being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by [the] living and abiding word of God.
Read Full Chapter →Commentary for this Verse
Peter has just told his readers to love one another. Here he gives the reason. They have a second birth, and its source is not the perishable kind behind their first birth. So what is this seed? What does the word do? And why does "living and abiding" matter for the person born from it?
A new being, not a repaired one
The language of birth is not a figure for improvement. One writer takes it at full strength:
James BoydIt is really the bringing into existence of a new being. When you were born into this world, a being was born into it that had not existed before. If you are born again, you are born a second time; born of God, you are a child of God now, which you were not before.
So what exactly is new? One writer starts by setting aside a common description of it:
William KellySome describe the new birth as a change worked in a man by the Spirit through the word of God on his faculties, so that they no longer serve self and Satan but serve Him. But that describes the effect rather than the cause. Scripture is abundant and clear that God gives a life to the believer. Christ is this life, as the old life is from Adam fallen. That life acts through our faculties on objects revealed by God, objects far beyond those of natural life.
Perishable seed and family line
Peter's first readers had a proud family line, and this phrase strikes at it. Older translations render "perishable" and "imperishable" as "corruptible" and "incorruptible":
Leslie M. GrantIsrael boasted in their natural family line, but this was corruptible seed. New birth is of incorruptible seed, the word of God — a seed filled with life, pure, vital, and eternal, abiding forever. Of course God is the source of it, yet the believer obeys it in the very fact of being born again by it: he is a child of obedience.
The contrast also settles what this birth secures. Natural descent brought blessings that could run out:
J. N. DarbyThe believer is not born of the flesh to enjoy temporary rights and blessings, as a Jew was. He is born of an incorruptible seed, a principle of life as unchangeable as the word of God Himself.
The word as seed, and which side takes hold
Peter pictures the new birth as sowing. The picture shows who acts first:
A. J. PollockHere the New Birth is like a seed falling into the ground. The seed has life in it. The power of life in the seed lays hold in the soil. The soil does not lay hold on the seed. The word of God in the power of the Spirit lays hold of the man.
Why does the word carry such power?
J. N. DarbyThe word is the revelation of what is in God, in His nature and character, His love, His ways, in short all that He communicates. And this is what God uses to quicken.
Offspring take after their source
Those two words describe the child as well as the seed:
F. B. HoleThat which is born partakes of the nature and character of that which gives its birth. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It is equally true that what is born of incorruptible seed is incorruptible. And what is born by the living and abiding Word of God is living and abiding. That enduring Word of the Lord has reached us in the gospel message we have believed.
Peter is drawing on the prophet Isaiah, who levels every human distinction:
James BoydThe Jew was grass, the Gentile was grass — all flesh was grass. And "the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever." Nothing on earth abides but the word of God. It is living and abiding... What comfort, to know we are the children of what is living, incorruptible, and abiding!
What it produces in practice
The verse begins with "since." The new birth is the ground of Peter's call to love:
J. N. DarbyThey are our brothers. So let us love one another earnestly from a pure heart. But this rests on another principle, vital at its core. It is a new nature that acts in this love.
Summary
- Source — Birth, not repair. A being exists now that did not exist before, and God gives it a life the old one from Adam never had.
- Seed — What Peter rules out is as pointed as what he affirms. Natural descent is perishable seed, and no family line survives the sowing.
- Means — The word carries life into a person as a seed carries it into soil. The seed lays hold of the ground, not the ground of the seed.
- Nature — A child takes after its source. A living and abiding word gives a living and abiding life.
- Result — All flesh is grass, and only God's word abides. Children of that word love one another out of the new nature it gave them.