Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. 

1 Peter 3v15

Introduction

Be prepared!

“Be prepared” is the motto of the scouts. Their founder, Robert Baden-Powell, came up with a motto using his initials, BP. In 1908 he wrote that being prepared meant,

In some ways that seems very old-fashioned. But in other ways it is bang up to date! We spend so much of our time managing risk and making sure that we are prepared for a variety of scenarios. We spend huge amounts of time, energy and money keeping our bodies fit and healthy. Being prepared is important to us!

We should have no difficulty, therefore, identifying with Peter’s call to be prepared:

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

1 Peter 3v15

What did Peter mean by being prepared?

We are going to look at what Peter meant by this.((This post was first written as a sermon to fit with session 3 of the Talking Jesus course.))

Perhaps you are expecting this sermon to be all about equipping us with good arguments that will convince our non-Christian friends… That is not going to be my focus. I want to show you that being prepared to share our faith encompasses far more than a list of reasons, no matter how good they may be.

An illustration

So, what is Peter’s advice on being prepared and on being convincing when we share about our faith?

Context

As ever, we need to look at the context to get the full flavour of what Peter is saying. How does it fit with his overall message in his letter?

Staying strong in the face of suffering and persecution is a major theme of his letter. Early in the letter, he says,

for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials

1 Peter 1:6

He spends some time explaining this in the rest of chapter one. Later, he refers to how non-Christians may accuse them, falsely, of doing wrong. He ends the letter by warning them to be alert (be prepared!) because,

Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

1 Peter 5:8-9

His closing doxology refers to suffering:

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 5:10-11

1.       Be prepared by living holy lives

As we narrow our focus and look at the context of our verse in chapter 3, we see that here too, there is a strong theme of suffering under persecution. In verse 9,

9Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

1 Peter 3:9

In the verse preceding our verse, v14,

But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.”

1 Peter 3:14

You see, one of the ways that we make ourselves prepared to share gospel truth is by living good lives. Earlier on, in 1 Peter 2:12, Peter said,

                12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

1 Peter 2:12

Just like in my example of swimming, if we are to be convincing, we must be authentic. Our lives must show the truth of what we say. That is the first way in which we must be prepared.

2.       Be prepared by living under the lordship of Christ

To see the second way in which we must prepare ourselves, let’s look more closely at v15. It doesn’t start with “Always be prepared…”

15But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

1 Peter 3:15 NIV

In the original language, it is all one sentence. There is no “be” before “prepared”. The ESV translation is closer to the original:

but in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

1 Peter 3:15 ESV

They have put in “being” to make it read more easily, but if you omit it, it still makes perfect sense.

Jesus must really be Lord in our lives

My point is that being prepared flows on from revering Christ as Lord in our hearts. They are linked. If Christ is not lord in our hearts, we can give the most wonderful, water-tight arguments and none of them will have any effect. People will see right through us. They will see that we say one thing and live another. We pay lip service to Christ as Lord, but in reality, we do as we please. There is little difference between us and the people of the world. Like them, we fill our lives with work and entertainment. We set little time aside for God. There are no issues on which we take a stand. We go with the flow and keep our heads down…

How to live under the reign of King Jesus – through the lens of the Beatitudes

There is so much that we could say about living under the lordship of Christ. Let’s just look for a moment at the beatitudes in Matthew 5. They contain the essence of what being in the kingdom of God entails.

• Do we recognise that we are poor in spirit? Do we know that we dare not rely on ourselves to live this life or to please the Lord? Do we know that we depend on his empowering for every step that we take?
• There should be a humility about us that leads to a gentleness in our dealings with others—what Jesus calls “meekness”.
• Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness? In other words, is the desire to please God by doing right the core motivation for all that we do? Does that desire go beyond appearances to wanting to please God with what is in our hearts?
• Are we merciful? Is there a softness about us that contrasts with the hardness of so many around us?
• Are we pure in heart? Are we sincere in all that we do, so that others recognise that we have no personal agenda? Is it clear that we don’t manipulate or try to pull strings, but we say what is right because it is right, and for no other reason?
• Are we peacemakers? Do we have a reputation of resolving conflict, bringing people together?

Living like this will help prepare us to be convincing when we give an answer about our faith. It follows on from being prepared by living good lives, but I think it goes deeper. It goes deeper because all of this is impossible unless at a deep heart level we are living under the lordship of Christ. And it’s impossible without the help of the Holy Spirit in us.

3.       Be prepared by living in hope

The third way in which we can prepare ourselves to give an effective answer about our faith flows from the way Peter describes our faith. He says, “Be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you have.” The ESV renders this, “the hope that is in you”. That’s what the Greek words say. I like that! For me, having a hope “in us” speaks of something more profound. We may have all kinds of hopes: hope to meet the right partner, hope to advance in our career, hope to find and fulfil our calling. These hopes may shape many of our decisions. But the hope that is in us shapes all our decisions because it is profoundly part of who we are. We may face disappointments in all those other hopes, but this hope always remains. Hallelujah! What is this hope?

• It is the hope that one day Jesus is coming back to this earth.
• It is the hope that when we see Jesus, he will change us to be like him (1 John 3v2). On that day our salvation will be complete.
• It is the hope that death is not the end for us.
• It is the hope that we shall live forever.
• It is the hope that there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which God reigns in righteousness.
• It is the hope that in that new universe, sin and suffering will be no more.

I’d like to say three things about hope.

a)      Hope looks to the future

Firstly, hope focuses on the future. We know that one day our victory will be complete, but we are not there yet. The Bible is clear that in this life we will have many struggles. Life will be hard. Jesus himself warned us that in this life we would have trouble (John 16:33). Peter in his letter is anxious to reassure his readers that their trials and persecution are a normal part of the Christian life. There are some who will try to tell us that we must experience constant joy and victory. But that is not what the Bible teaches. Far better to recognise that we are in a fierce battle, that the way is difficult. Having that mind-set will equip us better to experience joy in the midst of the battle.

b)      Hope recognises the reality of sin

Secondly, this hope recognises the reality of sin. The fact that we are looking forward to a new age when righteousness will reign points to the fact that sin ruins the current age. Neither politics nor education will solve the world’s problems. In fact, there are no means to achieve complete justice and equality in this world.

We know that ultimately all human efforts will fail. We don’t put our hope in them because we know that these human efforts don’t deal with the central problem. The central problem is the refusal of humanity to bow the knee to Almighty God. Sin taints everything in the here and now. Our hope is in Jesus who overcame sin, and nowhere else.

The central problem is sin in me

Above all, this hope recognises the reality of sin in me. If I’m hoping in my Saviour Jesus, it means I know that I need saving. I know that I am a sinner. My sin is the fundamental problem about me: all my other problems flow out of that central dysfunction. In myself I have no means of addressing this problem. And no one else can help me. No one else can grant me forgiveness; no one else can change that sin nature within me so that I can begin to live as God would have me live. Without the intervention of Jesus, I am utterly lost. That is the context of the hope that we have. It is in this context that we look to Jesus to complete the work that he has begun in us. In this context we cling to the promise:

he is able to save completely those who come to God through him…

Hebrews 7v25

c)       Our hope is a certain hope

That leads me to the third thing I want to say about our hope:  Our hope is a certain hope. When we talk about hope in this world, we usually mean something that we would like to happen, but we’re not entirely sure that it will. Will it be sunny at the weekend? “I hope so.” The hope that the Bible talks about is very different. It is a certain hope. Biblical hope is faith looking to the future with a certain confidence that what God has promised he will bring about:

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

Heb 6:19

If this hope thrills and energises us, then surely it will help prepare us to speak about our faith to others who don’t have that hope.

4.       Be prepared by prayer

Before we move on to talking about reasons for our hope, I must first say a word about prayer. I am not going to linger over it, because I hope that it goes without saying that none of our efforts to share the gospel will have any effect unless God blesses them. That’s where prayer comes in. Prayer is the vital backbone of all of this. Without prayer all our efforts will be whistling in the wind.

George Mueller in the 19^th century supported thousands of orphans by the power of believing prayer. In 1844 he began to pray for the conversion of 5 individuals. They all became Christians, but two of them converted in 1897, after he died. Brothers and sisters let’s keep praying!

5.       Be prepared by preparing some reasons why we believe

So far, we have looked at four ways that we can prepare ourselves to share our faith with unbelievers.

To finish I want to bring some brief thoughts on the reasons we may give for the hope that is in us. I’m not going to give you killer arguments. There are plenty of good books and web sites that will help you to argue the case for Christianity. One of my favourites is John Blanchard’s Does God Believe in Atheists? ((EP Books, Darlington, 2000. Get one second hand for £3 or £4!)) I don’t have time to go into the arguments here. I want to just leave you with some pointers.

a)      Give thought to preparing reasons

Firstly, how seriously should we take this? Some people will tell us that Jesus said,

do not worry beforehand what to say…

Mk 13:11

But, as ever, let’s look at the context:

when they arrest you and hand you over…

For most of us, it is very unlikely that someone will arrest us. We are talking about the ordinary, everyday. And in that context, Peter tells us to be always prepared.

I think “Always be prepared” has some implications for us. Peter said that to believers who routinely suffered persecution for their faith. He could have said, “Don’t make things more difficult than they need be. You are already facing a hard time. Don’t make it worse by speaking out!” That’s not what he said. How much more should we be prepared to speak out!

“Always be prepared” tells us that speaking out is important. It is something that we should give time and thought to.

An illustration from education

If you work in or volunteer in education, you must know about safeguarding. It won’t do to say that you know it is important and that you will get round to looking at it sometime. Nor will it do to say that you are not very good at that, you will leave it to others who are more gifted in that area.  No school in the UK is going to accept you on that basis! In a similar way, we must take seriously our preparation to give a reason. Let’s ask ourselves, “Have we done that?” Have we taken time to think about it? Have we prepared some reasons? That’s where a course like Talking Jesus can be so helpful. Especially when we reinforce our preparation through discussion in our home group.

Why not think about what objections people are likely to raise against Christianity and prepare some responses?

And for those people who will never bring up any spiritual matter, why not think of some questions that we could ask to provoke discussion? You could say something like,

You know I’m a Christian, right? Perhaps you could tell me what you believe.

Let’s give some thought to these things. That’s my first point about being prepared to give reasons for our faith.

b)      Communication involves listening

My second point has to do with listening.

Don’t you hate it when people talk at you? I don’t enjoy a conversation unless I feel that the other person takes an interest in what I have to say and gives me space to say it. I think most people would say the same. So, let’s not dump our message on to people without first listening to them. When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, he listened first. He had a conversation with her before he introduced anything about the gospel.

c)       Work on building understanding

That leads me to my third point about preparing to give reasons. Listening is important for another reason. We must listen because we need to have some understanding of where they are coming from. What is their framework of understanding of the world? Here’s a couple of examples of what I mean.

• For many of our friends, science is the only reliable indicator of truth. It may be that for them, “faith” belongs in the same mental pigeonhole as “fairy tale”.
• Few people today are likely to understand what we mean by Jesus saving us from sin. They probably see themselves as a good person and have no sense of needing forgiveness.

d)      Do it with gentleness and respect

Always being prepared means that we give time and thought to having our reasons ready. It means that we take care to listen. As we listen, we take the trouble to try to understand how unbelievers see things, so that we can present the truth to them in a way that they can understand. All of that is part of delivering our message with gentleness and respect, as Peter exhorts us to do.

Conclusion

Always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you. In conclusion, I want to say let’s persevere in speaking to others about Jesus, carefully and winsomely.

Let’s be wholehearted disciples of Jesus who live holy, authentic lives, sincerely seeking to obey him in every part of our lives.

Let’s pray for the non-Christians whose lives we touch, and let’s keep on praying.

Let’s rejoice in the wonderful hope that he sets before us. Living for Jesus in this world is tough, but it is full of glorious hope, and here and now we get tasters of what is to come. As we live in that hope, we will want to share it, and share it in a meaningful way. We don’t dump the truth on people and run. I think some of us give up on people long before we have genuinely communicated the gospel with them. Let’s persevere. Let’s think carefully about how to present the gospel in ways that will communicate. Let’s water it all with persevering prayer.

Let’s be prepared!

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