The Bible tells us that as Christians we are to do good to all people, even to those who

continually seek to destroy the faith.

But doesn't that give our enemy an advantage?

Alistair Begg helps us think through this today on Truth for Life as we learn how to put the principle into practice.

Alistair is looking at 1st Peter chapter 2.

Some of the challenges contained in this section are as follows. How do you render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, while at the same time making sure that you render to God the things that are gods?

What does it mean to be in the world, and yet at the same time,

not of the world? Question, does it not fall to the believer of all people to display to an

increasingly secular age just what it means to be one nation under God. I discovered that

it's not difficult to argue that there are three fulcrums in this section, beginning at the

13th verse. The first fulcrum comes in verse 15. The 15th verse reads, for it is God's will that by doing good you should silence

the ignorant talk of foolish men. For it is God's will that you should be able to silence the

ignorant talk of foolish men and that by doing good. This is the little explanation statement

which gives the credence to that which he has surrounding it in terms of application.

Who are these foolish men to whom Peter refers? Well, he uses men generically. It might

equally read foolish men and women. And these individuals are those

who run Christianity down without either reason or knowledge. People in his day who were saying

things that despised Christianity. And it wasn't simply that they lacked information, but it was that

they were culpably ignorant, that they were,

if you like, willfully disobedient to the truth, that they chose to ignore the clear instruction

which had been provided for them in the apostolic teaching. And the existence of foolish men

and women is as clear today in our generation as it ever was then.

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