1 Peter 3: Doing What Is Right, Even Under Pressure

Introduction

"Sometimes the most radical thing a disciple of Jesus Christ can do is simply to do what is right." This is how Malcolm Duncan opens this message at Kensington Temple, in his series on the Church called to be a "spire of hope" in a confused world. Not what is convenient, not what protects our reputation, not what gives us an immediate advantage, but what is right before Almighty God.

Many people look at Christians and non-Christians and see no difference. There should be one, in integrity, character and honesty. Peter writes to scattered disciples, of Jewish background, misunderstood and mistreated. What they are going through is real, the preacher says, "but it is not eternal." Peter does not ask them to retreat into a religious ghetto or to manipulate their way out. He calls them to live with truth, courage and grace, so that their lives point to Jesus.

"In a confused world, the Church must not only say the right things. We must become the right kind of people." Drawing on 1 Peter 3:8-22, Malcolm Duncan develops three movements: doing what is right in your relationships, under pressure, and because Jesus is Lord.

Outline of the Message

1. Doing What Is Right in Your Relationships

• Peter does not begin with influence, strategy or visibility. He begins with character: unity of mind, compassion, brotherly love, tenderness, humility (verse 8). These are not decorations hung on the tree of our lives, they are the architecture of God's kingdom.
• In London as elsewhere, communication has never been stronger, but communion is shrinking. I can reach thousands of people in seconds and not listen to the one sitting next to me.
• A careless sentence is typed in seconds, spreads in minutes and leaves a wound that lasts for years.
• Before asking whether our words are clever, we must ask whether they are true. Before wanting to win a debate, we must ask whether our words reveal Jesus. Before exposing someone else's failure, we must ask whether the goal is restoration or humiliation.

2. Not Repaying Evil for Evil

• "not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for reviling; but instead blessing" (verse 9).
• In 1970, John Perkins, who was committed to racial reconciliation and community development, was arrested and then brutally beaten in prison by white police officers, who left him for dead. He had every reason to hate those men. He chose to devote his life to reconciliation between Black and white people, even serving communities of people who looked like his attackers. "When the world expected bitterness, he chose blessing."
• The instinct of our age is retaliation: if you attack me, I attack you harder. But "retaliation lets someone else's sin determine the state of your soul, and it is not worth it."
• Peter does not call evil good. He does not ask victims to be silent, nor the Church to hide injustice in the name of peace. "Blessing does not mean avoiding the truth. It means refusing to become like the evil done to us."
• Your lie does not give me permission to lie, your cruelty does not give me permission to be cruel. Why? "I do not belong to you. I belong to Jesus." If my reactions are dictated by your actions, then you are the one controlling me.

3. True Words and a Life of Integrity

• "let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit" (verse 10). A lie damages trust. When trust is broken, families become suspicious, institutions defensive, leaders hollow.
• The British Post Office Horizon scandal showed what happens when an institution is more concerned with defending itself than with discovering the truth: the testimonies of ordinary people dismissed, and reputations, livelihoods and families devastated. The deepest fault was not technological, it was moral.
• Malcolm Duncan has met affected families. He was also the pastor of a man who worked for the company that installed the software: he had warned again and again that the system was faulty, without being heard, and he carried deep shame because of it.
• "We can be so committed to appearing right that we stop asking whether we are right."
• "Integrity means that what I say publicly matches what I know privately." I do not call secrecy wisdom, manipulation leadership, or cowardice peace. Integrity does not mean never failing: when I fail, I come into the light, I confess, I ask forgiveness, I make it right.
• The Gospel does not create people who have nothing to confess. It creates people who are no longer afraid to confess, because their mercy is found in the goodness of God in Jesus Christ.
• The preacher tells of a personal failure. While he was planting a church in Scotland, the neighbor who lived below his apartment finally came to a service after three or four years of invitations. Eager to see her enter the kingdom, he talked and talked, to the point of forcing her hand toward a decision. She never came back. "I was so preoccupied with the result that I forgot I was talking to a human being." He apologized several times.

4. Doing What Is Right Under Pressure

• "Now who is he who will harm you, if you are zealous for that which is good?" (verse 13). The preacher can name governments, leaders and institutions that harm those who do good, and even Christian ministries that cover up sin. Peter knows this: even if you suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed (verse 14). You may not feel it, but you are.
• Doing good has a price: telling the truth can cost you a contract, admitting a mistake can cost you the illusion of never being wrong, protecting a vulnerable person can close the door to people who hold power.
• The cross shows that justice can be condemned and love nailed to a piece of wood. The resurrection shows that "evil never has the last word." A believer's body can be hurt, but not their soul, nor the incorruptible hope Peter speaks of in chapter 1.
• Fear is one of the greatest enemies of integrity: we lie for fear of being found out, we stay silent for fear of losing approval. "Christian courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision that fear will not be Lord in our lives."
• "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts" (verse 15) is the heart of the passage. "If Christ is Lord, approval cannot be Lord." Neither can reputation or success.
• During the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, Christians and leaders, in particular from the local Methodist church, stayed, listened, served and built bridges across racial lines. In June 2017, after the Grenfell Tower fire in which 72 people died ("a tragedy," but also, the preacher insists, a scandal born of greed), believers, some of them from Kensington Temple, cooked, opened their doors and wept with those who were suffering.
• "Anyone can talk about integrity when there is nothing to lose. Character is revealed when it has a price."

5. An Authentic Life That Raises Questions

• In the age of artificial intelligence, synthetic voices and manipulated images, it is becoming hard to know what is authentic. Malcolm Duncan's face was imitated in a video in which he claimed that one of his daughters was about to lose her home and that he needed 10,000 pounds. His voice was also imitated to make him say a theology he does not hold.
• This makes integrity more precious, not less. To be a spire of hope, the Church must be a place where people meet what is real: authentic worship, authentic repentance, authentic accountability and reconciliation. So that people can say: "These people are not playing a role, they are living their real lives."
• Peter asks us to be ready to give an answer for the hope within us, with gentleness and respect (verse 15). People ask the question because they have watched a life.
• The preacher's father became a disciple of Jesus only on the night he died. What struck him most was seeing how Malcolm Duncan and his wife loved their son, who was born with a serious illness, often in intensive care and on a ventilator, not knowing whether he would live. That son is now married, a father of two and a pastor. His father watched them struggle in faith, carry their son, weep with him, and it marked him far more than any sermon.
• "Be careful what you say amen to, because someone is listening." Saying amen to prejudice or hatred leads others to believe that Christians are like that.
• A life of integrity raises questions: why did you tell the truth when a lie would have protected you? Why did you turn down that money when no one would have noticed? The answer is never "because I am morally superior," but "because of Jesus." "Testimony becomes credible when our words about Jesus are accompanied by a life shaped by Jesus."

6. Doing What Is Right Because Jesus Is Lord

• "Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God" (verse 18). Christian integrity is not a moral self-improvement program. Dishonesty is not defeated by determination alone: we begin with what Jesus has done. He does not merely expose our sin, he bears it.
• The passage on Noah and baptism is demanding, but its claim is clear: through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God brings people through judgment into a new life, with a new allegiance. In baptism, you declare that the old life has no more claim on you: the old divisions, old compromises and old fears no longer govern you.
• For the preacher, baptism is not an optional invitation but a command. It is not magic, but it is a place where we meet God, where intention becomes practice: "My old life is gone. I declare it to the world. I belong to Jesus."
• After the 1958 riots, it was above all the Black residents of the neighborhood, especially Caribbean Christians, who made the difference. They stayed, built churches, raised their families, served their neighborhoods. They answered prejudice with perseverance rather than revenge, because Jesus was Lord of their lives.
• Peter ends with Jesus risen, ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities and powers made subject to him (verse 22). Doing what is right is therefore never wasted. You may not see an immediate result, but Jesus sees it, and "no act of obedience offered to him is ever lost."

7. A Spire of Hope Needs Deep Foundations

• You are a spire of hope where you work, in your family, in your relationships, and in the decisions no one else sees. "A spire points beyond itself." But it requires very deep foundations.
• "Visibility without integrity is dangerous." A public ministry without private character cannot carry the weight placed on it. When it collapses, it affects the community, the witness of the Gospel in the city and the Church in the world.
• "God is not looking for impressive appearances propped up by hollow lives. He is forming a people able to carry the weight of his presence": a people whose yes is yes, who keep their word, who handle power responsibly, who admit their faults and would rather lose an advantage than a clear conscience.
• The Holy Spirit may be putting his finger on something: a truth to tell, an apology to make, an exaggeration to correct, money to give back, a hidden compromise, a relationship where you need to stop retaliating. The devil whispers: "Hide all of that." God says: "Do not hide it. Give it to me. Name it, and I can set you free."
• "Grace does not help us save face. Grace strips us bare and helps us walk straight." Jesus does not offer a mere patch-up job, but a new life from the inside: if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
• The preacher also warns against a Church that dilutes the Gospel in order to be accepted: "There is not a single example in the history of the Church of a church that watered down the Bible and survived more than two generations."
• His final prayer: in a confused world, to be clear; in a dishonest world, to be true; in a cruel world, to have a tender heart. And whatever the cost, by the grace of God, to do what is right.

Key Takeaways

• Doing what is right starts in your relationships: true words that reveal Jesus and seek restoration rather than humiliation.
• To retaliate is to let another person's sin decide the state of your soul. Blessing does not mean silencing the truth, but refusing to become like the evil done to you.
• Integrity means that what you say in public matches what you know in private, and coming into the light when you fail.
• Christian courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision that fear will not be Lord. If Christ is Lord, approval is not.
• Jesus, the righteous for the unrighteous, is risen and enthroned: no act of obedience offered to him is lost.

Personal Application

1. Before sending your next message or your next reply, do you ask yourself whether it is true and whether it reveals Jesus?
2. Is there a person whose behavior dictates your reactions today? What would it concretely mean to bless them?
3. Does what you say in public match what you know in private? Is there a truth to tell, an apology to make or something to give back?
4. Which fear sits on the throne of your heart when the pressure rises: reputation, approval, security, success?
5. If someone watched your life this week, what questions about your hope might they ask you?

Verses Cited

• 1 Peter 3:8-22
• Psalm 34:12-16
• 1 Peter 1:3-4
• Matthew 5:39
• Matthew 5:37
• Matthew 10:28
• Zephaniah 3:17
• 1 Corinthians 2:9
• 2 Corinthians 3:2
• 2 Corinthians 5:17

Frequently Asked Questions

Does blessing someone who harms me mean staying silent about injustice?

No. Malcolm Duncan makes clear that Peter does not call evil good, does not ask victims to be silent and does not ask the Church to hide injustice in the name of peace. Blessing does not mean avoiding the truth: it means refusing to become like the evil done to us.

What does "sanctify Christ as Lord" mean in 1 Peter 3:15?

For Malcolm Duncan, this is the heart of the passage. If Jesus is Lord, neither reputation, nor the approval of others, nor success can rule your heart. Christian courage is not the absence of fear: it is the decision that fear will not be Lord of your life.

Why does integrity matter so much for Christian witness?

Because people ask for a reason for the hope within us after watching our lives. Malcolm Duncan states that testimony becomes credible when our words about Jesus are accompanied by a life shaped by Jesus. Visibility without integrity is dangerous.