Do the Right Thing

By Rev. Heidi L. Barham |  May 15, 2023

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Read 1 Peter 3:13 - 22
 
During a time when we see chaos and confusion erupting all around us… when people are treating one another with reckless disregard… bringing hurt, harm, and danger when it is completely uncalled for… our New Testament lesson this morning conveys a rather clear message that we would do well to heed.
 
And that message is simply this: DO THE RIGHT THING.
 
Now, on this Mother’s Day, I think it fair to say that this is a lesson that most, if not all, of our mothers (and probably most, if not all, of our fathers) tried to instill in us at a very early age… that we should always aspire to DO THE RIGHT THING…
 
But what is the right thing?  
 
First and foremost, it is to follow Christ’s command to love God with every fiber of our being and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (see Matthew 22:36 – 40).
 
And when we DO THE RIGHT THING… loving God and the people of God… we can’t help but want to do good for others… remembering what Jesus taught… something commonly referred to as “The Golden Rule” … “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31).
 
But unfortunately, we are living in a day and age when doing the right thing is often met with resistance and criticism or worse… but that does not give us an excuse or a free pass to simply not DO THE RIGHT THING because it is difficult or because it brings hardships and challenges.
 
And, as we look at our text for today… given the Apostle Peter’s focus… it would seem that this phenomenon is not something exclusive to the modern generation.
 
In fact, let’s listen again to the first section of our text… this time as it is found in the Message Paraphrase:

 
In the first century when this text was originally written, many Christians were suffering and being abused and persecuted for their faith… for obeying the teachings of Jesus. 
 
And many of them were victims of slander… with people making false and damaging statements about them… but Peter’s encouragement to them was to “keep a clear conscience” … in other words to DO THE RIGHT THING… so that when the mudslinging started, there was no way for it to stick.
 
The commentary in the Life Application Study Bible (2005, p. 2107) puts it like this:
 
You may not be able to keep people from slandering you, but you can at least stop supplying them with ammunition.  As long as you do what is right, their accusations will be empty and will only embarrass them.  Keep your conduct above criticism!
 
And as we think about Peter, he was certainly no stranger to the pain and anguish of being a follower of Christ… and he most likely was the victim of slander a time or two himself… but he did not let that deter him.  He continued on his quest to spread the Gospel. 
 
And Peter wrote this letter to offer encouragement to other Christians who were suffering as well… so that they, too, could continue to spread the Gospel.  And his words of encouragement to believers back then ought to give us hope and encouragement even now to DO THE RIGHT THING… so that we, too, can be blessed as we share the Good News about Jesus. 
 
If we look back just a few verses before our text this morning, we find:
   
Although these can be hard verses to live by… the ultimate blessing that comes as a result makes it all worth it. 
 
We have been blessed to be a blessing… and we have been given an opportunity to not only tell others about Jesus but to show them through our actions… to model Christ’s love by responding, not with hate and anger, like the rest of the world… but with love and kindness and compassion… just as Jesus, Himself, did.
 
Think back to Jesus’ words as He hung upon the cross at Calvary… the victim of a hate campaign like no other… in the midst of what must have been truly excruciating pain… Jesus did not call fire to rain down upon the heads of those responsible for His crucifixion… on the contrary, “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”’ (Luke 23:34).
 
What better example do we need of what it means to DO THE RIGHT THING?  To not hold bitterness and animosity in our hearts toward those who have wronged us?  To extend grace and mercy… even as we have been the beneficiaries of God’s abundant grace and mercy ourselves…
 
In his letter to the Ephesians (4:31 – 32), the Apostle Paul writes, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
 
And in his letter to the Colossians (3:13), Paul writes, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
 
Oh, but how easy it is for us to sit in our seats of righteous indignation and cast judgment upon those who have done the unthinkable and what we deem to be the unforgivable… but at the risk of bursting someone’s bubble… forgiveness is not an option… it is a command.
 
Jesus said it Himself…
 
After teaching the disciples how they should pray, He said, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).
 
How can we possibly ask, much less expect, God to forgive us if we are not willing to forgive? 
 
Now I know from firsthand experience, folks can do some things that seem to be beyond our level of ability to even try to forgive… and yet that is exactly what we are called to do… to forgive them anyhow… to DO THE RIGHT THING.
 
And what makes it possible for us to do the seemingly impossible is to think about what Christ was willing to do for us. 
 
Listen again to verse 18 of our text for the morning, “That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.”
 
That goes along with 2 Corinthians 5:21 where we read, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
 
Jesus went to extraordinary lengths on our behalf so that we could become the “righteousness of God” … in other words, so that we could be made right with God… so that in turn, we could DO THE RIGHT THING…
 
And even when things are beyond difficult… we are able to DO THE RIGHT THING… not in our own strength but with the strength we have through Christ who makes it possible for us to do all things (see 2 Corinthians 4:13).
 
Now, I will be the first to admit that it is not easy to serve up love and compassion when others are dishing out hatred and hostility… but it is what we are called to do time and time again as we look throughout the Scriptures.
 
And yet, when I look at what is streaming on the Internet or listen to the news, it is hard not to want to lash out in anger and outrage…
 
And just to be clear, there were times that even Jesus got angry… just think back to that whole incident that took place with Him overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple (see Matthew 21:12, Mark 11:15, John 2:15) ... or when His disciples had seemingly little or no faith as the storms were swirling around them (see Matthew 8:26, 14:31, 16:8, 17:20)
 
But even in times of anger and frustration… Jesus never repaid evil with evil… He used those situations as teachable moments for those who were involved…
 
And that is the lesson that we can take with us today… that even in our anger and frustration with everything that is happening in the world around us… we are still called to DO THE RIGHT THING… to reflect the amazing grace that God has shown toward us by being gracious to others… even when that other person or those other people make it really hard to do so… or should I say, especially when they make it hard to do so?
 
And that it is the very essence of what it means to extend grace… to give something that is truly not deserved in spite of what the other person may have done, or not done, as the case may be.
 
Keep in mind what it says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
 
Talk about grace upon grace…
 
And yet, how easy it is for us to forget or lose sight of just how much grace has been lavished on us… and when that happens, that is when we find ourselves being much less gracious than we ought to be.
 
It takes me back to the story found in Matthew 18 about the man who owed a tremendous debt to the king.  The man could not afford to repay the debt and begged the king to be patient with him and give him time to repay what he owed… instead, the king took pity on the man and canceled the debt in full… something the man did not deserve… but the king extended grace to him anyhow.
 
But no sooner had the man had his tremendous debt forgiven than he went out and demanded repayment of a much smaller debt that someone else owed him…
 
How quickly we forget…
 
I am reminded of the story of a man named John Newton whose life was miraculously spared multiple times.  I want to share a brief excerpt from an article that I found on the Library of Congress website:
   
Newton spent many years working in the slave trade.  However, he eventually came to accept that it was only because of God’s grace that his life had been spared… over and over again.  He could no longer resist the call to ministry he felt in his heart and he became an ordained minister.  And several decades later he became an abolitionist, speaking out against the evils of slave trafficking. 
 
Although it took quite some time for him to turn things around, John Newton did DO THE RIGHT THING with his life… and he was inspired to write a poem that chronicled much of his spiritual journey and his experience of receiving God’s grace... a poem that was set to music many years later…
 
And so, I want to invite us all to DO THE RIGHT THING now and stand and join in singing that song which is our Hymn of Discipleship:  Amazing Grace #546.
 

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