1 Peter1chapter 1

1 Peter 1:1

Peter names himself only an apostle of Jesus Christ and addresses believers across five provinces of Asia Minor, a wide crescent of territory the letter treats as one mission field entering Nero's decade of persecution. The word rendered strangers, parepidemos, names resident aliens, people living in a land not their own, and the letter builds its whole vocabulary of pilgrimage on that status. Silvanus likely carried the letter along a route touching each province in turn.

1 Peter 1:2

The single sentence names all three persons at once: elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. The sprinkling recalls Exodus 24's covenant blood thrown on the people at Sinai, applying the old covenant-making rite to the new. How the Father's foreknowledge relates to the elect's own choice has divided the church since Augustine, and the traditions read it with holders rather than one settled answer; this verse itself only states the trinitarian shape, not the mechanism.

1 Peter 1:3-5

The doxology opens the letter on its keynote: begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, hope grounded in a historical event rather than a mood. The inheritance is described in three negatives, incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, reserved in heaven, and the same keeping covers believers themselves, kept by the power of God through faith. The keeping runs both ways, an inheritance kept for the heir and an heir kept for the inheritance, the ground this letter gives for assurance that the security is God's own work, not the believer's grip.

1 Peter 1:6-7

The greatly rejoicing sits beside heaviness through manifold temptations without contradiction, the two held together because the trial itself has a purpose: the trial of your faith, more precious than gold that perisheth, though gold too is tried with fire. The refining image, borrowed from the goldsmith's furnace, makes suffering purposeful rather than random, proving a faith worth more than the metal the world prizes most. The outcome named is praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, the letter's suffering-and-glory pattern stated for the first time.

1 Peter 1:8-9

Whom having not seen, ye love describes a faith already unusual within a generation of the resurrection, love and joy directed at a Christ known only by report and the Spirit's witness. The joy is qualified twice, unspeakable and full of glory, language that reaches past ordinary happiness toward a joy that anticipates its own consummation. Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls states the goal plainly: faith's whole aim is a person saved, body and soul, not merely a doctrine held.

1 Peter 1:10-12

The Old Testament prophets are pictured studying their own prophecies, searching what manner of time the Spirit of Christ within them signified when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow, a striking claim that the prophets did not always grasp the full sense of their own words. What was hidden from them is now open: not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things now reported by the gospel's preachers. The chapter closes the thought on the unseen world's own interest, which things the angels desire to look into, received here as it stands, angels themselves curious observers of redemption's unfolding.

1 Peter 1:13

Gird up the loins of your mind pictures the traveler tucking his long robe into his belt to run or work unhindered, the same posture Israel kept at the first Passover, eating in haste with loins girded. Be sober pairs the image with clear-headed self-command against a world of intoxicating distraction. Hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ turns the whole posture forward, hope as a discipline of the mind rather than a passing feeling.

1 Peter 1:14-16

As obedient children draws the family metaphor forward, obedience the mark of true sonship, set against not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts of a life lived in ignorance of God. The positive pattern is holiness itself: as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, holiness reaching every sphere of conduct rather than one compartment of life. Because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy, quotes Leviticus 11:44 directly, carrying the old covenant's own ground for holiness into the new.

1 Peter 1:17

If ye call on the Father grounds the appeal in the same family relationship, but adds a sober qualifier, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, the Father who disciplines is also the Judge who weighs deeds impartially. The fear commanded is not the dread of a condemned man but the reverence of a child who takes the Father's holiness seriously. Sojourning names the whole span of earthly life the same way parepidemos named the readers at the letter's opening, a life lived as a guest in a land not yet home.

1 Peter 1:18-19

Redemption is priced against the readers' own former life, not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, from a vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, a pointed line for readers whose inherited religion, pagan or merely formal, offered no real ransom. The price given instead is the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, the Passover lamb's own qualifications, Exodus 12:5, applied to the Lamb of God. The redemption imagery, agorazo, buying out of the marketplace, states the cost of the readers' freedom in the most concrete terms the letter uses.

1 Peter 1:20-21

Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world but manifest in these last times, the cross no accident of history but the center of a plan older than creation. By him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory locates saving faith in God the Father's own act toward the Son, resurrection and glorification together. That your faith and hope might be in God states the purpose of the whole gospel story: not admiration of Christ alone but faith and hope resting in God through him.

1 Peter 1:22

Purified souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit names the new birth's moral fruit, and the command that follows is deliberately doubled, unfeigned love of the brethren, then love one another with a pure heart fervently, the same virtue commanded twice for emphasis. Fervently, ektenos, is the word for a runner's stretched muscle or an athlete's strained effort, love as sustained exertion rather than a passing sentiment. The brotherly love commanded here becomes the letter's own test of genuine new birth, tied directly to the verses on the living and abiding word that follow.

1 Peter 1:23-25

Born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever grounds the new birth of 1:3 in the same living word that will preach the gospel to the readers. Isaiah 40:6-8 is quoted at length, all flesh as grass, its glory as the flower of grass that withers and falls, a picture of every human institution and boast set against one thing that does not fade. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever closes the chapter on the same incorruptible note it opened on, and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you identifies that eternal word with the message the readers had already received.