The Rarest of Moods

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Peter was a man of action—and he was nobody’s fool.

Like all of the apostles, except for John who died in exile, Peter would be martyred for his faith in Jesus. While on death row in Rome, Peter penned his first book. Two years later, around A.D. 64, Peter was crucified by being hung upside down.

Peter has come full circle since he drew his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. Locked in a Roman dungeon, he must have realized: The pen is more powerful than the sword.

No one knows for certain what Peter’s discipline as a writer looked like. He knew what he wanted to say and to whom he needed to say it. Did he hold the quill or did Silvanus?

What’s important is that Peter’s two letters are uniquely his voice. Both of his books have a definitive style. His theology parallels Paul’s, but his literary voice is his own.

Like Paul’s prison epistles, Peter is incarcerated. He can languish—or he can write. He can descend into pity—or he can leverage his limitation to put on paper what he knows of life with Jesus.

As a man cursed, Peter writes to cursed Christians living in exile; aliens scattered throughout Asia Minor. Peter’s trials validated his words.

Peter was a blunt instrument in life, an impetuous man preachers love to use as an illustration. He lived the entire spectrum, from striking courage, to utter betrayal, and back to unprecedented courage. Ready. Fire. Aim.

But the years tempered Peter, not as a courageous man, but as a man whose heart and intellect were honed into clarity. The sharpening stone was tribulation.

Peter was the perfect apostle to write these displaced Believers.

Straight up, Peter gets his readers’ attention: Alien. Exile. Unwanted. Rejected by home, family, and culture. Then: “You are chosen!”

Peter hasn’t yet left verse one and is only halfway through his preamble. “Let me be clear: Powerful people declared you alien and exiled you to the nether regions of the empire. But before there was anything at all, in His foreknowledge God chose you, called you His, made you family, and dedicated Himself to a sanctifying process through the Spirit. He endowed you with a heart anxious to obey Jesus.”

No literary nuance like Paul utilized. No literary sophistication like Luke. Peter’s prose is composed with words and grammar indicative of a man accustomed to action.

Concluding his preamble, it appears to English readers that Peter invokes grace and peace just as Paul and other New Testament writers do: “May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure” (1:2).

Peter’s words are generous.

His mood is not.

To conclude his literary hook, “May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure,” Peter chose the rarest and most unlikely of Greek, verbal moods: the optative.

This mood is used to express an improbable possibility; a wishful hope. The optative mood expresses the most unlikely contingency.

Peter is not saying that grace and peace are wishful or unlikely. After all, we know from the balance of scripture that Jesus is grace and peace personified, the truth of God, who cannot lie.

So what is Peter saying? Why did he choose the optative, the rarest and most uncertain of moods?

Vintage Peter!

Let me be blunt-honest. You are engaged in a fiery ordeal. Distressed by various trials. Your lives are perishable. Your friends are stumbling. You are suffering—suffering for the sake of righteousness. Don’t forget: Jesus suffered. Prepare yourselves for the same experiences! Your adversary, the devil, prowls like a lion on the hunt. There is a real probability you will be devoured. Your lives are a tormented trial and God brought this to bear. May grace and peace be yours in fullest measure.

The optative mood is Peter’s way of saying to his readers, “Unless you get really honest about your suffering and the truths of your faith in Christ, any grace and peace to match the full measure of your hardship is an unlikely wish.”

Peter’s choice of grammatical moods expresses a gauntlet thrown down. Pay attention! If you don’t collect your spiritual wits, you will be devoured—even though the fullest measures of grace and peace may be yours.

The optative is a taunt.

When Peter’s letter was read, his readers hear the grizzled apostle leaning into their faces. “You’re suffering a fiery ordeal. Grace and peace are yours, and they’re yours in their fullest measure, but I wonder if you will seize them like your lives depend on it.”

Hardship, trial, tribulation, exile, alienation. These are called suffering for a reason.

Life is hard.

God provides grace and peace in copious volume.

But whether you seize them as your own remains to be seen.

And God? What’s He thinking?

Peter’s letter references God’s blessings: salvation, hope, inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, reserved in heaven, rejoicing, more precious than gold, foreknown, revelation, called, courage, confirmation, strength, establishment. But the fullest measure of these aspects of grace and peace are not revealed apart from the fire nor appropriated without enduring it.

It’s nice talk to say God wants the best for His children. Peter’s letter explains how God’s best becomes experiential. “Indeed! God does want the best for you. But the only means of producing this quality of Christlike character is through fiery ordeals.”

It’s inspirational theology with a tough application.

On April 9, 1945, two weeks before the Allies liberated the Nazi death camp where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was incarcerated, he was stripped naked and hanged with piano wire. His final recorded words were, “This is the end—for me the beginning of life.”

Bonhoeffer, and thousands of Believers before us, picked up Peter’s gauntlet and lived the fullest measures of grace and peace while aliens and exiles on this earth. This is the rarest of moods, but Peter’s challenge is that it doesn’t have to be.

So, given your situation, what’s your mood?