1 Peter 4:7-11: Stewards of God’s Grace

1 Peter 4:7-11: Stewards of God’s Grace

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 1 Peter, and today the next passage we come to is 1 Peter 4:7-11. It says,

7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we thank you for the gift of your Word. And we pray what Jesus prayed in John 17—sanctify us in the truth, your word is truth. We understand, from this, that your Word isn’t just true but the very standard of truth itself. So please use your Word by your Spirit to sanctify Your people. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.Whenever you go to a professional sporting event—whether it’s a baseball game, a football game, or whatever it is—you go there expecting to sit in the stands and watch the professional athletes do their thing. You attend the event in order to be a spectator. And that’s something a lot of people like to do. In fact, some people will shell out thousands of dollars in order to do that. I remember reading that tickets for the most recent Super Bowl this past February were being sold for an average of $8,400. That’s the average amount people were paying to attend the Super Bowl. And for the better seats, some people were even shelling out as much as $22,000. That’s what you call dedication. And of course, they’re paying that money simply in order to watch others play the game. That’s what the vast majority of people do at sporting events. They function as spectators. 

It seems that a lot of churchgoers have a similar mentality when it comes to church. They have what we might call a “spectator mentality.” They may never say it like this, but they view church basically as a time when a bunch of “ordinary” Christians gather together in order to watch a special group of uniquely gifted or uniquely devoted Christians engage in ministry. In their mind, church is a weekly event that people attend in order to watch a handful of “elite” Christians do their thing.  

Yet the Bible speaks of church a lot differently—as we see here in our main passage of 1 Peter 4:7-11. This passage shows us that church is meant to be so much more than just a handful of “elite” Christians ministering in various ways for an hour on Sunday mornings while everyone else sits and watches. Rather, it’s intended to be not just a weekly event but a vibrant community of believers in which everyone is actively loving and serving one another. You might think of it as a kind of spiritual family. 

And that’s something in which we should all rejoice for numerous reasons but for two reasons in particular. First of all, it means that we don’t have to go through various struggles alone. Not only do we have the Holy Spirit within us, we can also have an entire family of fellow Christians beside us—loving us and supporting us and ministering to us—as we face the various difficulties in life we’ll inevitably face. What a blessing!

Not only that, this also means we have an opportunity to be a part of something that’s so much bigger than just ourselves. And not just to be a part of it as a passive spectator but to actually be a part of it as an active contributor as we strive to minister to the people around in various ways and labor side-by-side with our fellow Christians for the advance of the gospel. And what a high and holy calling that is. What a privilege that God invites us to something so much more significant than just sitting in a seat once a week and actually gives us an opportunity to contribute to an endeavor that has eternal value. So, we should be thankful that God’s designed the church to be not just a weekly event but a vibrant community of Christians who are actively loving and serving one another.

And as we prepare to dive into this particular passage of 1 Peter 4:7-11, there’s another aspect of all of this for us to keep in mind as well. When you look at the context of these verses, it’s clear that the Christians of the first century to whom Peter was originally writing were suffering for their faith. They were encountering a significant amount of social hostility and at times even outright persecution. We see numerous references to that throughout the letter, including in the passages both immediately before and immediately after our present passage. Back in verse 1 of the chapter, Peter referred to Christians who have “suffered in the flesh” and then spoke in verse 3 of the way these Christians were being “maligned.” And, peeking ahead to the next passage, we see in verse 12 a reference to the “fiery trial[s]” these Christians were encountering and the ways in which they were made to “share Christ’s sufferings.”

So, both the passages before and after today’s passage emphasize the fact that these first-century Christians were suffering for their faith. This passage focusing on the importance of having a vibrant Christian community in which Christians are loving and serving one another is sandwiched in between two other passages focused on suffering. That in itself should tell us something. As the world around us gets increasingly hostile to the Christian faith, we need each other more than ever. It’s more important than ever that we stick together as Christians and develop not just a weekly assembly of loosely affiliated people but a vibrant community of Christians who love and serve each other like family. 

And that’s the main idea of this passage. To state it concisely, the challenges of living in the midst of social hostility make it all the more important for Christians to love and serve one another. Again, the challenges of living in the midst of social hostility—that is, from those outside the church—make it all the more important for Christians to love and serve one another.

So, let’s walk through this passage verse by verse. First, at the beginning of verse 7, Peter reminds his readers that “The end of all things is at hand….” This truth provides the impetus or the motivation for everything else Peter’s about to write. “The end of all things is at hand.” The Greek word translated “end”—τέλος—refers not to the termination of all things but rather to the completion and consummation of all things. It’s not that everything will come to a sudden stop but that God’s redemptive purposes in this world will be fulfilled. That will happen, of course, when Jesus returns. That’s the event we’re currently waiting for. And, as we see, that event is “at hand.” It’s almost here. It’s imminent. And it’s becoming more and more imminent with each passing day. 

And that belief about the future should change everything about the way we approach the present. The thought of finding ourselves face-to-face with Jesus and of the day of his return drawing nearer should bring about nothing short of a revolution in the goals and priorities we pursue in our lives. It should motivate us to live our lives in a way that Jesus will find pleasing.  

I remember how, when I used to work at a supermarket as a teenager, the district manager would sometimes come around. And whenever our store manager knew ahead of time that the district manager was coming, you can probably guess what that meant for us. The store manager would want everything to be immaculate. He’d want us to buff the floors until they shined. He’d want all the cash register areas and everything at the front end of the store to be wiped down. He’d want all the items on all the shelves in the store to be pulled forward so that the shelves looked better. And, of course, the purpose of all of this was to have the store looking good for the district manager. Similarly, our anticipation of Jesus’s immanent return should motivate us to be faithful in living for him. 

And that’s precisely Peter’s point in verse 7. Right after he reminds his readers that “The end of all things is at hand,” he tells them, “therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded….” In other words, make sure that your mind isn’t muddled with misplaced priorities or unbiblical values but rather that you’re thinking clearly and therefore living a disciplined and “self-controlled” life. 

It’s also important to do this, Peter says, “for the sake of your prayers.” When our minds are clouded with worldly desires and priorities, we can’t pray properly. We need to be “self-controlled and sober-minded” so that we can pray the way God wants us to pray and pursue his glory and the advance of his Kingdom above everything else. Peter may also be referring to the fact that, if we’re not living for God, he won’t answer our prayers. Therefore, we have to be “self-controlled and sober-minded” so that God will even hear us when we pray. Don’t expect God to answer your prayers if there’s sin in your life that you’re not making any effort to repent of. 

Peter then continues to describe how we should live in light of Jesus’s return in the subsequent verses. He writes in verse 8, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” The phrase “above all” indicates that this command for Christians to love one another is an especially important command. 

And that’s confirmed in several other places in the New Testament as well. In Colossians 3:14, right after Paul lists numerous virtues to which Christians should aspire, he says, “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Do you see that phrase “above all”? There it is again. It’s a slightly different phrase in the Greek than Peter uses in our main passage, but it’s the same basic idea. And of course, we can’t forget about what Paul so famously states in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” So, love is what we might call the crowing Christian virtue and the virtue that encompasses all others. As we just saw in Colossians, it “binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

And according to Peter in verse 8, we should not only “love one another” but we should “keep loving one another earnestly.” The word translated “earnestly” carries the idea of stretching and straining and pictures an athlete exerting themselves to the maximum extent possible. Picture an Olympic sprinter running at the maximum speed their body is capable of and exerting themselves to the fullest extent possible in order to win a race. That’s the way in which we’re called to love one another. Peter’s not talking about some sort of vague feeling of sentimentality or half-heartedly acting in a loving way as long as it’s not too inconvenient. He’s talking about loving one another in a very active and vigorous and even sacrificial way. 

After all, isn’t that the way in which Jesus has loved us? Think about the love Jesus displayed when he came to this world as a human being and eventually died on the cross in order to take the punishment for our sins. There was nothing passive or half-hearted about that love. Instead, it was radical and sacrificial. And Jesus calls us to demonstrate that same love for one another. He says in John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” And perhaps Peter has that very commandment in mind when he writes in 1 Peter 4:8 that we should “love one another earnestly.”

He then says that this love “covers a multitude of sins.” There are a couple of different ways to interpret that. One interpretation is that our love for someone leads us to overlook their sins against us if at all possible. Alternatively, this could also be a reference to others overlooking our sins. People will put up with a whole lot of flaws and deficiencies in you if they know that you love them. 

So, that’s Peter’s central exhortation in this passage—“keep loving one another earnestly.” But what exactly does that involve? Well, let’s continue on in the passage. Verse 9: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” It’s worth noting that showing hospitality was especially important back in the first century because most inns weren’t reputable at all and were actually rather dangerous. Nowadays, of course, things are different because we now have hotels that are usually pretty good, and we can even look up online reviews on hotels to make sure we stay somewhere that’s acceptable. However, there are still plenty of opportunities for us to show hospitality. These include having people over for dinner, hosting a Community Group, and bringing meals to people who could probably use a meal such as families with newborn infants.  

Peter then continues to explain how we can “keep loving one another earnestly” in verses 10-11. He writes, 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 

So, we see in these verses that a key way in which we as Christians love one another is by using our spiritual gifts. Peter writes, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another.” A spiritual gift can be defined as “any ability that’s empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.” That definition, by the way, is from Wayne Grudem. Again, a spiritual gift is “any ability that’s empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.”

And there are several passages in the New Testament that talk about spiritual gifts and even provide detailed lists of the kinds of gifts that are out there. Romans 12:6-8 lists the gifts of prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, and mercy. And 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 lists the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, languages, and the interpretation of languages. Then later in that chapter in verse 29, Paul adds apostleship, prophecy, teaching, healing, and administration to that list. And I personally don’t believe these are exhaustive lists of all the gifts that are out there but are simply representative lists of the kinds of wonderfully diverse gifts God gives to his people. 

Back in 1 Peter 4:10, Peter refers to this wide diversity of gifts as “God’s varied grace.” He says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” And God’s grace is indeed incredibly “varied.” John MacArthur writes that, “Each believer’s spiritual giftedness is unique, as if each were a spiritual…fingerprint. It is as if God dips His paint brush into different colors, or categories of gifts, on His spiritual palette and paints each Christian a unique blend of colors.” 

You know, it kind of reminds me of the famous painter Bob Ross who used to have that painting show on PBS. He’d fill his palette with maybe 6-8 different colors but then mix those colors together in different combinations in order to form other colors that were truly unique and that were exactly what he wanted for that painting. He’d take a little of this color over here and a dab of that color over there and mix them together but then maybe decide he wanted a little more of the first color or maybe even an additional color in order to make the exact color he wanted for his painting. 

And that’s what God does with spiritual gifts. He gives each Christian a spiritual gift that not only fits within a certain general category but that also ends up being manifested in a very specific—and even a unique—way in the life of a particular Christian. That means two Christians might both have the gift of encouragement, but they exhibit that gift in two distinct ways. Or, perhaps even more noticeably, two Christians might both have the gift of teaching but end up exhibiting that gift differently by emphasizing different things and having a distinct style and tone. 

I mean, for those of you who like to listen to various preachers on YouTube, just think about the variety of ways those preachers minister to you. One might be particularly gifted at helping you understand profound truths, while another might be good at helping you see how those truths connect to your life, while another might be good at stirring your soul with penetrating insights you hadn’t thought of before. Every gifted preacher has a unique contribution to make. 

And it works the same with every other gift in the church as well. There might be a limited number of categories of spiritual gifts, but there are an infinite number of ways in which those gifts are expressed. Every Christian is gifted in a unique way and therefore has a unique contribution to make in their local church. That means, if you’re not faithfully using your gift, well—just to be blunt—you’re kind of letting all the rest of us down. We’re all missing out on your unique gifting. So, let me encourage you, don’t be the missing puzzle piece at Redeeming Grace Church. 

It's also important to note that the various gifts that exist in a church are not only different but also complementary. God makes sure that our gifts complement each other. It really is a lot like a puzzle. Just like the pieces of a puzzle complement each other in that they all fit together perfectly in order to form a picture, we have spiritual gifts that complement the spiritual gifts of those around us. 

This means, among other things, that you as an individual Christian are incomplete apart from a local church. You need other Christians who have different spiritual gifts than you to minister to you in various ways. Maybe if you had all the spiritual gifts, you’d be able to minister to yourself in all those ways, but the fact is that you don’t. So, you need others in the church to minister to you. By the way, this involves actually getting to know them well enough and developing relationships with them that are meaningful enough for them to be able to use their gifts to minister to you and for you to be able to do the same toward them.  

Now, at this point, you might wonder how you can discover what your gift is. You might understand from what we’ve discussed so far that it’s important to use your spiritual gift but not be sure about what that gift might be. So, how can we discover the ways in which God’s gifted us? 

Well, one type of resource that’s out there and that you can easily find online is what’s often called a spiritual gifts test. Basically, these tests ask you questions and—based on your answers to those questions—suggest what your spiritual gifts might be. And I think those tests have some value—particularly in identifying a few preliminary interests—although it’s probably best not to draw any definite conclusions from them. 

You might also find it helpful to ask yourself a few questions. First, what do you want to do? That is, what kinds of things seem desirable to you? What do you think you’d enjoy? Then, a second question to ask yourself is, what do you seem to be good at doing? Of course, this requires that you actually start doing various things in the church. It requires that you get out of your comfort zone a little bit and try new things. And then assess whether you seem to be good at those things. Or, even if you’re not that good at them at first, do you at least seem to show potential to become good at them with a little training and practice? 

After that, a third question is, what do other people think your gifting might be? Find a few mature Christians who won’t be afraid to give you honest answers and ask them to share their thoughts about areas of potential giftedness they might see in you. And finally, a fourth question is, what needs and opportunities exist around you? If God’s truly sovereign and purposeful in distributing spiritual gifts—as the Bible says he is—it makes a lot of sense that he’ll gift Christians in ways that match the needs of those around them. So, just look around you and ask God to open your eyes to things that need to be done and start doing what you can to minister in those ways, and you may very well discover a lot of overlap in areas where ministry is needed and areas in which you’re gifted. 

And by the way, all of this works a lot better if you’re a part of a Community Group. I’ll just say that Community Groups are the natural place—and probably the primary place—for you to discover and then develop your gifting. In addition, of course, there are also plenty of opportunities to serve in various ways on Sunday mornings. And those volunteer positions are likewise great opportunities to discover and develop your spiritual gifts. 

So, let me encourage you to seek to do that. Seek to be active in using your gifts to build up those around you. Peter’s very direct in exhorting us to do that in verse 10. He says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” In other words, don’t just let your gift sit on a shelf and collect dust. Use it, as God intended. 

Peter then says we’re to do this “as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Notice the word “stewards.” Back in ancient society, those who were wealthy would often entrust their property and possessions to professional stewards who were skilled at managing those things. It might be land or money or other kinds of resources. And the steward’s job was to manage what was given to him in accordance with the owner’s instructions. So, the steward didn’t own those things; he was simply managing them and was accountable to the owner. 

A good modern-day parallel would be a financial advisor. When you turn your money over to a financial advisor, that advisor isn’t free to do whatever they want with it. If they decide to use your money to take their family on a cruise in the Caribbean, that’s not cool, right? That’s generally frowned upon. There’s a good chance the financial advisor would end up doing some jail time for pulling a stunt like that. Because that money was yours, not theirs, and therefore needed to be managed according to your instructions. 

Likewise, according to Peter, it’s the same way with what God’s entrusted to us—specifically spiritual gifts but also everything else as well. God expects us to be faithful stewards of all that he’s entrusted to us. And the day will come when each of us will have to stand before God and give an account to him for how well we’ve stewarded what he gave us. Imagine that you died today had had to do that. What would your report be like? How faithfully have you been stewarding what God’s entrusted to you?

Not only that, notice also what Peter says we’re stewards of. We’re “stewards of God’s varied grace.” That’s where the title of the sermon this morning comes from—“Stewards of God’s Grace.” The word “grace” reminds us of the incredible privilege that it is to be called and gifted to serve our brothers and sisters in the faith. It’s not a privilege we deserve but instead one that God’s nonetheless graciously given to us.  

We then see in verse 11 that Peter divides the spiritual gifts into two very broad categories—speaking gifts and serving gifts—and tells us to use our gifts in a way that glorifies God. He writes, “whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

So, those who have speaking gifts should employ those gifts with a reliance on God to give them the words to say, and those who have serving gifts should employ those gifts with a reliance on God’s strength. And it’s as we do this, Peter says, that God receives the glory for everything we do. Spiritual gifts, after all, aren’t about us getting attention for ourselves or impressing people with how gifted or devoted we are but rather about God being exalted in and through our lives. That should be the grand ambition behind everything we do. 

And notice a very important phrase attached to the end of that sentence. Peter speaks not just of God being glorified but of God being glorified “through Jesus Christ.” Why do you think Peter wrote that? What do those last three words contribute to the sentence? We might have expected Peter to write something to the effect of God being glorified through our faithful service or God being glorified through us using our spiritual gifts. But instead, he talks about God being glorified “through Jesus Christ.”

I believe the idea Peter’s seeking to communicate is that all of our efforts to use our spiritual gifts faithfully are an outflow and overflow of the foundational ministry of Jesus. The only reason we even have spiritual gifts in the first place is because Jesus has died on the cross in our place, bearing the punishment our sins deserved. In reality, we should have been the ones to face God’s judgment for our sins. But in his love, Jesus stepped in and suffered that judgment as our substitute. He was then resurrected from the dead with the result that everyone who puts their trust in him is forgiven of their sins and adopted into God’s family and given eternal life in heaven. They also receive the Holy Spirit, who is the one who gives us spiritual gifts and empowers us to serve through those gifts. That means we don’t have any spiritual gifts to use until we receive the prerequisite gift of salvation that Jesus offers to us.  

So, everything we’ve talked about this morning related to Christians loving and serving one another rests on the foundation of the gospel message of Jesus. Everything that we do in our service to one another is inseparable from what Jesus has done in his service to us. And, indeed, that’s a key element of our motivation for serving one another. We serve one another through our faithful use of spiritual gifts because Jesus has served us through his death on the cross. It’s in this way that, according to Peter, God’s “gloried” not merely in our use of our spiritual gifts but, most fundamentally, “through Jesus Christ.”