view of marriage. Alright. Quick and easy question for you.
Have you ever been wronged? Yes. Okay. Wow. That’s a good response there.
It’s quick. It’s easy. Why? Because to be human and to live around other human beings is to often and regularly be wronged. We pick up these little offenses, don’t we, in relationships?
Some of them are maybe sort of lower level slights, you know, little little things, a little kindness that maybe is unacknowledged or a little word that kinda hits us wrong, and we feel this offense in our heart. Some of them are are more you know, a little bit are bigger, like when we are lied to or when somebody cheats us or where we find out somebody has been gossiping against us. We feel unjustly wronged by somebody else. And then there’s big ones, like really big ones, like adultery and an unbiblical divorce or maybe violence done against us or against a loved one. And these are especially painful when they are done by people that are a part of our family or maybe a fellow Christian, a fellow member in the church, people that we have loved and trusted.
Life is filled with these kinds of disappointments, ones that we deem unjust, actions by others that create suffering for us that doesn’t seem fair. And, of course, there is a very natural human response to these things. We don’t have to teach or train, even children in our in our children’s ministry to respond, with retaliation or anger, bitterness, harsh words of some kind. We wanna hurt people back. You’re like, okay.
You’re gonna hurt me? Well, then here you go. Right? We look like the the fight last night that was going on. Counter punch and counter punch and punch and counter punch.
Too many of our relationships are like that. And so here you have the apostle Peter. He’s writing to a group of people who he knows their faith will create for them many moments where they are gonna have things done against them because they’re doing the right thing, because they’re obeying God. Still, they are going to suffer as a result of doing that at the hands of people that don’t like them, don’t like their faith, don’t agree with their worldview. And so Peter wants them to survive this.
How are they going to survive there and to thrive actually as Christians if they can’t get over this unjust suffering thing. If they can’t get over when people do things that hurt them because this was going to happen all the time. And Peter wanted them to thrive in their Christianity, to land on the other side of that unjust suffering, and to indeed love the person who has done that thing against them. And so Peter now transitions in his letter to this whole matter of what I do when I am unjustly treated. And our text today is verses 21 through 25 of first Peter two.
I’m gonna begin in verse 20, though, to give the whole sense of it. So please follow along as I read God’s word today. “For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you may follow in his steps.”
“He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.”
“For you were straying like sheep, but now have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.” And God’s people said, amen. Amen to that. Alright. We spent time in verse 20 last week.
It’s it’s again, it’s a part of this section about Christians in the workplace. Christians that are working for an employer, whether they be a good one or not, what is the proper attitude and action that a Christian should have in the workplace? What should that work ethic be? And Peter here says that we are to be respectful to our employers. We’re to respect their wishes.
Our attitude is to be one that we come under their leadership, and we work in the manner that they would have us to work. Now in a perfect world, that means that our employer will love us and treat us wonderfully all the time. Like, every week, a Christmas bonus, every day, flowers, words of affirmation all the time. Who wouldn’t wanna work for a boss like that? But what in reality, what happens in a Greco Roman first century world where the polytheism of the Greek and the Roman pantheons was a huge part of the culture.
The highest place in the city was dedicated to that god of the city. And when you come along and say, that god is not a god. Jesus is the only God. He is the only Savior of the world. And that’s what I believe.
Is that something that’s gonna help your career? Probably not. Are the people that you work with gonna be like, hey. Let’s have Bible studies together about that. Probably not.
In fact, what would that create for a Christian employee in the workplace in a culture like that? We call that a glass ceiling, don’t we? Where I’m coming to the place where I can’t advance anymore. They’re not they’re not moving me along. They don’t believe what I believe.
They don’t like what I believe. And so these Christians are are finding themselves in the workplace suffering financially, vocationally, otherwise, at the hands of people who did not agree. That’s why we’re calling them exiles. Right? They were geographical exiles, but really they were spiritual exiles living in a place that was not friendly, that was not home.
So Peter wants them, and he wants us the Holy Spirit wants us to know how do we respond? How should we respond when we are the victims of unjust suffering, when we are doing what we think pleases God, what the Bible says is the right thing, whether that be in employ in as an employee or just as a citizen or as a neighbor, a friend, a family member, when people mistreat us because of our faith. How do we respond to that? Do we pull a Pacquiao counter punch? Are we like, oh, it’s on, like Donkey Kong?
Right? Is that how Christians respond? And we see Peter here now explaining in a very Christological, he’s tying a Christology to Christian ethics here, and he just lays out the example of Jesus. And notice again, verse 21, “for to this you have been called.” Why?
“Because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you may follow in his steps.” So Peter here, his answer to that question, hey, I’m suffering because of my faith. Things are happening because of what I believe. Peter, what should I do? Peter says, you look to Christ.
Look to the example of Jesus himself. And he unpacks it here in the next verses. But in verse 21, I want you to notice, first of all, that we are called to this. This is not a suggestion. This is not something that, hey, you know what?
If it makes sense, follow the example of Jesus. He is saying, this is our calling. This is what we are to do, following the example of our of the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, notice that the reason that we are called to this is that Jesus suffered for us. Now we would like to think we’re always the victim in this.
Right? We’re the ones that are suffering. Woe is me. And yet the story of the Bible is that we are not always the victim, that we are the perpetrator when it comes to Jesus. Right?
Jesus comes to this earth, does nothing but good. Right? Meets the needs of the people. It gives truth, teaches, lives out love. The most loving life that has ever been lived is the life of Jesus.
And yet what did mankind do to to Christ? Took him, beat him, persecuted him, killed him on the cross. Jesus suffered at the hands of mankind, and we’re guilty with that. We might as well been the people in the in on that on that morning saying, let his blood and let it let his blood be on our hands and and on our children. Why?
We are we are culpable in what happened to Jesus. We are not always the victim. Not when it comes to Jesus. And yet Jesus suffered for us. And in this, he says, provides us an example.
K? And the Greek word there for example literally is the word of the first century that teachers would use to help children learn to write. Now to help with this, I I got I got these right here. How many of you remember these? K.
Though maybe they don’t do this anymore. I don’t know. This could be old school. But if you remember these things, these were like in my school, they they I think they had a through z, like like lining the top of the walls all the way around the classroom. So that as you’re working on your letters, you could look up and, okay, what does the f look like?
And you kinda but we we would have these things, and we would literally we would trace the letter. Do you remember doing that? K. Trace the letter. So we have uppercase A, A A A A, Lowercase A, trace the lowercase B, uppercase B.
Now, if you saw my handwriting today, you would know I didn’t do very well with this. Okay? My wife has beautiful handwriting. I am the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s absolutely terrible.
It’s embarrassing. So praise God for typing these days. But literally, an example, a template. That’s the Greek word first century.
For children following a writing example. Peter says, when it comes to suffering unjustly and the response that we ought to have, Jesus provides for us a template. Our response, our lives are to trace the moral and spiritual character of response that Jesus himself did. So, what did Jesus do? Well, Peter starts with what he didn’t do.
K? What he didn’t do. And you’ll notice here in in verse 22 and following, if you had really good eyes and could read the small footnotes, you would see that this section is largely drawn from Isaiah 53. K? Isaiah 53 is the famous chapter in the Old Testament.
It is known as the prophecy about the suffering servant. And if we had time, I would go back to that, and we would read it, and you would see that Peter is either quoting or referring to Isaiah 53 numerous times through the end of this chapter. Isaiah 53, such an eloquent picture of the life of Christ that Wes and Lori Taber in our church who lead Life in Messiah ministry. It’s an evangelistic ministry to to Jews. They will just go on the street corner and hand the Bible to a a a Jewish person and say, would you read Isaiah 53?
They read Isaiah 53 out loud, and they just simply say, who do you think he’s talking about? Because when you read through Isaiah 53 and the and the and the nature of the life of of the one that is prophesied, it matches up almost exactly to the life of Christ. And it’s almost like as Peter is saying, oh, you wanna know how to respond to unjust suffering? It’s like he has his Bible in one hand, and he’s writing Bible in the other. He’s writing this letter, first Peter.
And he’s going Isaiah 53, Isaiah 53. What was true about the suffering servant? Well, quoting exactly, “he committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten.”
In this passage, Peter highlights four things Jesus didn’t do. And all four of these are things that naturally in our flesh want to do when somebody has wronged us. Let’s just walk through them. Notice, first of all, “he committed no sin.” Summary statement.
Jesus’ response to people that sinned against him was not to to sin in return. He didn’t act or react out of self interest, self protection. There is no carnality. There is no pride. There is no ego.
There is no selfishness in his response. Nothing that he did in response was immoral or was sin. Summary statement. Secondly, he didn’t deceive. “Neither was deceit found in his mouth.”
Friend, what do you naturally wanna do when you find out that somebody has lied about you? They have said some untrue thing about your character. Our natural response is to say, well, if you’re gonna lie against me, then I guess that’s the moral standard now. You are setting the tone morally for this relationship, so you lied against me. Well, let me just lie against you a little bit.
And we want to respond in kind to the person that lies about us, that gossips about us, that slanders us. We think, oh, two can play that game, and I’m fully able to take you down. And on we go with this little tit for tat. We can think of the treachery, for example, of Judas or Peter, who denied knowing Christ three times in his most dire time of need. And in each of those cases, Jesus doesn’t respond with Judas’ behavior.
Jesus doesn’t deny that he knew Peter. He doesn’t let their actions be then the moral standard by which he would respond. He didn’t deceive. No deceit was found in his mouth. Notice he doesn’t slander.
“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return.” You say, oh, it was Jesus. Nobody said anything bad about him. Actually, you read through the gospels, and you will find that Jesus was maligned throughout his entire ministry. People that were not fans of what he was teaching and what he was doing, they were trying to undermine his stature in the eyes of the people by undermining his character.
He was slandered. He was was accused of being born illegitimately, of plotting to overthrow Rome, of wanting to be king of Rome, well, king of, certainly, of of Israel, of demon possession, blasphemy, and mental derangement. Now I don’t know what kind of week you had or what people said about you this week, but I’ll bet that list tops whatever you went through this week. Right? That’s a pretty severe accusation being made against Jesus.
Now were any of those things true? No. They were not. They were not true at all. But here is the huge difference between Jesus and us.
When we wanna slander somebody, generally, we make up something or we characterize something about them, and we make it bigger than it is, and then we tell other people about it. K? We misrepresent what the person is, and it tears them down. If you’re Jesus, you don’t need to misrepresent anybody. Why?
Because you know their heart. Jesus would not have to misrepresent me to take me down in your eyes. He would just have to tell you really the depth of the sin of my own heart. And the same for you. He could just say the truth about us, and it would have taken us down.
But he doesn’t respond in like kind. He was slandered against. He doesn’t go around slandering Caiaphas or Pilate or Judas or anybody else. He didn’t return in kind. Fourth, he didn’t threaten.
“When he suffered, he did not threaten.” And I just think this is like the easiest, the most natural of all of the responses. You know, we when somebody when somebody threatens us, we wanna threaten them back. How do we threaten people back? We may threaten violence.
Right? What on the playground, what does this mean? You coming in here, you’re gonna pay for it. Right? That’s a threat.
We may threaten lawsuit. We may blackmail. We can withdraw relationship is a kind of threat. Oh, you can keep on this path? We’re not gonna be friends anymore.
We can remove financial support, etcetera. All of these are human beings trying to suppress the person who’s doing something to hurt us, doing something wrong against us and to stop the suffering. K? So let’s just pause right there and look at that those list of four things. And can I just ask you, is it possible that the Spirit of God is pricking your conscience right now about something that is going on in your life?
Are you sinning in response? Are you deceiving? Are you slandering? Are you threatening? Are you in a retaliation mode because of some hurt that somebody has done against you?
All of these, not what Jesus did. And the irony, of course, is that Jesus is the only one who had a right to retaliate. He was the only one who was actually the perfect person, right, who could and had a right to retaliate against people that were painfully were causing him to suffer. He had the right to pronounce a punishment. He had the right to pronounce a verdict.
And when you consider all of the resources that as the Son of God he had at his disposal, when somebody did something against him, it makes even more remarkable that he didn’t do anything. How’s that for a terrible sentence? Switch that around. I got the adverb wrong or whatever that is. Go back to my grammar here a second.
The fact that he had those resources makes him not retaliating even more remarkable. Like, just take the moment with Pilate, for example. Jesus has been beaten. He has he’s got the crown of thorns on his head. He’s got the robe of purple.
He’s standing next to Pilate in front of the people, and Pilate sentences him to be crucified. In that moment, if Jesus would have just thought, I think a little retaliation right now is in order because I have done nothing wrong. Imagine I mean, 10,000,000 nuclear bombs right on Pilate’s head right in that moment. Right? And that would have been just a fraction of the power that Jesus had at his disposal.
Right? Or maybe just one. And just Pilate’s just obliterated there. I remember the old song. I used to sing it when I was growing up.
He could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set him free. I mean, you talk about a hair trigger. When you have legions of angels at your very disposal, when you have the power that’s holding the atoms together of the entire universe, when it is your power that is the gravitational thing that the sun and the Mercury and Pluto and all the rest are, when all of that is right there in your fingertips and a human being does you wrong and you don’t retaliate, that tells us something, doesn’t it? Jesus knew something that kept him from feeling the need to retaliate. That is the key that Peter’s getting at here.
What did Jesus do when he was wronged? And notice what it says. Rather than retaliating, he continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. Jesus entrusted himself to God. And the the verb there is it’s not a one time thing.
It’s not like just on the cross he said, it is finished. It was an ongoing activity that Jesus did as he picked up these offenses and wrongs and slights and and irreverence to his glory throughout his life and certainly in his public ministry, ongoingly, he is entrusting himself to God. You say, well, what does that mean? Here’s what it means. The Greek word there, literally, it means to hand something over.
K. So, like, if I if I was to, you know, to to just hand something to somebody here in the front rows, what would I be essentially doing as I took what I had and I gave it to that person? It would essentially be meaning this is no longer my concern. This is out of my hands. I am no longer responsible for this particular matter.
I am handing it over to you. That’s what Jesus did. With every wrong done against him, he handed it over to his Heavenly Father. He said, here’s another thing for you to take care of. I am not going to view this as my responsibility.
I am not going to feel emotionally the bondage of this wrong being done against me. I am taking this wrong, and I am giving it to you. Do you see what it do you see this? And do you see how this is kinda helpful? Right?
Are you with me this morning? K. Or have you never been wronged? Like, is nothing coming to your mind right now? You’re thinking, I hope this is helping somebody in the room because I’ve never had anybody do anything like this to me.
There’s no application in my life whatsoever. What world are you living in? K? Not mine. One commentator.
Jesus kept handing over to God every dimension of His life, including the fate of His enemies. What did Jesus do when He looked up and He saw His own disciple Judas leading the mob to come and arrest him, a man that he had lived with, hand selected to his inner circle? What do you think Jesus felt inside? He was human. He felt betrayal.
He felt wrong. He felt an even greater wrong than the worst wrong that you have ever felt in your life. Why? Because you’re a sinner, and I am too. He is the perfect Son of God.
What did what did Jesus imagine this you wanna talk about a creepy moment in the Bible. Here it is. When Judas comes walking up to Jesus in the Garden Of Gethsemane and kisses him on the cheek. That’s a moment in the Bible. And as Jesus as he comes close, the text tells us that he says, Judas, are you gonna betray the Son of God with a kiss?
What was Jesus feeling inside, do you think? He was feeling the same thing that you and I feel when somebody betrays us, when somebody does wrong against us. But what he didn’t do in that moment is what you and I naturally want to do. He did not retaliate. Rather, by faith, he took even that betraying kiss, and he handed over to the father and said, you know what?
I’m not gonna worry about that. Heavenly father, that’s just something else that you get to make right. I am not gonna be in emotional bondage to the kiss of Judas. It’s out of my hands now. I am entrusting this to you, heavenly Father.
Now you might say, well, that’s kind of a mind game, isn’t it? Like, this some sort of talk show mind game? Doctor Phil, thank you. No, it’s not.
So why isn’t it? Look at the rest of the phrase. Okay? Look what it says. But continued entrusting himself to him who judges you see that?
Judges justly. And here is the absolute key to this whole thing and us living in this world without bitterness against people that wrong us. Here’s the key. Jesus’ holy character did not allow any sin to go unpunished. He’s not it’s not like he’s the sheriff who’s overlooking things and saying, oh, you drug runners.
Do what you want in my town. I don’t care. He is holy. He is righteous. He is offended at sin, and rightly so.
But here’s the deal, friends. Jesus knew that nobody gets away with anything. Nobody gets away with anything. There is a payday someday for every single wrong and sin that has ever been done. God’s justice and his holiness requires that in the end, everybody gets what is due them.
Hebrews reminds us this in Hebrews ten thirty one. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry God.” And make no mistake, God is angry at sin. And his wrath is holy and infinite and will be poured out against every sinner and every sin. And Jesus knew that.
Jesus knew that there was that there’s a hell. Jesus knew, knows that there is real justice in the world. And it’s not the justice of the local police. It’s not the justice which can be corrupt. It is not the justice of the court systems which can be corrupt.
It is not the justice that mankind exerts which is often self seeking and is corrupt. It is the holy and righteous judgment of a God who sees everybody impartially. And He judges justly every sin, every wrong. And he had full confidence in his heavenly Father’s commitment to punishing fully and eternally every wrong, every sin, every violence, every betrayal, every unjust suffering, there is a payday someday. And that justice and that confidence that Jesus had in the Heavenly Father’s ability to make that right freed him from feeling like he had to be judge and jury and sheriff for every single wrong that happened in his life.
Rather, he knew that God had his back and he would take care of it. And Paul picks up this point in Romans 12. “Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, I will take revenge.
“I will pay them back, says the Lord.” Now when does God pay back all of these wrongs that have piled up the billions of sins that have piled up over time. Some of the payback happens in this life. You know, the consequences of sin are the rewards of sin. Or as we sometimes say it around here at Bethel Church, we don’t break the 10 commandments.
They break us. When we violate God’s will, when we live in a manner that’s tearing other people down, when our pride and our ego has risen to such a place that we will cause unjust suffering in other people’s life, We are living a life that is not a flourishing life. We are living a life that is empty and broken and bankrupt, and that kind of life has its own consequences and its own pain. But primarily, Jesus is looking to the future here, that nobody gets away with anything, that there is a coming judgment from God where every single wrong that was done against Jesus, and there were probably thousands of them that we don’t even know about that aren’t recorded in Scripture, little things people said, snide remarks, little irreverence against Jesus, refusal to believe, and all the rest. All of those in his life, he knew someday hell was gonna take care of it.
Hell was going to be the place where that would be judged justly. He knew it, and that meant that he didn’t have to punish Judas when he came in to kiss him. He didn’t have to punish Caiaphas for all of his schemes and being the architect for his crucifixion. He didn’t have to punish on the spot Pilate for sentencing the holy Son of God. He didn’t have to punish the person unknown to us who drove the stakes through his hands and feet.
He didn’t have to do any of that. Why? God’s got it. He’s got it. And instead of retaliating or slandering or violence back, now Jesus is free to do the most counterintuitive thing that a human being can do when somebody is wronging us.
He was free to actually love here now. K? Up in Gary, they start amenin’. Free to love the person who is wronging us. Indeed, to love our enemy.
It’s hard to love your enemy when you feel like you’ve got to make right what they are doing against you. But when you think God’s gonna make it right, I don’t have to do it anymore. I can give that over to God. Now my hands are free from the bitterness and the bondage that comes when I think I’ve gotta make this right. My hands are free now to actually love them, to do good for them, to bless them, which is what the Bible calls us to do.
When we look at it, we go, how could anybody do that? We trace the letters and the example of Jesus’ life, and we follow that. So if right now we could peer into hell and see Hitler and Judas and Mao and Stalin and Dahmer and the nine eleven murderous terrorists who took 3,000 lives or any other person infamous for their sin that we don’t mind thinking about being in hell. And if we if somebody came to us having seen their suffering in hell and said, hey, do you think they’re getting away with it? Did they get away with murdering all those people, all those Jews?
Did those Nazis get away with it? One glimpse into hell, we would shudder, and we would say, they aren’t getting away with anything. That future look is what Jesus had, and it freed him from responding sinfully. Now I can hear maybe you if you’re tracking with me, you’re thinking to yourself, okay, Hitler, Dahmer. I’m okay with those guys being there and thinking that way.
But, honestly, the people that are causing the most suffering in my life are not unbelievers but are actually Christians. And I know my Bible, Romans eight one. “There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” And so these Christians are causing me suffering, and yet they’re forgiven. They’re not going to hell.
So how do I deal with fellow Christians that are causing me wrongly pain and suffering. And here is Peter’s response, a very maybe most famous verse in Peter. I don’t know. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds, you have been healed.” Or the old King James, “by his stripes, you have been healed.”
And this is a very sobering verse in the Bible because it highlights the fact that Jesus himself bears our guilt. He’s the victim, isn’t He? He’s the one who has been wronged. And yet, He is the one that bears the guilt for our sins on the cross. This is known as a substitutionary atonement that Jesus is in our place.
He stands in our place. His body becomes a kind of reservoir spiritually for all of our guilt, all of the wrong that we have done against God, and all of the wrong that we have done against other people, the wrong that I have done. I you know, I’m doing this message, and you’re thinking maybe about all the wrong things that people have done against you. And Peter draws out the fact that we are the ones who have done the wrong. We are the ones who have caused unjust suffering.
It has been our sin. And you say, I don’t know anybody like that. If you’re a Christian, you caused Jesus to suffer unjustly. He didn’t do your sin, and yet he was made guilty for your sin. That doesn’t seem fair to me.
Does it seem fair to you? No. He bore our guilt on the cross. And all of a sudden, the paradigm changes, doesn’t it? Not to how I have been wronged, but how I have wronged Christ himself.
And so we discover then that all the wrongs that have ever been done by anyone against anyone are made right in the end. How? For unbelievers, they are judged justly in hell. And all the wrongs that Christians have ever done were judged justly on the cross. Jesus bore the guilt for my wrong and for the wrong that is being done against me by a fellow Christian.
Piper says it this way, the suffering of Christ was the recompense of God on every hurt I have ever received from a fellow Christian. And we have to ask ourselves, do I think that Jesus’ payment for the wrong that Tom has done against me, my fellow Christian, do I think that was enough, or do I need to pile on to the payment that Jesus made on the cross with my own slandering against him and my own violence against him or my own threatening him? Was the cross a not was the let me say it this way. Was the cross a sufficient payment for the wrong that this Christian has done against me? And if it was not a sufficient payment, then guess what?
I’m going to hell too because he died for me. He died for me too. And so we find ourselves then in living life. We’re constantly looking forward. We’re constantly looking back.
How do I get out of the bondage of bitterness and anger for the things that people have done against me? I’m constantly looking forward. This person is an unbeliever. I look forward, not in a kind of a gleeful way, but I look forward chronologically. Two, the time when God is going to judge that justly and make it right, I hand that over to him.
It’s out of my hands now. If the person is a Christian, I don’t look forward. I look back. I look back to the cross. And I see on the cross a a bloodied Savior gasping for air.
And I believe what the Bible says to be about that moment that Jesus was bearing the guilt for the sin that this person is doing against me. And I believe by faith that payment was enough. I don’t need to make him pay anymore. And I am free then to hand that matter also over to God. And for my hands now to be cleared, again, to do the most counterintuitive thing that only Christians can do, and that is to love our enemies and to do good to the person who has done wrong to me.
Now I know right now we got some deep roots of bitterness right here in this room. And when I get to this point on love thing, you’re like, I could never do that. And I’ll admit to you, there are some people in my story I’d have a hard time loving them because they have hurt me so deeply. And here’s the question. Do I wanna view what has happened to me through the grid of my emotions or to view it through the gospel?
Which of those sounds like a better path to freedom? In fact, to ask you, some of you are going back twenty years to something that somebody did against you. You’re still in bondage to that. Here is a path to freedom, and it comes through our faith and applying what we believe to be true to even those deepest hurts that we have in our hearts. We let God take care of it.
It’s out of my hands. And now I’m going to love as best I can. Well, you say, I don’t see the word love in there anywhere. Well, what did Jesus do on the cross for us? He loved us.
We mistreated him. He continued to love us. We abused him. He died in our place. We slandered him.
And here are some of the most profound words in all of the Bible to me. “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” Who does he say that over? He says that over the Roman soldiers who had just plunged nails into his hands.
He says that in a sense over mankind and humanity. They don’t begin to realize what they have done. And we do not find a bitter Savior on the cross, do we? We find a loving one. I’ve been thinking about this because I just think there’s so many applications to life.
You know, for me as a pastor, there are there are so many, like, frustration points where things don’t seem fair to me. Like, we’ll have a family that that’s in our church. They’ve been in the church for a long time. You know, we’ve married them. You know, I buried loved ones at the hospital when they were in trouble, helping their kids through distress, all of these time and investment and all of that.
And then all of a sudden, they leave the church because they don’t like the traffic flow in the parking lot or something like that. And you’re like, really? I mean, all this investment and then this little thing and you’re gone, it just doesn’t seem fair. And we pastors, we kinda struggle with what do we do with that kind of thing. Or think about in marriage.
Talk about application. To be in marriage is to have all kinds of these little offenses that you pick up. You know, the little word, the little, I felt disrespected or, you know, these kinds of little what do you do with those? Some people, they just let them pile up, and they just get more angry and more embittered against their spouse. Big and small, this has application.
Why? I hand it over to God. I don’t have to hold on to this offense. I see this through the cross. I see this through the future.
I hand it over to to God. I find myself at times in in in marriage, like, I’ll I’ll do maybe do something, and and and then I feel like my it’s not being acknowledged. Even though she’s really good at it, my heart wants perfection in that. You know? And, you know, so I start fishing.
I’ll be like, so the house looks pretty clean, doesn’t it? Doesn’t seem fair. What about that unthoughtful word or that opinion that maybe is shared a little stronger than it needed to be? Where do we go with these things? Are we just mad all the time?
Are we just offended all the time? Peter, I think, says a much better path. Look back to the cross and see a bloodied Savior, feeling the guilt of my sin and hand that offense over to him and be free of it, be free of the bondage that bitterness creates. And this is how we trace the example of Jesus with our life. How are you doing there?
Are you getting outside the lines? Does does the a look more like a g? Does your does your b look kind of like a w? Because you’re wanting to do it your own way. Let us follow the example of Christ.
Let us walk in his steps, and that’s a path of freedom. That’s a path of freedom.
* This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
Review Notes
The following items were flagged during editorial review and could not be resolved without the original audio. They are marked inline in bold red text at the point where they occur in the transcript above.
“Count punch” (early in the message, discussing retaliation): Possible transcription error — may be a mishearing of “counterpunch.”
“AAAALowercaseA” (handwriting/alphabet illustration): Garbled text, likely a transcription corruption. Preserved verbatim in the transcript.
“Wes and Lori Taber” (Isaiah 53 illustration): Proper name spelling could not be verified against audio.
“Life in Messiah” ministry name (Isaiah 53 illustration): Presented as the ministry's proper name based on context; exact spelling/title unverified.
“Doctor. Phil” (mind-game illustration): Stray period after “Doctor” in the source file appears to be a transcription artifact; likely refers to the TV personality “Dr. Phil.” Punctuation corrected in the text above.
“Up in Gary, they start amenin’” (freedom to love illustration): Unclear reference — could not confirm whether “Gary” is a person, place, or section of the room.
“Does it fit seem fair to you?” (substitutionary atonement section): The word “fit” appears to be an extraneous transcription artifact.
“Was the cross a not was the let me say it this way.” (Piper quote section): Broken/unclear phrase, likely a verbal self-correction by the speaker; the intended meaning becomes clear in the sentence that follows. Preserved verbatim.
First reference to “the Greek word” for “example” (writing-template illustration): The speaker references a specific Greek word (likely “hupogrammos,” meaning “example”/“template”) but does not state it aloud, or it was not captured in transcription.
Second reference to “the Greek word” for “hand something over” (entrusting himself to God section): The speaker references a specific Greek word (likely a form of “paradidōmi,” meaning “to hand over/entrust”) but does not state it aloud, or it was not captured in transcription.
Other checks performed:
No profanity or curse words were found; all instances of “hell” in the transcript refer to the theological concept discussed in the sermon, not profanity.
No “Premium” table row was found at the top of this document, so none was removed.
Paragraph breaks were reviewed for mid-sentence splits; the existing paragraph structure was already logically segmented, so no paragraph merges were needed.
All instances of “God” were capitalized; lowercase “god(s)” was preserved only where the speaker is referring to pagan/false deities (e.g., “that god of the city… that god is not a god”).
“Bible,” “Scripture(s),” “Savior,” “Spirit” (in “Spirit of God”), “Son” (in “Son of God”), “Heavenly Father,” and “Mercury” (the planet) were capitalized for consistency.
