The natural tendency for us is to allow trials and hard times to make us give up. Every child of God will endure difficult and trying times in life. Whether it be chastisement for sin or the trial of our faith, it is meant for our good. We must press on and not give up. Our text reminds us of God’s purpose in chastening and admonishes us with our responsibility to the Lord’s chastening.

There are those who hate Jesus and they hate Jesus’s followers, and sadly they persecute people for no other reason those because they love Jesus. It can be emotionally wearing and in situations of severe persecution in our world, harmfully painful physically and even imprisonment or death. Peter challenges the believer with eight ways we are to respond to persecution.

The Christian life is a miracle transformation wrought in our lives by the True, Living, Eternal God by means of His grace provided through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ and applied to our lives through faith. Peter tells us in this passage that this divine work is the distinguishing character that separates genuine salvation from counterfeit gospels or redemptive philosophies in this world. If we seek to live the Christian life without daily seeking God’s power and strength, we are not living the Christian life, we are living some weak imitation of the Christian life.