1 Peter Notes
1 Peter 1
What to do with Rome? What to do about Rome? What to make of Rome? “Rome” really was the issue: its sanctioned religions, its imperial and colonizing presence and practices, its world system, its matrices of honor and order. Even Peter understands that the problem is not Rome per se, though, and so he refers to Rome not by its real name but as “Babylon.”
“Babylon” was a cipher for a world power hostile to God, and, for Peter, this is what Rome had become. Peter thus highlights emphatically the problems of Christian life and witness in the presence of a world system not only out of step with God’s purpose but actually set against it.
Peter paints his audience, like the Jews, as an exilic people, strangers in a strange land.
1 Peter is about God and the ramifications of orienting life wholly around him. This entails refusing the conventions of honor and status that constitute Roman politics in favor of the valuations and judgment of the merciful God who has chosen and honored what the systems of this world have dismissed. To read 1 Peter is to be told not how we might think about God, but what God thinks of us. Here in 1 Peter is an invitation to adopt God’s way of seeing things and to live accordingly; perhaps better, 1 Peter offers not so much an invitation as an exercise in formation in the character and ways of God. This entails allegiance to Jesus Christ, and not to Caesar, as Lord. And this has as its immediate corollary our awareness that Jesus’ own rejection of the politics of Rome resulted in his suffering and death on a Roman cross and that his righteous suffering was not a denial but rather an affirmation of his status before God. What is more, this death was purposeful and meaningful, overcoming the powers of evil and effecting the transformation of persons from old and idolatrous ways of life, from wasting time feeding the insatiable desires of pagan life, to a life patterned after that of Christ, embodying the character of a holy God, demonstrating the possibility of faithful suffering—that is, suffering for righteousness rather than as punishment for sin, and blazing the pathway that leads through faithful suffering to glory. And it entails an openness to the empowering and transforming work of the Holy Spirit, the active presence of God in the midst of trying circumstances.
What if, instead, we were to read this letter from the perspective of its central icon, the passion of Christ—that visible and horrible manifestation of what happens when life is lived according to God’s view of the way the world really is? What if, instead, we were to read this letter from the perspective of its primary temporal orientation, the End—that actualization of God’s purpose, the judgment, the vindication of the faithful, which undermines the claims of Babylon (in all its guises) to its own ultimacy or importance? Following the Christ who was crucified on a tree determines both internal and external relations; it is a profoundly political and missiological act (external) and a commitment to indwelling a terrain determined by the sanctifying Spirit and intramural hospitality (internal). The homeless people of God comprise God’s household under construction, and a priesthood whose vocation it is to mediate God’s presence wherever they find themselves. As they journey through suffering in hope of eschatological honor, they bear witness in the present to the coming new age.
1 Peter, the “diaspora letter” has its origin in Babylon rather than its having been sent to Babylonian exiles.
Peter describes his audience as “aliens” and “strangers in the world,” foreigners in this sense: their commitments to the lordship of Jesus Christ have led to transformed attitudes and behaviors that place them on the fringes of their communities. This is not because they set out to distance themselves from their contemporaries; rather, they have become the victims of social ostracism, their allegiance to Christ having won for them slander, animosity, and vilification. Previously they have participated in the mainstream of Greco-Roman society (“discharging the will of the Gentiles,” 4:3), but their segregation from prevailing attitudes and practices has now marked them as social misfits worthy of contempt. 1 Peter was written to address Christians in such circumstances as these—not so much to resolve the enigma of the suffering of God’s people as to give significance to their distress and to articulate how best to engage a world set against those allegiances, attitudes, and actions that are consistent with God’s agenda.
Experiences of hostility and challenges of pluralism from outside the church provide Peter with the occasion for articulating what is common ground within the church. Antagonism toward the church from beyond its borders provides the occasion for solidifying the church’s center in relation to the ancient purpose of God, for drawing out the continuity from Israel of old to the contemporary life of God’s people, and for remembering that the primary orientation of faithful life is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We should not be surprised, then, if 1 Peter participates fully in the emerging Christian consensus and emphasizes the common ground of the faithful as they look for places to secure their feet in the struggle for faithful witness.
what Peter describes is not an imperial action against the church or any other government-sponsored decision against Christians, but trouble from “the Gentiles”—that is, from Roman society in general, from which Peter’s audience had, through their dispositions and behaviors, distanced themselves (see 4:3–4). The suffering of Christ “on the tree” (2:24), pointedly emphasized in 1 Peter, would have attracted special antagonism from Romans.
In the earlier years of the church’s spread, too, Christians would have distinguished themselves from the general populace by their nonparticipation in public festivals (cultural affairs imbued with religious, political, and social consequence). Failing to associate themselves with these religiocultural activities, their behaviors would have been perceived by the general populace as atheistic, perhaps even bordering on unlawful. Failing to participate in these activities, they would have been charged with bringing upon their communities the disfavor of the gods. Their presence within communities of the empire, including the Anatolian peninsula, would have attracted negative attention, too, on account of the political and economic ramifications of those practices.
whether we are ready to read 1 Peter as a letter addressed to us—that is, whether we are ready to allow our dispositions and behaviors to be so transformed that we experience, on account of our faith, conflicted presence in the world, and to embrace as our own the vision of God Peter develops in this letter
Together with the Book of Revelation, 1 Peter is unrivaled among NT documents for its concern with questions of Christian identity, constitution, and behavior in a hostile world. For 1 Peter, Christian communities must struggle with how to maintain a peculiar identity as God’s people in the midst of contrary cultural forces. This is accomplished by identifying with Christ, both in his suffering and in the promise of restoration and justice. Through maintaining their allegiance to God the Father, theirs is a living hope certified by the resurrection of Jesus to life and animated by the Holy Spirit. Their inheritance is nothing less than eschatological salvation.
Although Peter’s audience may well have experienced their diasporic status in bleak terms, Peter begins immediately to interpret suffering and ostracism in essentially hopeful terms. They are chosen by God (1:1), he insists, born anew into a living hope (1:3). Throughout this opening section, Peter underscores the theological context of the lives of these “strangers in the world of the diaspora,” directing attention to the aim and work of God in these circumstances.
What Peter does not say is almost as important as what he affirms. First, he provides nowhere any hint that the affliction and misery of his audience is the consequence of their sin or God’s judgment. Such categories simply have no place in his letter. Nor does he take the route of other diaspora letters of painting the resolution of contemporary misfortune in terms of God’s striking out against their enemies: “But you know that our Creator will surely avenge us … according to everything which they have done against and among us” (2 Bar 82:2). Nor does he deny the validity of the experiences of his audience, as though they were not really experiencing the life of refugees. The issue is not that or what they are suffering, but rather how to make sense of it. Hence, 1 Peter concerns itself from the very beginning with issues of Christian identity and formation, constitution and behavior. This is profound theological work.
What is important at this juncture is simply this: his identification as “apostle of Jesus Christ,” which marks him as the authorized agent of Jesus Christ and qualifies his message as originating with Christ.
Peter spends far more energy identifying his audience, and this marks one of the most important contributions of the letter—namely, to press upon them, indeed, to form them in, their true identity. He does so by inscribing them into the world of Israel’s Scriptures and the record of God’s relationship with his chosen people, and by characterizing their lives in relation to God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ—that is, in trinitarian terms.
That they are “strangers in the world of the diaspora” will have come as no surprise to Peter’s audience. As Gentile Christians, this language might have been foreign to them, so deeply rooted is it in the world of Israel’s history, but the trials of foreigner status, the erosion of identity and roots, and the endurance of slander rather than praise—these would have been familiar indeed. That Peter’s audience was not violently torn from their homes and paraded to alien lands does not lessen the reality of their status in the world. “Diaspora” has become a metaphor for social ostracism and other forms of harassment and is associated with notions of exile.
That is, Peter’s “strangers” are not “Jews” living among “Gentiles” in the expected sense of these terms, as though the author were concerned with their ethnic or nationalistic status. Attempts to find in Peter’s descriptive terms a reference to his audience’s economic status founders similarly on a problem of category. One’s social status was a product of numerous intersecting considerations, relative income or access to the means of production being only one of them. In fact, there is no basis within the letter itself for suggesting that Peter’s audience occupied any rung on the ladder of economic measurement other than would have been characteristic of the mainstream of people living in Asia Minor. Rather, these are people whose commitments to the lordship of Jesus Christ have led to transformed dispositions and behaviors that place them on the margins of respectable society. Their allegiance to Christ had won for them animosity, scorn, and vilification. Their lack of acculturation to prevailing social values marked them as misfits worthy of contempt.
For persons thus branded as “not at home,” intimate with day-to-day cancerous slander and calamity, the temptations are several: to embrace the dispositions and practices conventional in the wider world (i.e., the threat of assimilation and defection) and to query one’s status before God chief among them. (We do not easily correlate rejection within the human family with honorable status before God.) Crucial challenges therefore include negotiating and maintaining community boundaries, identity formation and coherence, and finding positive, redemptive meaning for diasporic life. Peter will address the issue of boundaries and behavior in his repeated calls to holy and honorable living, but for now focuses on concerns with formation and meaning.
The terms “stranger” and “diaspora” are joined by a third, “chosen,” in 1:1. This underscores Peter’s indebtedness to the story of Israel (e.g.,
The believer, then, is never really “at home.”
Epistle to Diognetus puts it:
For Christians are no different from other people in terms of their country, language or customs. Nowhere do they inhabit cities of their own, use a strange dialect, or live life out of the ordinary.… They live in their respective countries, but only as resident aliens; they participate in all things as citizens, and they endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign territory is a homeland for them, every homeland foreign territory. They marry like everyone else and have children, but they do not expose them once they are born. They share their meals but not their sexual partners. They are found in the flesh but do not live according to the flesh. They live on earth but participate in the life of heaven. They are obedient to the laws that have been made, and by their own lives they supersede the laws. They love everyone and are persecuted by all. They are not understood and they are condemned. They are put to death and made alive. They are impoverished and make many rich. They lack all things and abound in everything. They are dishonored and they are exalted in their dishonors. (5:1–14 [LCL])
First Peter is addressed to folks who do not belong, who eke out their lives on the periphery of acceptable society, whose deepest loyalties and inclinations do not line up very well with what matters most in the world in which they live. This is not the sort of life that most people find attractive. In terms of our ability genuinely to understand 1 Peter, all of the linguistic skills we might develop, all of the material on historical background we might accumulate—none of this will make up for the basic reality that, as a whole, we resist the possibility that this letter is addressed to us, that we might be cast as “nobodies in the world.” The problem is theological. What separates us from 1 Peter is not “the strange world of the Bible” as much as its unhandy, inconvenient claims on our lives. Commenting on Peter’s greeting, The Venerable Bede recognized that we who can truly say that we are but travelers on this earth are in a position to believe “that the Letters of blessed Peter were written to us as well and to read them as having been sent to us.” 1 Peter invites a reading among those who are ready to embrace the identity and status of exiles in the dispersion.
The three prepositional phrases of v. 2 modify Peter’s identification of his audience as “chosen” and “strangers.” Alien status does not contradict divine election, but is the outgrowth (1) of God’s purpose, (2) of the Spirit’s sanctifying work, and (3) of the redemption of Christ (himself rejected among humans but chosen by God [e.g., 2:4]). These phrases are coordinated so as to make sense of the apparent oxymoron contained in the juxtaposition of these two categories: chosen by God, strangers in the world.
(1) The paradoxical status of the believers to whom Peter addresses himself is in accordance with the foreknowledge of God; in the same way, we will learn, Jesus was “chosen before the creation of the world” (1:20). This refers less to notions of predetermination and more to the divine purpose as a basic hermeneutical principle that will pervade the letter as a whole. Divine choice and alien status are deeply rooted in God’s purpose as this comes to expression in the Scriptures, so the dissonance of present life, chosen by God but held in contempt in society, is neither a surprise to God nor a contradiction of his plan. Peter will demonstrate that the way of Jesus Christ was the path of suffering and glory (e.g., 2:20; 4:13–14; 5:1, 10), that the model of Jesus Christ interprets and is interpreted by the Scriptures of Israel (cf. 1:10–12, 19 [
The introduction to the letter continues with what is in Greek a single sentence, running from 1:3 to 1:12—rendering this whole section a declaration of and elaboration on God’s mercy. Rhetorically, vv. 3–12 function for Peter’s letter as the exordium, the purpose of which is to create a good atmosphere, preparing the audience to receive the instruction that will follow and introducing the main elements of the letter. As doxology, 1:3–12 is less prayer and more proclamation, a celebration of God’s gracious character and activity as the means by which to make sense of the paradoxical life of Peter’s audience. As such, it situates the contemporary struggles of Peter’s audience within the interpretive matrix of God’s agenda, reminding them that their current situation is the result of their having been transformed in accordance with God’s mercy, demonstrating that their lives are following the pattern of Jesus’ career, and authenticating the movement from present suffering to future glory by anchoring it in Spirit-inspired prophetic witness. Multiple terms are used to identify the true situation of Peter’s audience—“new birth,” “living hope,” “heavenly inheritance,” and “salvation” (three times!) the most explicit among them—and these establish the basis of eschatological joy and continuing faithfulness. Although this section comprises a single complex sentence, it is easily divided into three units, each oriented toward salvation: vv. 3–5, introduced by the blessing formula and concluded with reference to “a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time”; vv. 6–9, introduced by the relative clause “in which,” and concluded with reference to “your salvation”; and vv. 10–12, introduced by the phrase, “concerning this salvation.”
Throughout, Peter maintains an unwavering focus on the situation of his addressees: their new birth, their distress, their trials, their testing, their love, their faith, their joy, and the grace that had come to them. Obviously, however, a rehearsal of their current circumstances is incomplete without situating the present within the grand mural of God’s character and activity. In v. 2, God’s actions are consistent with his wisdom and intention (“according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”); to this Peter now adds an emphasis on God’s “great mercy” as the source of his salvific activity. This declaration is seamless with the OT portrait of God’s lovingkindness (חסד, ḥsd), which connotes spontaneous kindness and acts of generosity grounded in dispositions of compassion toward those in need, a characteristic of God which grounds divine-human relations in God’s generous initiative and sustaining faithfulness culminating in the powerful, restorative activity of God on behalf of humanity. In the OT, the mercy of God is exhibited in his compassionate response to the cries of Israel, in his redemptive initiative in rescuing Israel from slavery, in their transformation by him into a people, in his choosing them from among the nations, and by his gift of Torah by which their relationship would be sustained. Analogously for Peter, God’s mercy is on display in his transformation of people by giving them new birth into a living hope.
The identification of God as “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is rare and appears in the NT only in doxological contexts (
Why would Peter address communities of Gentile Christians as if they were Jews? He does so for two reasons, one related to the past, the other to the present. The first is that he wants to give them a new heritage—a whole new past—to replace the “empty way of life that was your heritage” (1:18), and the only heritage he can give them is his own, the heritage of the Jews and Judaism. The second is that he wants to underscore certain real parallels between their experience and the experience of the Jews, above all the experience of being “aliens and strangers” in the cities and provinces where they live (2:11)
Even while promising his readers joy at the “salvation about to be revealed at the last day” (1:5–6a), Peter adds a sobering qualification: “—though now for a little you must suffer affliction in various ordeals. [You must suffer] so that the genuineness of your faith—a quality more precious than gold which, though perishable, is [also] tested by fire—may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the time when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1:6b–7).
First Peter addresses an Anatolian church facing, at minimum, social pressure and ostracization, yet the letter’s message is one of hope based on the foundation of Jesus Christ. These churches can rest assured that God has marked them out as a holy nation—a unique people group that ignores ethnic identity markers in favor of a unity forged through the blood of Jesus Christ. This new nation is designed to live out the love of God. A threefold link between the church’s Trinitarian theology, social-spiritual identity, and Christ-centered ethics knits the letter together (e.g.,
In summary, 1 Peter was written to churches struggling under harsh external pressure to remind them of who they are in Jesus Christ and how they should live.
This message is not given in a social vacuum, but rather in the midst of the “innocent suffering of Christian believers and the dilemma this presented concerning the believers’ relation to and behavior among hostile outsiders” (Elliott 2000, 104). At least one of the purposes of 1 Peter is to “exhort and encourage [the audience] in a time of trial” (Selwyn 1969, 1). Thus, the epistle ultimately declares that the social conflict they are experiencing does not mean that God has abandoned them; to the contrary, it shows their close relationship with him (Feldmeier 2005, 11). The external social pressure and/or persecution provides a glorious opportunity for the epistle to teach the audience about their “collective dignity and privileged status with God” (Elliott 2000, 105).
A study of 1 Peter is an opportunity to discover how the early church interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures as applying to itself in a profound way. Christians really interpreted themselves in the light of those ancient writings.
1 Peter shows the continuity between the story of Israel and the story of the church; the God of Israel is the same God as the God of the church, and the Messiah for the Jews is ultimately the one hope of salvation for humanity as a whole.
1 Peter develops its theological concept of identity through ironic juxtaposition, two concepts in tension with each other: Christians are “strangers/resident aliens” (
“A Discourse Analysis of 1 Peter” (2005).
1. Epistolary Introduction (
Peter’s emphasis on his audience’s identity as “strangers” as an attempt to help them understand their “true identity” (15). He considers this true identity to be spiritual and theological, discounting the argument that Peter is referring to Jews living among Gentiles by asserting that “diaspora” had “become a metaphor for social ostracism and other forms of harassment.” If the term is a metaphor, then its referent need not be members of the Jewish dispersion. But Green critiques the entire tendency to oversimplify the debate into whether “‘strangers in the world of the diaspora’ should be read metaphorically or literally” because research on conceptual metaphor has shown how subtly metaphor pervades our thinking and our conception of the world around us (16). These metaphorical concepts interact dynamically with areas of human experience and get blended with related concepts (16–17). As a result, “the concept of ‘stranger’ is for Peter interwoven with motifs associated with election, such as call and vocation, covenant, and journey. To be God’s people is to be ‘on the way’ under his care and leadership” (17).
Hillyer (1992, 26) states that God’s foreknowledge “includes far more than a divine capacity to foretell the future” because it “implies God’s intention all along, and his ability to bring his desired end to pass (
Consistently, Rome was held up as the ideal for which all strived (and not just by Romans).
The point is that, with the Pax Romana, Rome established something that people wished to be a part of, yet something that Christians could not completely embrace with a clean conscience. Even pagans who were dissatisfied with their social status generally did not see Rome as an evil that needed to overthrown; to the contrary, Lee (1971, 132) states that:
Purely in terms of social expectations, the workman, as well as other disaffected groups within the urban population, were looking for ways of being included in the officially promoted social life of Imperial Rome, not a way of being further excluded as they were certain to be if they joined the Christian sect.
On the one hand, Roman citizenship became “the apogee of status across the entire Mediterranean world” (Dunning 2009, 28); yet even for non-citizens the fact that they were productive members of the Roman Empire counted for a lot—we have already noted how eager the populace of Anatolian cities were to participate in the imperial cult.
The “gospel” of Rome was inescapable: “Rome and its emperor infiltrated every aspect of public life until it was hard to imagine a world where this was not the case” (Goldsworthy 2016, 281). Surrounded on every side by a physical meta-narrative trumpeting the glories of the Roman Empire, Christians had a choice to make: blend in with the crowd by declaring the praises of Rome (or at least acknowledging its primacy), or sing a countercultural tune by consistently holding up Jesus Christ, not Rome, as supreme. Christians’ insistence on worshiping only one God would cause pagans of that day to “recoil” from them, “accusing Christians of rank impiety and even atheism.” Yet Christianity did not turn into a counter-narrative to the Roman Empire by simply worshiping one God; rather, it was the “exclusive loyalty to one deity” that rendered Christians unique in the eyes of the Roman Empire (Hurtado 2016, 37–38; 86). We can see such a perception of Christians in Tacitus, Annals 15.44, where he refers to Christians as “a class hated for their abominations” (Church and Brodribb 1876: 304).
Becoming a Christian would result in social decisions that could have disastrous consequences. DeSilva (1998, 84) notes,
By withdrawing from cultic expressions of solidarity with the citizenry and loyalty and gratitude toward those who secured the well-being of the city, Gentile Christians especially were held in suspicion and stood at risk of being viewed as subversive, unreliable and even dangerous elements of society.
When we remember these facts, 1 Peter’s use of “stranger” language becomes more significant. Like nobody else in the Roman Empire, Christians would be “strangers” due to their unique devotion to God the Father and his son Jesus Christ. In this way, Christianity as a “holy nation” became a true counter-narrative, irreconcilable with the “gospel” of Rome. Christianity became “a state within a state” (Feldmeier 1992, 125).
The audience of 1 Peter, then, must make a choice: identify with the Roman Empire and its subservient nations and bask in its glory, or identify with Jesus Christ and receive shame, ostracization, and suffering. Yet that is hardly the end of the story for those who side with Christ, because as Jobes (2005, 130) notes,
For all their glory, the nations of the earth are as nothing. Those who dwell on earth are grasshoppers in comparison with the great God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who measured off the vastness of the universe with the span of his hand and whose word abides forever. And this is the word that has come to you, the apostle.
Peter acknowledges that God’s choosing of a people for himself is at the same time God’s setting that people apart from the other peoples of the earth, rendering it strange and foreign among peoples, making it a ‘holy’ people that witnesses with the whole of its life to the being and character of God.”
1 Peter 1:1
Peter transitions from his initial greeting to a glorious doxology, which focuses on the roles of both the Father and the Son while also delineating both the present and the future aspects of salvation. The Father is to be blessed because he is the initiator of salvation. Green 2007, 25 notes, in light of the audience’s circumstances, “How Peter portrays God is primary,” yet that salvation is brought to believers by means of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. As Jobes (2005, 81) states, “The centrality of Jesus Christ to Peter’s thought is indicated by his mentioning that name four times in the opening three verses of this letter.”
From there, Peter introduces the concept of “salvation history”—namely, the overarching narrative of God’s work for his people that spans past, present, and future. As Achtemeier (1996, 92) notes, “The passage contains references to the beginning of the Christian era (Christ’s resurrection), its present continuation (Christians are upheld by God’s power), and its future consummation (revealing of God’s salvation).”
In regard to believers, on the one hand this glorious salvation has a present aspect: Believers are “born again” (anagennaō, a word that occurs elsewhere in the New Testament only in
The apostle seeks to encourage and reassure Christian churches in Asia Minor as stormy seasons of persecution begin.
Peter’s pastoral letter encourages us by instructing us. Our deepest needs drive us to our deepest beliefs. What hope do we have? Peter proclaims Jesus Christ, our sure hope now and for ever. Throughout his letter he grounds our hope in the reality of what God has done and will yet do for us through Christ. The apostle is a witness, not just to what Jesus did and said while he was in his fishing-boat or in his house, but to the meaning of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Peter’s testimony about the life of Jesus is reflected in Mark’s Gospel. In this letter he shows us what that story means for us as Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him.
Facing impending assaults on the gospel, Peter witnesses to the grace of God, the overwhelming reality of what God has done in Jesus Christ. The apostle knows that Jesus rose from the dead; he saw him ascend to heaven. He knows, too, why Jesus died, and what his death accomplished: ‘He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed’ (2:24). The reality of what Christ has done makes sure the hope of the Christian ‘brotherhood’. Christians can not only endure suffering for Christ’s sake; they can rejoice, for in their agony they are joined to Jesus who suffered for them. Their very sufferings become a sign of hope, for, as Christ suffered and entered into his glory, so will they. The Spirit of glory and of God rests on them (4:14).
Whether their neighbours attack or respect them, they can bear witness to the grace of God by their Christian lifestyle. Quietly and humbly they can live holy lives, not seeking to claim their own rights, but honouring others. Such humble living is in no way servile or demeaning, for Christians know themselves to be the royal people of God’s own possession, the chosen heirs of the new creation. They need not avenge themselves, nor need they claim for themselves what is their due; their trust is in the judgment of God. Christians are ‘resident aliens’ in Babylon, but they are members of God’s own household.
The gift of God’s love, the blood of Jesus Christ, has redeemed Christians from the corrupt and empty lifestyle of their pagan past; that grace now unites them in fervent love for one another. They serve and help one another, using the rich spiritual gifts with which God’s grace equips them. Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the flock of God, watches over his people. He calls undershepherds to serve him in guarding his sheep. The victory of Jesus Christ over all the powers of darkness frees his people from the power of Satan. They can repulse the roaring lion; in the fires of trial their faith will not be destroyed but purified like gold in the furnace. They may cast all their cares on God, knowing that he cares for them.
The grace that already fills Christians with joy will be brought to them fully at the appearing of Jesus Christ. The Lord, whom they love but have not seen, they will see and adore. Knowing well the doom and darkness from which they were delivered, the new people of God sing forth his praises. Their hallelujahs ring from their assemblies, their homes, even from the prison cells where their fear of God has set them free from the fear of man. Their witness is a witness of praise. Nourished by the unfailing Word of God, they taste already the goodness of their Saviour. The true grace of God has called them to his glory: everything, even their sufferings, will serve his purpose who redeemed them at such a price.
Some may scorn the comfort and triumph of Peter’s letter as unpractical theology. His answers are answers of faith. But Peter knows that his witness is true, that Jesus Christ is real. He has tasted that the Lord is good, and that his goodness will not fail. ‘This is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it’ (5:12).
The apostle to the Jews blesses God’s true people
1:1–2
1. He greets them with blessing
Greetings cards are big business in the United States and Britain. Misty photographs of lovers, paintings of little gamins, grotesque cartoons: they crowd long display racks. But for all their variety, the cards still repeat standard formulas of greeting. There are only a limited number of ways to say ‘Get well soon’ or ‘Happy birthday’.
But Christians, and especially Christian apostles, may think of greetings as more than formalities. Early Christians did use the common greeting ‘Wish you joy!’ But Peter, Paul and John salute the church with greetings that become blessings; a wish for joy becomes an apostolic pronouncement of grace.2 The Old Testament form of this blessing is on the lips of David: ‘May the Lord now show you kindness and faithfulness.’ The New Testament heightens the meaning of God’s mercy and grace. Grace ‘signifies God’s love in action in Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners.’
What makes a greeting a blessing? Peter gives the answer in the words that precede his blessing. It is the work of the Spirit. When a minister of God’s word pronounces a blessing at the end of a service of worship, it is the action of God’s Spirit that gives power to his words. Grace is a gift; God is the giver. Our words of blessing are not magic; they do not communicate grace by their own power, or because we speak them. But when they are spoken in faith to the people of God, God honours them. They are much more than wishes; more, even, than prayers. They declare God’s own favour toward those who are in Christ.
Coupled with grace in apostolic greetings is peace. Grace transforms the greeting of the Greeks; peace gives new meaning to shalom, the salutation of the Hebrews. The priests of the Old Testament pronounced God’s blessing of peace upon the people: ‘The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.’ Sinful Israel forfeited that blessing and brought upon itself the judgment of captivity. But the prophets foresaw a day when God would deliver his people, not only from their oppressors, but from their sins.3 God himself would be their Saviour: ‘O Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us, thou hast wrought for us all our works.’
Simon Peter, the Galilean fisherman, knew the Prince of Peace of whom Isaiah spoke. In the upper room at the last supper, and again after the resurrection, Jesus had blessed the disciples with his peace. That peace was not the political peace that the people expected the Messiah to bring. The world, Jesus said, could not give it or take it away. The Messiah’s peace was given in the shadow of the cross. Jesus gave his peace not only in spite of the cross, but because of the cross. By his death he bore the judgment of God’s just wrath and made peace not only between Jew and Gentile, but between God and man.
Peter’s brief greeting, Grace and peace be yours in abundance, gives in miniature the whole message of his letter. He writes to those who already feel the scorn and malice of an unbelieving world. Writing from Rome under the emperor Nero, Peter knows that they will experience much worse. Can he really pronounce peace in abundance to those who are only beginning to discover the suffering to which Christians are called? Peter writes for that very purpose. Once he had fought to defend the shalom of the Messiah. Under the olive trees of Gethsemane, he drew his sword to resist those who came to arrest Jesus. But Jesus had made him sheath his weapon after one misdirected stroke. Peter wanted to fight because he feared that the death of Jesus would end all hope of victory, all hope of the Messiah’s peace. But the death of Jesus had done the opposite. It had accomplished the salvation of God’s Anointed. Now Peter, the apostle of the risen Lord, can pronounce peace; the peace that comes, not by the sword, but by the cross. His letter expands on the blessing that is distilled in his greeting.
Peter prepares for his letter by identifying himself and his readers. We are struck by a contrast; he says so much about them and so little about himself. Peter is simply an apostle of Jesus Christ. He makes no claim to be a prince among the apostles, but neither does he feel any need to justify or defend his apostolic office, as Paul had occasion to do. Peter’s calling as an apostle would be well known wherever the gospel had been preached. Peter was one of the twelve chosen by Jesus to be with him. He was the first to confess, in the name of all, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son the living God. To him Jesus replied, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.’
To be sure, Peter is not the foundation rock apart from his confession. Christ’s words are addressed to the Peter who has received revelation from the Father in heaven. When Peter a little later rebukes Jesus for speaking of the cross, Jesus does not call him Peter, but rather Satan. He has become the rock in a different sense; not the rock of foundation, but a rock to stumble over.
Neither may Peter be isolated from the eleven. Jesus grants to them all the power of the keys of the kingdom that he gave to Peter. The church is not built on Peter as an isolated stone, but upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, those who like Peter have received the revelation of Christ.
At the same time, neither may we separate Peter’s confession from Peter. Jesus does not build his church on a confession in the abstract, but on the confessing apostle. To Peter’s word ‘You are the Christ,’ Jesus replies, ‘You are Peter.’ Peter had recognized Jesus, the Christ; Jesus will recognize Peter, the rock. To Peter is given the calling to open the gates of the kingdom to Jewish and Gentile believers. He does so at Jerusalem in the midst of the eleven, and at Caesarea as one of the eye-witnesses of the resurrection. Peter has a prominent role to fulfil as an apostle and an eye-witness, but he is not given a higher authority than that of other apostles. It is enough for Peter, in this letter, to identify himself as an apostle; he bears witness not to himself, but to Christ as the chief cornerstone of God’s spiritual temple (2:5–8).
Peter’s witness is strong. He knows what he has seen and heard; he knows, too, his appointment by Jesus, and the revelation from the Father that has equipped him to serve. Simon Peter the fisherman can put the rabbis to shame; he can stand before rulers to give a reason for the hope that he has. He does so as Christ’s apostle, rejoicing in the faith of those who have not seen and yet have believed (1:8).
Peter is Christ’s apostle, too, in giving inspired and authoritative teaching to the church. When we think of Peter as the author of this letter, we may at first be disappointed. Why did not Peter report to us more of the words of Jesus, more of his miracles? What scenes from the life of Jesus Peter could have painted! Every Bible student notices how similar Peter’s first letter is to the letters of Paul. But Paul was never with Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum, or in a fishing-boat on the lake, or in the upper room at Jerusalem. How can Peter fail to draw on his days with Jesus as he writes to people who have never seen the Lord?
As we saw in the Introduction, the absence of such personal references has led some scholars to conclude that Peter could not have written the letter. Yet it is presumptuous, to say the least, for us to imagine that we know what the apostle must have written. More than that, it shows a misunderstanding of Peter’s witness as an apostle and of his particular purpose in writing.
As an apostle, Peter shared with others in teaching the faith. He did not desire to attract a personal following of those who would relish his distinctive insights or experiences. He was one of a company charged by the risen Christ to testify that ‘he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead.’2 The teaching of Jesus during his ministry, and especially in the forty days between his resurrection and ascension, moulded the apostolic tradition. The gospel that Paul received was the apostolic deposit, the pattern of sound teaching that proclaimed the fulfilment of the Old Testament promises in Christ. The apostolic message was not a melange of individual testimonies prepared as the twelve spoke for five minutes each on ‘what the resurrection means to me’. Rather, it was the Lord’s interpretation of his own work in the light of his own word; he must ‘suffer these things and enter into his glory.’ Peter preached the apostolic message at Pentecost; the church was established in the tradition of apostolic teaching.5 Peter continues to teach this in his letter. It is a message saturated with the Old Testament, a message that proclaims the fulfilment in Christ of all that the prophets promised.
Peter’s purpose in writing this letter is not to give a first announcement about the words and works of Jesus. Peter’s preaching on that subject is reflected in the Gospel of Mark. Neither does Peter address one local church in order to deal with its particular problems (as Paul often does). Rather, his purpose is to deepen the understanding of the whole Christian church in Asia Minor so that believers may face the testings that await them with strong hope in Christ. His letter may reflect the teaching he and others would give to prepare new converts for baptism. Some passages may echo hymns or credal statements from the apostolic period. What is clear throughout is that Peter teaches the common doctrine of the apostolic testimony.
We do well to remember the authority of Peter as an apostle. Jesus taught with unique authority as the Son of God, but he also commissioned his apostles to teach in his name. He promised his Spirit to bring his words to their memory and to teach them other things after his resurrection. The church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets because they received the revelation of Christ.2 The office of the apostle does not and cannot continue, for the apostles were eye-witnesses of Christ’s resurrection. Peter, as an apostle, together with Silas, a prophet, laboured with other apostles and prophets to lay the foundation of the church. Together they taught the doctrine that Jesus committed to them in the Spirit. The church is apostolic today to the extent that it remains upon the doctrinal foundation established by the apostles. No-one today can claim the authority of an apostle, either by virtue of ecclesiastical office or charismatic enduement. The work and calling of the apostle are finished in witnessing to the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the final Prophet, just as he is the final Priest, and Peter writes to bear authoritative witness to him.
Why are we drawn to Peter’s letter? Certainly it is fascinating to read a genuine document written by one who knew Jesus so well. Today, as in Peter’s time, there are storms of persecution rising against the church. Never was it more important to understand how the church is to be related to the world. But we are drawn to Peter’s letter by a more fundamental reason. Peter is an inspired apostle, and what he writes is the word of God. We come to a letter that is addressed to the Christians of Asia by Peter, but to the church of all ages by the Spirit of Christ.
2. He greets them as the true people of God
After briefly identifying himself, Peter addresses those to whom he writes as the people of God. They are the new Diaspora, scattered in the world, but chosen by the Father, sanctified by the Spirit and cleansed by the sprinkling of Christ’s blood.
Feel the drama in that description. Peter is writing primarily to Gentiles, to those who had no part in the people of God, but who followed the ‘empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers’ (1:18). They had lived to the full the Gentile life of ‘debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry’ (4:3). Peter, a pious Jew, would regard pagan Gentiles with scorn and loathing. Indeed, even as an apostle, Peter had been called to minister particularly to Jewish Christians. He was sent to the ‘circumcision.’ Peter was shocked when God, in a vision, commanded him to eat food that was not kosher.2 Only after God’s rooftop session of reorientation was Peter ready to go to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile army officer. There he explained that God’s revelation had overcome his conviction ‘that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.’
This is the apostle who writes to Gentiles living in Asia Minor (now Turkey) and greets them as God’s chosen and holy people! What could cause such an about-face on the part of this very Jewish fisherman? The answer, of course, is Jesus. Peter came to a new understanding of what it meant to belong to the people of God: it meant to belong to the Messiah, the Son of God.
Nothing is more astonishing than that he should call these Gentiles the chosen of God the Father (1:2). Israel was God’s chosen people. Theirs was ‘the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants …’. God ‘set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people.’5 How could Gentiles be called God’s chosen, his elect?
Think of the answer Peter might have given. He could not deny that Cornelius and his family had been added to the people of God. They had received the same Holy Spirit who had come upon the Jewish believers at Pentecost. But Peter might have felt that these Gentiles were second-class citizens. They had been added, he might have suspected, as a divine afterthought. When many of the Jews did not believe, the Lord decided to admit a few Gentiles on a provisional basis.
Peter’s answer is entirely different. These Christian Gentiles are God’s chosen people because he has known them from all eternity. Jesus Christ was foreknown by the Father before the world was created. The chosen people of Christ are also foreknown by the Father. Their inclusion in the people of God is no accident, no afterthought, but God’s purpose from the beginning. Those who are foreknown by God are foreknown in and with Christ. The expression foreknowledge does not mean that God had information in advance about Christ, or about his elect. Rather it means that both Christ and his people were the objects of God’s loving concern from all eternity.
Paul speaks of God’s foreknowledge in the same way. As a Pharisee he could not conceive that Israel might reject the Messiah and be themselves rejected. After Jesus met him on the road to Damascus he preached the message he had sought to silence. Yet, in a new form, the problem remained. His former friends now rejected his message. ‘Did God reject his people?’ Paul asks. It might seem so. But Paul answers, ‘By no means! I am an Israelite myself … God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.’
God’s foreknowledge is of crucial importance for Paul, as for Peter. Paul has reflected on the Old Testament teaching about the ‘remnant’. God has not cast off all Israel. A remainder is left. Paul is a case in point. What then distinguishes at last those who were cast off from those who remained? Certainly nothing in them. Paul was not wiser, more responsive, less stubborn or less self-righteous than his Pharisaical colleagues who continued to hate the name of Jesus. No, Paul is distinguished from them only by God’s choosing, God’s electing grace. Christ met Saul the persecutor; the Spirit of God gave him new birth. He was chosen by God in Christ before the foundation of the world. God does not cast off those, like Paul, whom he foreknew. There is therefore a choosing within the choosing of Israel, ‘a remnant according to the election of grace’.5 They are not all Israel that are of Israel, nor are all of Abraham’s descendants true children of God.
Since it is God’s choosing, not physical descent, that establishes the true people of God, God is surely free to choose others outside of Israel. Paul makes this clear: if in royal grace God determines to call a renewed Israel ‘Ammi’, ‘my people’, when they had been ‘Lo-ammi’, ‘no people’, then he may say the same to Gentiles. This, indeed, has been promised by the prophets. God will gather a remnant from the nations along with the remnant of Israel to assemble his new people.3
What mighty assurance Peter gives to these Gentiles! As Christians they are the people of God, not just as Israel was, but in the ultimate spiritual sense. Chosen in Christ, those who were no people are now the objects of God’s free grace and choosing love. God is their Father, not simply as God was a Father to Israel his beloved son, but as God is the Father of Jesus Christ, the eternal Beloved (1:3).
Whether we are descended from Abraham as Peter was, or are Gentiles, as were most of those addressed by Peter, we share together the wonder of God’s amazing grace in Christ. The mystery of God’s choosing will always offend those who stand before God in pride. Forgetting their rebellion and guilt before God, they are ready to accuse him of favouritism. But those whom God’s love has drawn to Christ will always confess the wonder of his initiative in grace:
I find, I walk, I love, but, O
The whole of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee;
For thou wert long beforehand with my soul,
Always thou lovedst me.
God’s choosing is the final reason that polluted Gentiles can be called his people. But God’s choosing also means that he will act to make these Gentiles his own. To belong to God they must be redeemed from their sin and washed from its stain. They must be made holy as God is holy (1:16).
To describe what God has done to bring about his great design, Peter refers to the Holy Spirit and to Jesus Christ. God’s choosing of his people is applied to them through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood (1:2). It is by the Spirit that God ‘has given us new birth’ (1:3), and it is by Christ’s blood that we are cleansed and redeemed (1:18–19). The triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, accomplishes our salvation.
The obedience of which Peter speaks seems to refer, not to our whole life of obedience, but to our initial submission to Christ as Lord. He again speaks of this obedience as obedience to the truth in verse 22. Paul, too, speaks of the obedience of faith in this sense. Of course, the Holy Spirit who makes us holy initially through the blood of Jesus Christ continues to work in us as ‘obedient children’, making us holy in our new lifestyle (1:14–16). Peter may have in view this ongoing work of the Spirit. On the other hand, he is emphasizing the new position of Gentiles as those given a new birth by God into a living hope (1:3). That suggests that the sanctifying work of the Spirit refers to our initial cleansing (symbolized in baptism) rather than to the continuing work of the Spirit.
The cleansing of God’s chosen people requires not only washing by the water of the Spirit, but also sprinkling by the blood of Christ. In this phrase Peter takes us back to the dramatic scene at Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. While the mountain shook at the presence of the Lord, the people were assembled to enter into covenant with God. At an altar with twelve pillars, sacrifice was offered. Half of the blood was sprinkled on the altar. Moses read again the words of God’s covenant, and the people vowed their obedience. Moses then sprinkled the people with the rest of the sacrificial blood, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’
At Sinai Israel was made the people of God; they were joined to him in his covenant. Now Peter speaks of Gentiles becoming obedient to Christ through the new covenant in his blood. We are sprinkled, not with the blood of oxen, but with the blood of Christ. The altar that is sprinkled with his blood does not stand before Sinai, but in heaven; it is the very throne of God. The symbolism powerfully declares that Christ’s death satisfies God’s justice and makes atonement for our sins. The blood of Christ sprinkled on us marks God’s acceptance of us because the penalty of sin has been paid. It also symbolizes God’s claim on us. As Peter says, we were bought, not with silver or gold, but ‘with the precious blood of Christ’ (2:18–19).
Peter had once urged Jesus not to go to his death on the cross: ‘Never Lord! This shall never happen to you!’ But now Peter understands the necessity of the death of Christ, and the meaning of his resurrection. Jesus himself ‘bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness’ (2:24).
In Christ Peter found the reality foreshadowed at Sinai. Israel miserably failed to keep their covenant oath. The yoke of the law, Peter himself said, was one that ‘neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear’. But now Peter can rejoice in the new covenant. God cleanses the hearts of Jew and Gentile by faith in the sacrifice of Christ.4 The reality to which the prophets testified, and to which all the ceremonies pointed, had come at last.
3. He greets them as the people of God in the world
What difference does it make that Gentiles can be called the people of God, chosen of the Father, made holy in the Spirit, sprinkled with the blood of the new covenant? To mark the difference, Peter uses two words that turn the world upside down for those inhabitants of Asia Minor, and for us. He calls them the scattered people, and says that they are strangers, aliens who are transients, temporary residents, travellers headed for their native land.
These terms give us the key to Peter’s whole letter. Peter is writing a travellers’ guide for Christian pilgrims. He reminds them that their hope is anchored in their homeland. They are called to endure alienation as strangers, but they have a heavenly citizenship and destiny.
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress gave classical expression to the theme of following Christ as a journey. Today, however, Bunyan’s traveller, Christian, seems to have more critics than followers. In his earnest haste to reach the Celestial City, Christian did not take much account of the world he was passing through. He tried to speak a good word to his companions, but he did not set up an evangelistic booth at Vanity Fair, nor did he seek funding for a project to drain the Slough of Despond. In Bunyan’s defence, it might be said that his own life was better than his allegory. But how are we to understand the Christian pilgrimage? Does the Christian flee from the world, fight it, conform to it, change it—or is there a deeper meaning to the call to pilgrimage?
Certainly the questions are not new. Those who received Peter’s letter faced them, too. What does it mean that they—and we—are the scattered people, transient aliens in a land that is not our homeland?
The ‘Diaspora’ (the dispersed) was the common term for the Jews scattered through the world after the exile of 587 BC. Although the scattering of the Jews began with their forced deportation by the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was greatly increased by voluntary emigration. The Gentiles to whom Peter wrote may have been familiar with the term as it described dispersed Jews. Indeed, they may have resented the Jewish Diaspora among them. Anti-Semitism was strong in the Roman empire. But Peter includes Gentile readers in the Diaspora. In what sense are they the ‘dispersed’? To be sure, many of their forefathers had come from other regions, but they were now settled residents, living where they had always lived, in their own lands, cities and home towns.
They must not take offence, however, but rather rejoice in a title of honour. They are the Diaspora, because they are the people of God, scattered in the world. Jesus had looked with compassion on ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, because they were ‘harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’. He had come to gather his ‘little flock’, including other sheep that were not of the sheepfold of Israel. Peter writes in the joyful assurance that the Gentiles in Asia Minor are part of the Lord’s flock. Once they were without God and without hope in the world, following the ‘empty way of life’ handed down from their fathers, but now they are ‘returned to the Shepherd and Overseer’ of their souls (1:18; 2:25).
The fact that these Gentiles are included in God’s Diaspora accounts for the other term that Peter uses. Since they are citizens of heaven, and have another country to which they are going, they are strangers, transients in the world in which they live. In relation to their homeland, they are the Diaspora; in relation to their place of residence, they are aliens. They carry another passport; they are on pilgrimage to the city of God.
God’s people must be aliens in a world of rebels against God. That point is often made in the Old Testament. God called Abraham out of the city of Ur to a life of pilgrimage. He wandered in Canaan, the land of promise, as a stranger: ‘I am an alien and a stranger among you,’ he told the Hittite residents. Jacob, brought to Egypt by Joseph, confessed to Pharaoh that ‘the years of my pilgrimage’ were ‘few and difficult’.4
In Egypt the Pharaohs exploited Israel as a workforce of undesirable aliens, despised and feared. After God delivered them in the exodus, Israel became a pilgrim people, journeying through the wilderness to the land of promise. That wilderness experience became the model for understanding the life of God’s people as a pilgrimage. God met with his people, taught and tested them, led them by day and night, fed them with bread from heaven and water from the rock, and placed his tent among them. His care watched over their journey till they reached their home, the place where God would dwell with them. The path through the wilderness is therefore the way of the Lord, the way that leads to life.
After the sin of Israel brought God’s judgment, the prophets took up the exodus theme anew. In exile, God’s people were again aliens in a strange land. The prophets promised that a remnant of the people would be spared and restored. God would deliver them from the graves of their captivity as he had delivered them from the graves of Egyptian bondage. The Lord would again march through the desert, leading his people out of exile and wandering. ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.’2
The Qumran community on the shore of the Dead Sea looked out across the water to the wilderness where God had marched with Israel. The community regulated its life to make ready in the wilderness for the coming of the Lord. John the Baptist went into the desert to preach the preparation of the way of the Lord, and announced Jesus as the One who was to come. Jesus led his disciples in the way and told them, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.’
The words of Jesus in
No Christian avoids suffering, however, and no true Christian escapes a measure of suffering for Christ’s sake. Peter speaks to us all when he tells of suffering now and glory to come.
Outline of the Overall Argument of 1 Peter
The argumentative structure of 1 Peter has been delineated differently by different scholars, and I will do so here in terms of the letter’s arguments.
1:1–12: Greetings and Introduction
The recipients are introduced as paroikoi. This word can be understood in political-legal terms to designate non-citizens or as expressing their religious identity of belonging to another world while being aliens in this world. Because words are not univocal but multivalent, which meaning might be intended can only be decided with reference to an overall interpretive framework and method.
1:13–2:10: First Argument: People of G*d
The first line of argument articulates the recipients’ ‘high’ status as the people of G*d, ‘house (oikos) of the Spirit’ and ‘royal priesthood’ (1:15–2:10) alluding to Jewish democratic understandings in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures.
2:11–3:12: Second Argument: Empire and Household
The second line of argument spells out the ‘good’ behavior demanded especially from the subordinate members of the household (oikos). It utilizes the socio-political form of the colonial oikos-discourse, which is usually called by exegetes ‘Household Code’. The argument in 1 Peter, however, does not begin by addressing behavior in the household but by prescribing behavior toward the authorities of the Empire. Such emphasis on suffering is also found in the opening and the conclusion of the letter (1:6–10; 5:1, 9). It is also developed in the following sections.
3:13–4:11: Third Argument: Suffering and Doing Good
The third line of argument articulates the necessity of suffering (pathēmata) and explains what ‘doing good’ means for the ‘stewards’ (oikonomoi) of G*d’s manifold grace who are publicly put down, harassed and defamed as Christianoi—that is, as Messianists (3:13–4:11). The section which spans 3:13–22 begins with a rhetorical question: ‘Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?’ It tells the recipients not to be intimidated, but to keep a good conscience. Finally, vv. 18–22 speaks of Christ’s suffering (cf. also 4:1), resurrection, vindication and exaltation.
4:12–5:11: Conclusion: Summary and Amplification
These three argumentative moves are summed up and amplified in 4:12–5:11, which continues to tell the readers to expect difficulties as ‘Christians’ and to undergo ‘honorable suffering’ because the end is in view.
Finally, how is it that baptism “saves”? Protestants especially have insisted that salvation is by faith alone, apart from any legal or ritual act we may perform, however valid or praiseworthy that act may be. Moreover, what do the comfortably heated waters of a baptismal tank or a few drops splashed on a baby’s head by a priest have in common with the destructive flood that overwhelmed the entire world in Noah’s day? Natural as such questions are, they reveal how bland and commonplace baptism has become in many of our churches. Yet Paul called baptism nothing less than a death and burial with Christ preparatory to rising with Christ to a new life (
If Jesus is the “living Stone” mentioned in the two passages from Isaiah and the one from the Psalms, then we who belong to him are “living stones” (2:5).
Peter’s metaphor of “living stones” is important not for itself (as, e.g., in John the Baptist’s statement that “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” [
