The sermon continues a series on Christian suffering from 1 Peter, turning now to verses 8 and 9, where Peter describes the marks of genuine faith. The preacher opens with an illustration from John Piper: the Christian life is like swimming against a strong current, the current of worldliness, secularism, and self-love. Believers swim against that current using the strokes of love, faith, and joy in Christ, sustained not by their own strength but by God's power, which was introduced in verse 5. Peter himself functions like a swimming coach standing on the riverbank, planting a flag as a fixed point of reference so that struggling swimmers can tell when they have drifted. Just as a driver at a red light needs a stationary gas station to know whether it is his own car or the neighboring car that is moving, Christians need a fixed reference point to know whether they are drifting from the faith. Peter supplies that reference point by describing what is actually true of genuine believers.

From verses 8 and 9, the sermon draws five marks of a true Christian: they love Christ, they believe in him, they rejoice in him, through these they are receiving the salvation of their souls, and they experience all this without ever having seen Christ physically. The sermon focuses on the first three, arguing that Christianity is fundamentally a matter of the heart before it is a matter of performance; right actions flow from a heart that rightly loves, trusts, and delights in Christ. The phrase "receiving the goal of your faith" is noted to be present tense in the original language — believers are already in the process of receiving salvation, echoing Psalm 16, where God makes known the path of life, and in his presence there is fullness of joy.

The sermon then unpacks each mark. To love Christ means experiencing him as the most valuable, most beautiful person there is, echoing the hymn "Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts." To believe in Christ means trusting that everything he says and commands is fully reliable — he is trustworthy, therefore we trust him. To rejoice in Christ is inseparable from loving and believing in him; like the man in the parable of Matthew 13 who joyfully sells everything to buy the field containing hidden treasure, once a person truly sees how valuable Christ is, giving up everything else becomes not a burden but a joy. Citing Psalm 42's image of the deer panting for water and Psalm 84's longing for the courts of the Lord, the preacher argues that even longing for God, before it is fully realized, is itself evidence of treasuring him — like a hiker pressing on toward a spring he has not yet reached but knows is there. Psalm 1 reinforces this: the righteous person not only obeys God's law but delights in it.

A pastoral warning follows, drawn from a recent youth conversation about marriage and covenant: making any human relationship — a spouse, child, or parent — the ultimate source of joy and the object of total dependence is dangerous, because no human can bear the weight only God can bear, and every human will eventually die and disappoint. Only God deserves the whole heart, whole soul, and total reliance that Psalm 42 describes. The sermon then invokes C.S. Lewis's image of half-hearted creatures who settle for making mud pies in a slum because they cannot imagine the joy of a holiday at the sea — content with cheap pleasures like alcohol, sex, and ambition because they do not grasp the "fullness of joy" and "pleasures forevermore" available in God's presence (Psalm 16:11).

The sermon then confronts the central puzzle of the text: how can believers love and trust someone they have never seen? Drawing on Romans 15:20–21, the preacher explains that through the gospel, believers actually see Christ — and in a sense more fully than many who saw him in the flesh but did not truly perceive him. Crowds followed Jesus for the loaves and fishes without recognizing him; Herod, Pilate, and the chief priests witnessed the raising of Lazarus and still sought to kill him. By contrast, believers today have access to the full Gospel accounts — Christ's birth, teaching, private prayers in John 17, miracles, compassion for Jerusalem, patience with Peter, agony in Gethsemane, and the seven words from the cross — giving a fuller, more intimate knowledge of Christ than many eyewitnesses possessed. This is confirmed by 2 Corinthians 4:6, where Paul, shaped by Jewish reverence for light, Roman regard for glory, and Greek pursuit of knowledge, describes God shining the light of the knowledge of his glory into believers' hearts through the face of Christ in the gospel. Though believers have not seen Christ with physical eyes, they have truly seen him with spiritual eyes through the gospel's light. The sermon closes by returning to Peter's riverside flag: the marks of loving, believing in, and rejoicing in Christ mark the true Christian, who continues swimming against the current of the world, not by self-effort but by resting on grace, until reaching the perfection God intends.

Bible Verses Used

• 1 Peter 1:6–9: The primary text; describes believers who love, trust, and rejoice in an unseen Christ and are receiving the salvation of their souls, framed as Peter's "point of reference" for genuine faith.

• Psalm 16:11: Cited to show that the path of life itself, not just its destination, is joy-filled, and that fullness of joy and eternal pleasures are found in God's presence.

• Matthew 13:44: The parable of the hidden treasure illustrates that true joy in Christ leads to gladly forsaking everything else to gain him.

• Psalm 42:1–2: The image of the deer panting for water pictures the believer's deepest longing as being for God alone, not for any created thing.

• Psalm 84: Cited alongside Psalm 42 to reinforce that longing for God's courts, even before fully realized, reflects treasuring him above all else.

• Psalm 1: Shows that genuine faith delights in, not merely obeys, God's law, meditating on it day and night.

• Romans 15:20–21: Paul's missionary principle — those who never heard will see and understand — used to explain how believers can truly "see" Christ through gospel proclamation despite never having seen him physically.

• 2 Corinthians 4:6: Explains that God has shone the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ into believers' hearts, meaning the gospel grants a deeper knowledge of Christ than physical sight alone.