BIG IDEA:
I. LIVE FOR ETERNITY: (3 LIVING REALITIES ASSOCIATED WITH OUR SALVATION)
– FOCUSING ON OUR LIVING HOPE
– FEEDING ON THE LIVING WORD
– FUNCTIONING AS LIVING STONES
INTRODUCTION:
Erland Waltner: Peter begins with blessing God, inviting the same in his hearers, and bidding them to view their life experiences from the perspective of the Christian hope. This hope is both their gift from God and their message to proclaim in word and life. They have been born anew into a life characterized and transformed by Christian hope. This hope in turn changes both their inner experience and their outer relationships and conduct.
The goal of their life of hope is salvation, which Peter perceives as yet to be completed in the future. Already, however, they may experience joy, even while they are being tested in their faith in Christ. Theirs is an inheritance that cannot be destroyed nor corrupted. This is being kept securely for them in heaven. They, as heirs, are being kept to receive it. While in this world, they are resident aliens, sometimes misunderstood, misinterpreted, mistreated, and maligned. Some of them are abused physically, socially, or spiritually. Their status with God, as people of God, however, is one of high privilege.
Daniel Doriani: The opening verses of Peter are steeped in covenantal language.
Scot McKnight: Grammatically, our passage [1:3-12] is one massive run-on sentence. While such lengthy sentences (ten verses!) tweak the nose of modern English teachers, Peter’s grammar is wonderfully elegant as well as profoundly expressive of the grandeur of his subject: salvation. We may unravel the grammar as follows: Peter blesses the Father for the new birth he grants his people (v. 3a), which leads to their majestic hope of final salvation (vv. 3b–5); this expectation of final salvation leads them to rejoice, in spite of suffering, about that final day of Jesus Christ (vv. 6–7); this very Jesus Christ they both love and trust, while they rejoice as they await that final day of salvation (vv. 8–9); that very salvation was the subject of inquiry and longing for the ancient prophets of Israel, though they did not live to see its fulfillment (vv. 10–12). The words in italics demonstrate how one idea leads to a fuller digression on that idea, leading to more and more digressions—all in one breath and in one glorious doxology.
John MacArthur: The apostle Peter follows the introduction of his first letter with a sweeping doxology regarding the wonder of salvation. He considered it essential to begin the body of the letter with this joyous paean of praise inasmuch as the believers he addressed faced severe persecution from Rome. The passage is a hymn of worship designed to encourage Christians living in a hostile world to look past their temporal troubles and rejoice in their eternal inheritance.
I. (:3) OUR DESTINY HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM DEATH TO LIFE
A. New Birth gives us new life and new family identity
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Erland Waltner: Blessing God as the Lord (Yahweh) was a common OT worship pattern. It is especially common in Psalms (18:46; 28:6; 31:21; et al.) and specifically in doxologies (Ps. 41:13; 72:18-19; 89:52; 106:48). The root meaning of the word used here for bless is “to speak good of” or “to praise.”
Daniel Doriani: In verse 3, Peter cites Jesus’ full title, “our Lord Jesus Christ,” which appears about thirty-five times in eleven different books of the New Testament. Working backward, Christ means that he is the promised Messiah. Jesus means that he is Savior; in Hebrew, Joshua/Jesus means “Yahweh saves.” Lord means that he rules all things. Beyond all that, he is ours, and we are his. So he is the Lord and our Lord. He is God’s Anointed, and Yahweh saves through him.
Wayne Grudem: The term Father, as applied to the first person of the Trinity, signifies not that the Father in any way created the Son or caused him to exist (for the Son has always existed and was never created, John 1:1–3; 8:58; 17:5, 24; Rev. 22:13), but that he relates to the Son as a father relates to a son normally: the Father plans and directs, the Son responds and obeys; the Father ‘sends’, the Son comes from the Father (John 3:16, 18; 5:19, 22, 26–27, 30; Gal. 4:4; Heb. 1:3). The Father creates ‘through’ the Son; all things come ‘from’ the Father ‘through’ the Son (John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2).
B. New Goal / New Orientation — described as a LIVING HOPE
who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope
Daniel Doriani: “Give new birth” translates one Greek verb (anagennaō) that appears only in 1 Peter. The term echoes Jesus’ teaching of Nicodemus, Israel’s teacher, that he had to be born anew and born of the Spirit if he hoped to see God’s kingdom (John 3:1–10). Nicodemus and Peter, Jews and Gentiles, you and I—all need God’s Spirit to breathe life into our dead souls.
Peter Davids: Peter does not focus on the past, the new birth itself, but on the future, for the goal of this regeneration is “a living hope”.
Roger Raymer: Here “living” means that the believer’s hope is sure, certain, and real, as opposed to the deceptive, empty, false hope the world offers.
Erland Waltner: To speak of a living hope follows naturally from the image of being born anew and anticipates the images of being newborn babes (2:2) and children(1:14; 3:6).
This newly experienced living hope is precisely what will now make the difference in how the hearers will be able to face their own immediate and ultimate futures, including suffering in a variety of forms. It will enable them to follow in the steps of Jesus (2:21) when encountering reviling and abuse in a hostile world. Without hope, they may be tempted not only to renounce their faith in God but also to respond to their enemies in ways which would compromise their witness in a world of injustice and violence.
Wayne Grudem: It is ‘living hope’: by so describing it Peter indicates that it grows and increases in strength year by year. If such a growing hope is the expected result of being born again, then perhaps the degree to which believers have an intense, confident expectation of the life to come is one useful measure of progress towards spiritual maturity. It is not surprising that such a hope is particularly evident in many older Christians as they approach death.
C. New Head — Headship of Christ instead of Adam
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Our destiny has been changed from death to life because of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. The resurrection is the key to our guaranteed future. Our future is as certain as His resurrection.
II. (:4a) OUR INHERITANCE HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM EARTHLY TO HEAVENLY
A. Imperishable – will not rot or decay
to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable
Daniel Doriani: An inheritance is a gift based on a relationship, not a wage for a performance. Because the gift rests on the Father’s grace and covenant, and because God keeps us safe, our inheritance is safe. In language that is almost poetic in the original, Peter says that this inheritance is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” Nothing can spoil our inheritance. It is “untouched by death, unstained by evil, unimpaired by time; it is compounded of immortality, purity and beauty.” Nothing can jeopardize it and nothing can ruin it. The symmetry is perfect. God keeps the inheritance for us, and he keeps us for the inheritance. He keeps the treasure for us, and he guards us so that we will properly enjoy it.
Daniel Akin: The Greek word was occasionally used with a military connotation—of a land not ravaged by (or beyond the reach of) enemy armies. Sometimes it was used of a land unscathed by natural calamities. Likely the language here suggests perpetuity: the Christian’s heritage is imperishable, not liable to corruption or decay. In short, death cannot reach and destroy it.
B. Undefiled – morally and religiously pure
and undefiled
C. Unfading — eternal
and will not fade away,
Daniel Akin: That is to say, the Christian inheritance is not subject to the wasting effects of time. The root word was used of the withering of flowers, of the wasting of one’s features by illness or age. The word used in the text suggests then a beauty that time does not impair or cause to wither away. It is unchanging.
Erland Waltner: Neither corruption from within nor corrosive forces from without can destroy this inheritance that is fully guaranteed to believers. These adjectives, perhaps chosen because in Greek each begins with the letter a, emphasize the assured permanence of what God has given them, and also that this heavenly inheritance transcends any earthly wealth. Similarly, Jesus emphasized “laying up treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust corrupt and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:19-20).
Wayne Grudem: The ‘inheritance’ of the New Covenant Christian is thus shown to be far superior to the earthly inheritance of the people of Israel in the land of Canaan. That earthly land was not ‘kept’ for them, but was taken from them in the Babylonian exile, and later by Roman occupation. Even while they possessed the land, it produced rewards that decayed, rewards whose glory faded away. The beauty of the land’s holiness before God was repeatedly defiled by sin (Num. 35:34; Jer. 2:7; 3:2). But the Christian’s inheritance will never be defiled.
III. (:4b-5) OUR FUTURE HAS BEEN TOTALLY GUARANTEED
A. (:4b) Our inheritance has been totally guaranteed –
reserved in heaven for you
it will be there when we get there
Peter Davids: While the Christians’ adversaries might destroy all they have in this world, there is a reward that no force on earth can touch. This inheritance should give them hope in the darkest times.
Erland Waltner: The focus here is not on a safe space or place but on the total competence and trustworthiness of God, who makes promises of inheritance and who can be counted on to be entirely faithful in making good on these promises.
B. (:5) Our destiny has been totally guaranteed –
who are protected by the power of God through faith
for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
we will get there to enjoy it
Erland Waltner: Not only is the inheritance in the trustworthy hands of God; so are Christian believers being protected or guarded, a military term. Peter invokes another image of a powerful God who protects his own people against enemies, making it unnecessary for them to fear, hate, or destroy enemies.
Wayne Grudem: He stresses that this is by God’s power. Yet God’s power does not work apart from the personal faith of those being guarded, but through their faith. (Faith, pistis, is regularly a personal activity of individual believers in Peter: 1 Pet. 1:7, 9, 21; 5:9; 2 Pet. 1:1, 5; and commonly in the New Testament.) The parallel examples of God working ‘through’ someone or something in Peter’s writings (1 Pet. 1:3, 23; 2 Pet. 1:4; and probably also 1 Pet. 1:12; 2:14; 3:1) suggest that the believer’s personal faith or trust in God is the means God uses to guard his people. Thus we might give the sense of the verse by saying that ‘God is continually using his power to guard his people by means of their faith’, a statement that seems to imply that God’s power in fact energizes and continually sustains individual, personal faith. The theological implication is that, while God does not believe for us (for we individually must believe), he does invisibly empower us to believe, and were it not for his sustaining power, we ourselves would fall back into unbelief.
(:6a) APPLICATION
“In this you greatly rejoice“
Erland Waltner: Verse 6 can be read either as indicative, In this you rejoice, or as imperative, Rejoice in this. While commentators debate this issue, the first is preferred, implying that the living hope into which they have been born makes it possible for them to rejoice even in the presence of suffering. Similarly, Acts 5:41 reports that the apostles “rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name.” In this (1:6) refers back to all that God has done for them through Christ. It continues the description of their transformed experience, their birth into living hope. This is consistent also with the reference to rejoicing in 1:8-9, which describes present rejoicing in anticipation of the full salvation yet to be realized. Such rejoicing is understood as a dimension of the transforming hope which has come to them through God’s grace in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.