In the Spring Sunday school session this class will be looking at the book of 1 Peter using the lessons available at Reformed Forum. These lessons are also available on YouTube under the Reformed Forum account for 1 Peter. The class format is to watch the video together and then discuss the presentation.
NotebookLM generated blog content from the YouTube video:
The Cruciform Life: 5 Radical Lessons on Power, Submission, and the Art of Suffering Unjustly
We have all felt it—the cold, sharp sting of the unfair. It’s the "harsh, unreasonable boss" who demands your loyalty while demeaning your character. It’s the crushing weight of systemic inequality that offers no legal recourse and no easy exit.
In those moments, our internal wiring screams for two things: retaliation or resignation. We want to litigate our rights or sink into the bitter comfort of victimhood.
But in the first century, the Apostle Peter dropped a tactical bomb into the middle of our resentment. Writing to exiles—people living in the lowliest, most precarious social positions—he offered a set of "rules of engagement" that feel entirely foreign to the modern mind.
Peter’s advice on submission isn’t a call to weakness or a demand for spineless conformity. It is a "deep interior liberation." It is the secret to a life that cannot be crushed by external circumstances because it is anchored elsewhere.
1. Submission is a Sign of the Truly Free
In the logic of the Gospel, submission does not imply inferiority. It is actually the hallmark of the truly free. Peter points to the ultimate example: Jesus paying the temple tax.
As the "True Temple," Jesus knew he was exempt from the obligation. He had previously excoriated the temple authorities as corrupt and even murderous. Yet, as a free man, he chose to pay. It was the outward manifestation of a soul that no authority could truly bind.
When we refer all things to God—a concept the source calls "God consciousness"—we are no longer victims of our circumstances. We become agents of a higher kingdom.
"This God consciousness is the interior freedom, which enables one to transform suffering... This is the secret to all successful nonviolent Christian resistance."
2. The Revolutionary Act of Giving Someone a Voice
One of the most radical moments in Peter’s letter is the simple fact that he addresses household slaves directly.
In the Greco-Roman world, this was a revolutionary conferral of dignity. Under the prevailing logic of the time, famously articulated by Aristotle, slaves were property. Because they were objects, Aristotle argued, it was logically impossible to "mistreat" them—any more than you could mistreat a shovel or a chair.
By speaking directly to them, Peter treats them as moral agents with their own agency. He doesn't command their masters to control them; he invites the servants to make a conscious, pious choice. He gives them a seat at the table of human dignity, disrupting the social order by treating the "property" as a person.
3. The Gospel as an Indirect Disruptor of Systems
Critics often wonder why the early church didn't simply "abolish" slavery or pontificate against the institution directly. But Peter’s methodology is more subversive.
The Gospel transforms people first. It "unleashes forces that can ultimately transform or abolish corrupt institutions" from the inside out. As the theologian J. Gresham Machen noted, when social change is pursued as the primary goal, Christianity becomes "a different kind of religion" entirely.
By focusing on the heart and the individual’s relationship to God, the Gospel works indirectly. It dissolves the foundations of corrupt systems by making the "lordship" of one human over another unthinkable in the light of the Cross.
4. The Atonement is a "Moral Alphabet" to be Traced
We often treat the Cross as a theological transaction that happened "out there"—a private deal for our sins. But Peter uses a striking word to describe it: hupogrammos.
In the ancient world, a hupogrammos was a sketch or a pattern of the alphabet that children would use to trace their own letters. Peter is saying that the Cross is our "moral alphabet." It is the central lesson in public, political Christian ethics.
To live a "Cruciform" life is to place our lives over the pattern of Christ and trace his lines. It is not just an event to believe in; it is a set of footsteps to walk in. Any political theology that does not have the "naked, lacerated, suffering slave-king" at its center is not a Christian one.
5. The Paradox of the Wounded Healer
The Gospel offers a claim that is both bizarre and offensive to human pride: that the wounds of a "beaten slave" are the source of global healing.
In the face of betrayal, false accusations, and the "cowardly injustice" of authorities, Christ practiced a holy, efficacious resistance. He didn't retaliate or make threats. Instead, he "kept entrusting himself to him who judges justly." He refused to become a victim, turning the violence of the world into a vehicle for its restoration.
The beaten slave becomes the great physician by being wounded.
The Ultimate Example: The Story of Pastor Yang-won Son
What does this look like when the stakes are life and death? In 1948, during a period of intense conflict in South Korea, a group of communists executed the two older sons of Pastor Yang-won Son. The boys, Matthew and John, died calling on their executioner to believe the Gospel.
When the killer, a young man named Chai-sun, was caught and sentenced to death, Pastor Son did the unthinkable. He requested the man’s release. His 13-year-old daughter, Rachel, testified in court to support her father’s request.
Pastor Son didn't just forgive Chai-sun; he adopted him as his own son.
"I thank God that he has given me the love to seek, to convert, and to adopt as my son, the enemy who killed my dear boys."
This is the embodiment of cruciformity. It is the active choice to abandon the "politics of vengeance" and instead allow healing to flow from the very wounds inflicted by an enemy.
Conclusion: Returning to the Overseer
Peter’s instructions are not a form of spiritual coddling. They are "effective medicine" for a world obsessed with power and rights assertion.
He reminds us that the one who was led like a silent sheep to the slaughter is now the "Overseer of our souls"—the Shepherd who protects and nourishes his exiles. We are under the ultimate authority of the Wounded Healer, not the harsh masters of this world.
As you navigate your own experiences of injustice, the question remains: Will you stay trapped in the cycle of vengeance, or will you trace the footsteps of the Shepherd?
Will you seek the healing that only flows from the wounds of Christ?