How should I prepare to give an answer for the hope I have?

Question 60077.

Peter tells us to be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in us, and I suspect that verse has produced more guilt in ordinary Christians than almost any other.

We read it and picture a debate we would lose. But look at what Peter actually asks for, and in what order, because the order changes everything. The command begins in the heart, not in the library.

Start where Peter starts

The sentence does not open with study. It opens with in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy. Everything else hangs on that clause.

To set apart Jesus as Lord in your heart is to settle, inwardly and in advance, who is in charge. It is a decision made in private long before any conversation happens.

That is where the courage comes from. If Jesus is Lord in your heart, the opinion of the man at the next desk shrinks to its proper size. If He is not, no amount of preparation will steady you.

So the first work of learning to give an answer is not intellectual at all. It is worship.

Peter was writing to frightened people

Context matters here. The letter is addressed to scattered believers under real pressure, people losing work and standing and sometimes more.

These were not professional apologists. They were slaves and tradesmen and household servants, and Peter expected every one of them to be able to explain their hope.

That tells me the command is for ordinary Christians, and that whatever Peter meant by it must be something an ordinary Christian can do. Which is a relief.

What sort of answer is being asked for

The Greek is apologia, from which we get apologetics. It is a legal word meaning a defence or a reasoned reply, the sort of thing a man gives when asked to account for himself.

But notice the subject of the defence. Peter does not say be ready to defend the existence of God, or the age of the earth, or the doctrine of the Trinity. He says be ready to explain your hope.

That is personal. Why are you not despairing? Why did you not fall apart when your father died? What is it that keeps you going to that church every Sunday? Those are the questions Peter is anticipating.

So to give an answer means being able to say, in your own words, what you are hoping for and why.

The question comes when there is something to ask about

Peter says be prepared to answer anyone who asks. Which raises an awkward point. Is anyone asking?

The verses around this one describe conduct that provokes the question. Suffering without retaliating. A gentle wife whose behaviour speaks. A good conscience that shames those who revile it.

The reason we are so rarely asked is not that our country has hardened, though it has. It is that a life indistinguishable from everybody else’s prompts no questions.

So the preparation to give an answer includes living a life that raises the question in the first place, and that is slower and harder work than reading a book.

Learning to give an answer in practice

Now the practical part, because I do not want to leave this at the level of the heart alone.

Learn your own story. Not a polished testimony with a dramatic middle, just what your life was, what happened, and what is different. Three minutes, in plain words, without church vocabulary. Write it down and say it out loud until it comes naturally.

Learn the gospel itself well enough to explain it without notes. Who God is, what sin has done, who Jesus is, what the cross accomplished, what repentance and faith mean, and what follows. If you cannot explain that in five minutes you have found this week’s homework.

Learn two or three questions you are actually likely to be asked. Suffering. Other religions. Whether the Bible can be trusted. You do not need to master every objection in the world, just the ones your own friends raise.

Answering with gentleness and respect

Peter is not finished with the verse. Do it with gentleness and respect, he says, and having a good conscience.

That instruction is routinely ignored, particularly online, where a great deal of Christian argument is conducted in a tone that would end a friendship in a pub. Winning an argument and losing a person is not obedience.

Gentleness does not mean vagueness. You may say something is false, and Peter’s own preaching was direct enough to cut his hearers to the heart. It means you say it without contempt, without scoring, and without needing to be seen to have won.

And respect, in the Greek, is the word for fear or reverence. Some read it as respect towards God, some towards the questioner. Both are true and both restrain us.

What to do when you do not know

Here is the single most freeing thing I can tell you. I do not know is an acceptable answer, and it is usually a better one than a bluff.

Say that you have not thought about it, that you will look into it, and then actually do it and go back to them. That conversation, the one where you return a week later having done the work, is worth more than any instant reply.

Nobody is asking you to be an expert. The Samaritan woman ran into town with almost no theology and a single sentence, come and see a man who told me all that I ever did, and many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.

You are a witness, not the counsel for the defence. A witness says what he has seen.

Building the habit over time

Preparation is cumulative and it does not require a course. Read your Bible with an eye to the questions people actually ask. Keep a note of objections you hear and look one up a month.

Read something solid occasionally rather than everything at once. And pray for two or three people by name, regularly, over years. The willingness to give an answer grows in people who are already praying for the person asking.

See also how we know the Gospels record Jesus accurately and what apologetics actually is for two of the questions that come up most often.

The three things people actually ask

Over the years the questions have been remarkably consistent, and knowing them takes most of the fear out of the business.

How can a good God allow suffering. That one usually comes from a person in pain rather than a philosopher, and the answer begins with sitting down and listening rather than with a theodicy.

What about other religions, or the sincere person who has never heard. That question is about fairness, and the honest reply is that God will do right, that Scripture says He judges according to light received, and that this is why we go and tell people.

How can you believe an ancient book. That one has real answers and I have written about them in how we know the Gospels record Jesus accurately.

Prepare on those three and you are ready to give an answer in nine conversations out of ten.

Preparation is not performance

One last encouragement, because I think a good many Christians hear this verse as a demand for eloquence.

Paul told the Corinthians he came to them in weakness and fear and much trembling, and that his speech was not in plausible words of wisdom. This is the man who had argued in the Areopagus.

The Spirit is the one who convinces, and He has a long record of using inarticulate people. My own conversion owed a great deal to a man who could not string two sentences together but who plainly meant every word of them.

So prepare properly, and then relax. You are asked to give an answer, not to close the deal.

A word about fear

Peter adds something a verse later that we usually skip. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.

The reason most of us never give an answer is not ignorance. It is dread of the pause after we speak, the raised eyebrow, the awkwardness on Monday. I have felt it standing in a queue and saying nothing.

The cure Peter offers is not a technique for confidence. It is the lordship of Jesus settled in the heart, which is where the verse began. Fear of man and fear of God cannot both occupy the same throne.

So if you find you cannot give an answer, do not start with a book. Start on your knees.

So, now what?

Do the heart work first. Settle, this week, that Jesus is Lord, and notice how much of your fear of being asked is really fear of being thought a fool.

Then write your story down. Three minutes, plain words, no jargon. Say it to your wife or a friend and ask them what did not make sense.

Then pray for one person and ask God for an opening. He is rather good at providing them, and they usually come at inconvenient moments in ordinary conversations.

And when the question comes, remember what is actually being asked. Not for a lecture. For a reason for your hope. Do you know what yours is?

But in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.

1 Peter 3:15, ESV