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NOTES for Pe1 3:13

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13 And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?
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What does the apostle mean when he says that no evil can be done to the one who strives for the good? If we understand his words as referring exclusively to our still untransformed world, they may appear overly optimistic. But what should be considered good? And on what does it depend?

As early as five centuries before the Savior's birth, the Athenian philosopher Socrates asserted that evil cannot come to a person from outside, and that what people usually consider evil, meaning by it failures, sufferings, and even death, is not in fact evil. True evil, in the philosopher's opinion, a person can do to himself only by making a wrong choice and thereby harming his own soul. This is how a man who lived in the times of Zechariah and Malachi, but never heard them, resolved the question of good and evil.

It would seem that the apostle has the same thing in mind: if evil is understood as harm inflicted by a person on his own soul, then one who strives only for the good truly has nothing to fear. But the matter concerns a fallen person in a fallen world. Can one be confident in one's own unswerving movement on the path of the good?

As is evident, human wisdom alone is not enough here. But the apostle is not speaking only of it either. Now that the Messiah has come and brought the Kingdom into the world, a person no longer remains alone in his striving for the good, one on one with the world that lies in evil and with his own sin. And if earlier intention alone was not enough, if earlier one who chose the path of righteousness had to be a spiritual hero, now it is enough simply to remain firm in one's intention. In everything else, we will always be helped.

Other notes

 
For Pe1 3:10-22
10 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:
11 Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
13 And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?
14 But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled;
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.
17 For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
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The Apostle Peter wrote his catholic Epistle around AD 63, at the very beginning of the period of persecution of Christians. At that time...  Read more

The Apostle Peter wrote his catholic Epistle around AD 63, at the very beginning of the period of persecution of Christians. At that time, the new people of God, chosen and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, entered upon the way of the Cross in following their Teacher. The apostle therefore writes about the meaning of suffering and relates the sufferings of the faithful to the saving suffering of Christ Himself. Tradition tells us that around the time this epistle was written, at the beginning of the persecutions in Rome, the apostle left the city at the insistence of the Christians, and on the road just outside the city walls he met Christ. “Lord, where are You going?” the Apostle Peter asked Him, and the Lord replied that He was going to Rome to be crucified there once again. On hearing this, Peter returned to Rome and suffered martyrdom there. A church called Domine quo vadis (Lord, where are You going?) was later built at the site of this encounter, and to this day it houses the stone upon which Christ’s feet stood.

Today’s passage from Peter’s Epistle seems to contain the apostle’s thoughts about precisely this. The apostle says that we must always be ready to give an answer for our hope, and explains that suffering for good deeds, when it is given to us by the will of the Creator, offers us an opportunity to meet and be united with Christ. The apostle writes that salvation itself was accomplished because Christ suffered innocently for our sins. The meaning of the apostle’s words is that our innocent suffering is mysteriously connected with Christ’s saving Passion. The Apostle Paul would express this thought as follows: “I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for His Body” (Col 1:24). In the Epistle to the Romans, in the passage read during the sacrament of Baptism, he adds: “we were buried with Him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).

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For Pe1 3:10-22
10 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:
11 Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
13 And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?
14 But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled;
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.
17 For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
21 The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
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The twelve verses from the First Catholic Epistle of the apostle Peter that we read today seem like a very large passage because of the abundance of exceptionally important things...  Read more

The twelve verses from the First Catholic Epistle of the apostle Peter that we read today seem like a very large passage because of the abundance of exceptionally important things the apostle says. The most important, perhaps, are the apostle's words about what our baptism is. The stereotypes of our consciousness force us to relate to baptism, how shall we put it... in different ways. Sometimes for us it is a rite of initiation, or something like a vaccination against illnesses and misfortunes.

That is why it is so important to hear what the apostle Peter says: baptism, according to his words, is not the washing away of bodily uncleanness, that is, it has nothing to do with ritual purity. The apostle states that the main thing in baptism is the pledge to God of a good conscience. The Greek word here means not merely a promise, but a promise made solemnly, a vow. For various reasons, for most of us this event itself, the making of baptismal vows, passes unnoticed. Partly for that reason we do not keep these vows in memory, the "pledge to God of a good conscience." But the apostle Peter says that precisely this baptism, this promise or oath to Christ, saves us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

No less important is that everything else, apart from a good conscience, remains offstage. Salvation is given by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and by nothing else. To receive it, one must promise God to have a good conscience and fulfill that promise. First, such Christ-centeredness is important in itself, because anything that claims the central place in our life apart from the Son of God Himself is an idol. Second, this view of the apostle contains within itself all the countless variety of forms of Christian calling.

In this connection it is also significant that the apostle speaks about our lot. He speaks of the persecutions that fall to Christians with remarkable calm, as something fully understandable to him. He grounds this in the fact that a good conscience before God draws every Christian onto the Way of the Cross, which the Head of the Church also walked. But, following the Teacher and Lord, the apostle Peter says to us: do not be afraid; this is the way of life.

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