Big Buts of the Bible

“It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.”
—1 Peter 1:12

There are some things we have heard so often that we can forget how astonishing they are.

Grace. Forgiveness. Resurrection. Salvation. Living hope. An inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. The promise that even suffering does not get the final word. These are familiar words to many of us. We sing about them, read about them, talk about them, and sometimes familiarity can quietly rob them of their wonder.

Then Peter gives us this remarkable little sentence: “Even angels long to look into these things.”

Maybe toay is a good day to look again.

What the Prophets Could Only See Coming

First Peter is filled with big, beautiful, poignant buts—six of them in the opening chapter alone. But before we follow all of them, I want to linger over the first.

Peter has been talking about salvation and the “living hope” we have through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then he turns our attention backward. Long before Bethlehem, Calvary or the empty tomb, the prophets had spoken about “the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.” They searched carefully, Peter says, trying to understand what God was revealing through them.

They could see something coming. They just couldn’t see all of it yet.

Isaiah wrote of the Servant who would be pierced for our transgressions. Micah pointed toward Bethlehem. The Psalms spoke words that would take on deeper significance in the suffering and triumph of Christ. Generation after generation carried pieces of a story whose fullness they would never see in their lifetimes.

Then comes Peter’s first big but: “It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you.”

Think about that for a moment. They wrote words whose fulfillment lay beyond their horizon. They carried promises they would never see completed. They faithfully passed along what God had entrusted to them, and centuries later those promises arrived at the feet of people like Peter.

Peter had seen Jesus. He had walked dusty roads with Him, heard Him teach, watched Him heal, witnessed His suffering, and then encountered the risen Christ. Imagine what it must have been like for Peter to look back into those ancient Scriptures and slowly recognize that the pieces fit.

It had been pointing toward Jesus all along.

And Peter says those ancient prophets weren’t serving only their own generation. They were serving you. And me.

Leaning In

Then Peter widens the picture beyond anything we might expect. “Even angels long to look into these things.”

Heaven itself, Peter seems to say, finds the unfolding story of God’s saving work worthy of attention. Angels had announced Christ’s birth. Angels ministered during His earthly life. Angels were there at the empty tomb. Yet Peter pictures them still leaning in toward the mystery and wonder of what God has accomplished through Jesus.

And here we are, sometimes yawning.

I don’t say that to make us feel guilty. I think it’s simply one of the hazards of familiarity. The extraordinary can become ordinary when we’ve heard it enough times. 

Peter invites us to look again. The prophets searched for it. The apostles announced it. Angels lean in to see it. Perhaps we should too.

This invitation becomes even more poignant when we remember who received Peter’s letter.

He addresses them as God’s people living as exiles, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. They were believers trying to follow Jesus while increasingly finding themselves out of step with the culture around them. Throughout the letter, Peter speaks honestly about trials, suffering, insults and hostility. These weren’t people sitting comfortably in a sanctuary discussing abstract theology. They needed hope.

So Peter reminds them what they possess in Christ: great mercy, new birth, a living hope, an eternal inheritance, salvation, and a joy that suffering cannot ultimately extinguish.

Their circumstances were painful, but their circumstances weren’t the whole story.

That’s where wonder becomes more than a pleasant spiritual feeling. Sometimes wonder is how we lift our eyes beyond what is immediately in front of us.

There are seasons when our world becomes very small. Pain can do that. So can grief, fear, disappointment, life’s struggles—our attention naturally narrows towards whatever hurts.

Peter doesn’t tell suffering people that their pain isn’t real. He reminds them that something else is real too. There is a larger story. And they are part of it.

Therefore…

From here, I’d encourage you later to ‘follow the buts’ through the rest of this chapter as they all serve the purpose of encouraging us on our daily journey and through each trial and tribulation we encounter. 

But note, first, the paragraphs that immediately follow our first big but  in verse 12.

Verse 13 begins, “Therefore …”

A few verses later, verse 17 begins, “Since…”

Then verse 22: “Now that …” 

Peter doesn’t invite us to marvel at God’s grace and then simply close the book. What God has done calls us to respond. Wonder moves into the way we think, the way we live, the way we love, the way we endure, the way we treat one another as we walk through a world in which we sometimes feel like strangers. And perhaps that is where wonder becomes worship.

Worship isn’t merely something we do for a few minutes on Sunday mornings. It is the response of a life that has looked again at who God is and what He has done—and cannot remain unmoved.

May that be our invitation this Sunday.

Look again at the mercy that met you when you couldn’t rescue yourself. Look again at the empty tomb and the living hope it announces. Look again at the grace that has held you through seasons you weren’t certain you would survive.

And realize that these truths—passed down to us by the prophets of old, longed for by heavenly angels, and fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Savior, are not truths that grow dormant in our lives, but rather they inspire us and move us beyond where we are.

Wonder and awe? God meets us where we are and brings us beyond. That’s worthy of lives lived in response—and that, my friends, is true worship, or as Jesus said, worship worthy of the Father, in Spirit and Truth!