Blessed [be] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through [the] resurrection of Jesus Christ from among [the] dead,
Peter opens his letter with praise, not instruction: he blesses God for a new birth and a hope no grave can touch. Two questions follow: what makes a hope "living," and why does everything rest on the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Peter praises God by a name that Israel and the fathers did not know Him by.
It is not as Jehovah for Israel, nor as Almighty God for the fathers. For us Christians God worked more deeply for His glory and for those who believe... But now the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ worked in a more triumphant way in Him. As sin-bearer He entered the dark gates of the grave which closed on all others. He glorified God so fully that God had to raise Him from among the dead. So God, as revealed here, begot us again through Christ's resurrection out of the dead. No one could speak of this or know it until that mighty witness of redemption. It was not true, and could not be, until Christ was raised in this way.
Peter traces the new birth to mercy, not to anything in those who receive it.
Every other spiritual blessing would have been useless if God's mercy did not beget us again. That is what our letter declares. No blessing is more necessary for a sinner who is lost and ruined. His old life is corrupted by inborn evil, habitual self-will, and incurable alienation from God.
Mercy also reaches people one by one, not just a nation.
Israel had been begotten first as a nation. Now people had been born again. Mercy met them where they were, and there awakened a living hope in their souls, because the Lord Jesus had been raised from the dead.
Where the ESV says God "caused us to be born again," older translations read "begotten again." Either way, the words point to something that has already happened. One writer presses this against those who make it only a hope of life.
Should not "begotten again" have shown you that life — new life — was received, not hoped for? So, using this same word, he tells us Christ is a living stone. And we have become living stones built up on that great foundation. That is, the apostle's teaching is the exact opposite of what you make him say. He says they are living stones, as Christ is a living stone; you tell us they only have a hope of life.
For the first Jewish believers the change was dramatic.
They had believed in Jesus as their promised, national Messiah. Their hope was in Him... They hoped He would be King and take the throne of His father David. Then He who was their hope died on the shameful cross, and hope died. But the third day came and Christ rose from among the dead. Hope revived — yes, they were begotten again to a living hope. His resurrection was a begetting again to a living hope, no longer the hope of the earthly kingdom.
Why call the hope "living"? Because of the One it rests on.
His resurrection brings in a whole new hope for the believer. The shadow of death can never fall on it. Risen from the dead, He dies no more; death has no more dominion over Him.
Remove the resurrection and this verse collapses. One writer shows how much rests on it.
Had His body remained in the tomb, what assurance could we have had that He had redeemed us? More than that, had He been held by death, we would have had no Saviour and no salvation. The resurrection of Christ is, therefore, the foundational truth of the gospel. To take away the truth of the Lord's resurrection is to remove all hope — to leave the soul without hope.
Peter writes as a man whose own hope had once collapsed.
He could hardly have thought that within a few weeks he would be able to say, "you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows!"... One thing, as a result, is certain: his despairing soul was begotten again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This he tells us, and for this he blesses God.
- Mercy starts it. Nothing in a ruined sinner supplies the cause; the new birth rests on God's abundant mercy alone.
- Birth, not wishing. "Begotten again" points to life already given — believers are living stones, not people hoping to live.
- Resurrection secures it. Take away the empty tomb and there is no Saviour, no salvation, and no hope left standing.
- The hope lives. It centres on One who dies no more, so no shadow of death can ever fall across it.
- Praise ends it. God is now known as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ — and the man who once denied Him is the first to bless Him for it.
to an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance, reserved in [the] heavens for you,
Peter has just blessed God for a new birth into a living hope, and this verse names what that hope leads to: property. But this property is strange: three things can never happen to it, and it is kept at an address no one on earth can reach.
Peter's readers knew what an inheritance was. Their nation had once received one. The three words here reverse everything that happened to that earlier gift.
Every Israelite knew what it was to have an inheritance. Nationally, their inheritance was the land of Canaan (Num. 26:53). They received this inheritance (Josh. 11:23). But sadly, it was later corrupted, and became only a shadow of what it was meant to be. It was defiled by idolatry. And it was lost — first at the time of the captivity, and then in AD 70, soon after Peter wrote this letter. Their Christian inheritance is just the opposite: "incorruptible and undefiled and unfading".
The failure was not in the land. It was in the people left responsible for it.
The land itself was all that a land should be. Still, it could be corrupted. So those who inherited it soon defiled it, because they were left to their own responsibility. Bit by bit they forfeited it, and it faded away.
Where older translations say "incorruptible", the ESV says "imperishable". Each word rules out one way earthly things are lost: decay, stain, and fading.
Earthly things are corruptible; the heavenly inheritance is incorruptible. Earthly things are defiled. Pollution clings to the finest and the best. The coming inheritance is undefiled. Sin and its curse can never stain it. It is pure forever. Here on earth everything fades. Every beautiful flower has its roots in a grave. All is passing away. But the inheritance we will receive never fades. It is always fresh and beautiful.
Why is it safe? Because of where it is. Scripture keeps telling of people who lost their place. Heaven is the one place the enemy never broke into.
Adam was driven out of Eden. Israel was about to be driven out of their inheritance. But the inheritance of the children of God was secure. It was in heaven, not in Eden or in Canaan. Israel had corrupted and defiled their inheritance with their idols. The Christian's portion is in a land Satan cannot enter, as he entered Eden. It is a land where man, left to his own responsibility, cannot fail and defile it.
The keeping runs both ways. Commentators set the two halves side by side.
It is preserved by God… "Reserved… for you who are kept." The inheritance is kept for you in heaven. You are kept on earth waiting for it. He will keep you for the inheritance and the inheritance for you. It is then not a question of my perseverance, but of God's faithfulness.
Being kept does not mean being spared the journey.
This treasure is in heaven. I have nothing to fear, it is in perfect safety. But this is what I fear about myself: temptations, all sorts of difficulties, for I am not in heaven. This is true. But our full security is not that we escape trial or temptation. It is that we are kept in the trial here below, just as the inheritance is kept in heaven for us.
The inheritance of verse 4 hangs on the resurrection named in verse 3. Remove that, and it is only a wish.
The hope of the Jew was earthly and, for the time, was closed by the death of Christ… Every hope of the believer rests upon Christ risen. Our hope is a sure and certain hope because He is risen. It is a living hope because Christ is living. This heavenly inheritance, unlike the earthly one, is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, and it is reserved for the believer.
The New Testament shows this inheritance from two angles. Peter takes the one that fits a traveller.
There are two ways of looking at the inheritance. In Peter and Hebrews, I am a man walking in this world in trials and difficulties, looking out for an inheritance reserved in heaven. Then in Ephesians I have entered the inheritance. There I am seen as seated in heavenly places, and as going to inherit all that Christ has.
- Kept by resurrection. The hope is living because Christ is living. A risen Saviour makes the inheritance certain, not just wished for.
- Kept from decay. Imperishable, undefiled, unfading. Three words shut the three doors by which earthly things are lost.
- Kept where Eden and Canaan were not. Adam lost a garden and Israel lost a land. This portion sits where neither Satan nor human failure can reach.
- Kept both ways. God keeps the inheritance in heaven for us, and keeps us on earth for it. It rests on His faithfulness, not our staying power.
- Kept for pilgrims. Peter writes to people still in the trials, not spared them. The treasure ahead carries a stranger along the road.
who are kept guarded by [the] power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in [the] last time.
Peter has just described an inheritance kept safe in heaven. Now he turns to the heirs, who still walk through a hostile world: what holds them steady until glory, and what is the salvation still waiting to appear?
The word Peter chose is not a mild one. The ESV reads "guarded"; older versions read "kept," the word the writers below discuss. Either way it is military language — a city ringed with troops.
How blessed it is to consider our security, our eternal security — "kept by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time!" In the original, "kept" is a very strong word. It clearly shows the church as garrisoned, enclosed, guarded, protected by the power of God against all the powers of darkness.
Why is such a guard needed? Because the road itself is dangerous.
But they kept proving their own weakness, men's hostility, and Satan's active malice. So difficulties, trials, afflictions and dangers met them all the time. They needed a guard the whole way through. And so they are — garrisoned by God's power. And if God is for us, who can be against us?
God keeps two things at once, in two different places.
The inheritance is reserved for us in heaven, and we are preserved on earth for it by the power of God operating through faith.
The power is God's, but He uses a means. That means is faith.
Still God has His means; and this the apostle goes on to tell us. It is "through faith." No means for a saint on earth can compare with faith. More than any other means, faith honours God and the word of His grace. It calls for dependence on the good Shepherd by the Holy Spirit. So it is "by God's power," but "through faith." Faith gives God His due place. It keeps us in our place of confidence in Him, according to His word.
But faith itself can waver. So who keeps the faith?
God's power keeps us, but it does so by keeping our faith, for a salvation ready to be revealed.
Peter once thought he could keep himself, and failed. That memory sits behind this verse.
In Peter's letters you can hardly find a verse without a quiet and touching reference to his own path. He had not been kept, because of his own self-confidence; but God will keep you, he says, by His power through faith. I believe that when he wrote that, his heart was turning back. Back to the moment when the Lord told him He had prayed for him, that his faith might not fail. Back to the moment when, full of self-confidence, he had thought he could keep himself.
Peter uses the word "salvation" for something wider than a soul rescued from judgment.
Here we are taught that salvation is ready to be revealed at this moment, for we are, as John tells us, in "the last times." Note that salvation as used here is not limited to the soul's deliverance from hell and ruin. It refers rather to the deliverance of the believer's body from the power of death and corruption. In short, it covers everything linked in any way with the glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We already possess the salvation of our souls, as the passage around our verse tells us.
Nothing remains to be arranged. The word "ready" means the whole thing stands finished, waiting only for the moment of display.
This word "ready" is important... Christ Himself is glorified. He has conquered all His enemies and accomplished redemption. He waits for one thing only — that God should make His enemies His footstool... Once God has brought in all who are to share it, nothing is left to wait for. That salvation is the glory in which the redeemed will appear.
- Kept by power. Peter's word is a soldier's word. God's power surrounds the believer and guards him from every hostile force.
- Kept through faith. That power does not bypass us. It works through faith, and it keeps the faith it works through.
- Not kept by self. Peter once trusted his own strength and failed. So he points his readers away from their own strength to God's.
- Kept for an inheritance. God reserves the inheritance in heaven for us, and keeps us on earth for it.
- Kept until it is revealed. The salvation ahead is finished and waiting. It includes the body's deliverance. Only its unveiling at Christ's appearing is left.
Wherein ye exult, for a little while at present, if needed, put to grief by various trials,
Peter writes to believers scattered and under real pressure. In one sentence he sets great rejoicing beside deep grief, and raises three questions: what holds the joy up, why is the grief allowed, and how long will it last?
The joy does not come from circumstances. It rests on what Peter has just described: a salvation kept in reserve, still to be revealed. One writer notes that Peter uses the word "salvation" in more than one sense. Here he means the full and final one:
There is another sense of salvation, and the apostle, as we will soon see, does not ignore it at all; but he qualifies the term. When he refers it to the present, it is the salvation of souls, not of bodies… On the other hand, as here, when salvation is meant plainly and fully, we are pointed forward to the revelation of the last time.
Peter does not tell suffering people that their sorrow is unreal. Both halves of the verse are true at once:
How good to see here that deep sorrow can go together with great joy — a joy that only faith knows, faith in what God has revealed. The sorrow is not made light of, for it is called the grief of many trials of various kinds. But the certainty and blessedness of that salvation, which is near, rises above it.
Older translations say "heaviness" here, which can sound like spiritual flatness. One writer separates the two, and shows Peter lifting his readers' eyes up before bringing them back to earth:
If you are thinking of the scene where Christ is, where you will be with Him; if your hearts rest on that inheritance which He is keeping for you… you will be rejoicing. What else can you do but rejoice with such a prospect? Then he drops down to earth again in this sixth verse, and says, You may be "put to grief" by various trials. But the "heaviness" here is not what we often call heaviness. That means a soul dull and heavy because it is out of communion with the Lord. Here it is the soul under pressure, with the Lord seeing the need for the many trials.
No trial arrives without a reason behind it, and that reason is God's:
It is a fact that we shall never be in heaviness through many trials unless there is a need for it. God does not test us on a whim. He does not delight in our testings and our heaviness, or even in chastening or rebuking or scourging. Hebrews 12 assures us of that. So each of us has to say: if God did not see some spiritual need to meet, I would not be facing this trial and its heavy pressure.
The word "various" shows why comparing sufferings never works, and why God means us to feel the pressure:
Your difficulty is not mine, very likely. You may look at me with an envious eye and say, It is all very well for you. Well, is it? I may have testings you know nothing of. Trials come in many kinds, and we are often weighed down by them. We feel it. The weight of them comes down upon us and we cannot escape the weight, and, let me tell you this, we are not intended to. We are intended to feel these things, so that we are tested by them.
The same phrase marks the world's pleasures too:
Thank God for those words, "for a season." … In Hebrews 11 we find Moses making his immortal choice. He says: Give me the reproach of Christ, with the glory that follows. Let me not walk in the track of the pleasures of sin — they last only for a season. The pleasures of the world and the trials and afflictions of God's people last only for the same short time — "for a season." The heaviness of many trials is only for a season. When the worldly man's pleasures die out inside him, the heaviness of God's people will end too.
- Cause — The joy does not come from circumstances. It rests on a salvation kept for the revelation of the last time.
- Coexistence — The sorrow is real, not denied or made small. Faith does not erase the grief. It outweighs it with the salvation that is near.
- Character — The heaviness is pressure on the soul, not the dullness of a believer out of touch with the Lord.
- Care — "If need be" rules out whim. God takes no pleasure in afflicting; where there is no need, there is no trial.
- Clock — The world's pleasures and the believer's trials both run "for a little while." Only the rejoicing outlasts the season.
that the proving of your faith, much more precious than of gold which perishes, though it be proved by fire, be found to praise and glory and honour in [the] revelation of Jesus Christ
Peter has just spoken of grief and many kinds of trials, and here he gives the reason for them: God tests faith the way a refiner tests gold. He values that faith far above gold, and He has fixed a day when its worth will be shown.
Peter says the grief comes only when there is a need for it. One writer finds comfort in that, and turns it into a question each of us should ask.
It is a fact that we will never be weighed down by many kinds of trials unless there is a need for it. God does not test us on a whim. He does not enjoy our testings and our sorrow, or even correcting us, rebuking us or disciplining us. Hebrews 12 assures us of that. So each of us has to say, If God did not see some spiritual need to be met, I would not be facing this trial and feeling its heavy pressure.
Gold lasts, yet Peter calls it "gold that perishes." One writer takes that word seriously and asks what it makes faith worth.
Gold does not perish easily. No. When they dug up poor old Tutankhamen, they found him surrounded by splendid things. There were objects of papyrus and fine linen from Egypt, brown with age, crumbling at a touch. But there were also objects of gold, and they were barely marked compared with everything else in that famous tomb. Gold lasts a long time, yet it perishes. The clear implication is that faith does not. Faith is much more precious than gold that perishes. God treasures your faith, and "precious" is the word He uses for it. In God's sight, faith is something of very, very great price.
Testing is not an accident that may or may not fall on a believer. Another writer states it as a rule with no exceptions.
Faith's place is on earth, and God tests it. He never gives faith without testing it. That testing produces fruit, and the fruit will be seen later, when everything is brought to light at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Fire sounds destructive. A refiner's fire is not. He lights it because the metal is worth saving, and one writer applies that to the believer.
Why does the goldsmith take such trouble and spend so long over the pot where he refines his gold? Because the gold is so valuable. He wants to remove the impurities and leave it at its finest. God allows His people to go into that pot, and He tests them, even by fire. He does it because in His view faith is worth so much... The truth is this: if we Christians suffer no testing, we will never be more than weaklings in spiritual terms. The testing itself is what makes us strong.
Peter's word is "found." That meets a real feeling in long illness or suffering: the sense that the time is wasted.
We tend to think that a time of deep trial is all wasted time, because it may keep us out of active service for the Lord. No, says God, it will be "found to praise" at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Who receives the praise, glory and honor? The verse does not say, and commentators read it in two ways. Some take it as glory brought to Christ. (Both writers below quote an older translation, which reads "praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.")
It says, it "shall be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." The thing that seemed to be lost is going to be found. What a finding it will be when that hour comes! It will be found to praise and honour and glory. Whose? That of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the hour when He appears in glory, He will have His own glory, the glory of the Father, and the glory of the holy angels. Even so, He will not be too great to wear a little glory brought to Him by these things we thought were lost.
Others read it as the believer's reward. They rest the point on the word Peter chooses: not the Lord's coming to take His own, but His revelation.
Note again that praise, honour, and glory are connected with Christ's revelation. His coming to receive us and take us to the Father's house is supreme grace. At His revelation He will weigh our faithfulness and reward it. Both will certainly come true, but God's righteous government is quite different from His sovereign grace.
- Needed. Grief never comes on a whim. It comes because God sees a need in you that must be met.
- Valued. The fire falls on faith because God prizes it. Gold survived a pharaoh's tomb, yet gold perishes; faith does not.
- Refined. Untested faith stays weak. The refiner's fire burns off the impurities and makes a believer strong.
- Found. Time that looked wasted, and service you could not give, is not lost. God will find it and turn it to praise.
- Displayed. The finding happens when Jesus Christ is revealed. Some read the praise, glory and honor as brought to Him; others as reward given to the faithful.
whom, having not seen, ye love; on whom [though] not now looking, but believing, ye exult with joy unspeakable and filled with [the] glory,
Peter writes to believers under pressure, and one sentence names what marks them out: they love and rejoice in a Person they have never seen. How can love and joy hold on to someone unseen, and why is that better than seeing Him?
One writer weighs Peter's first phrase against the way love works between people.
"Though you have not seen him, you love him." It is a strange sound and fact at first, but in the end precious. Who ever loved a person that he never saw? We know that in human relations it is not so. In divine things it is precisely what shows the power and special character of a Christian's faith.
The Jews were looking for a visible king. Christianity holds out something else.
This gives us a true and vivid picture of what Christianity is. It was important for the Jews to weigh, because they always looked for a visible Messiah — the royal Son of David — the object of all reverence, homage, and loyalty for all Israel. But here it is altogether another order of ideas. It is a rejected Messiah who is the proper object of the Christian's love, though he never saw Him. Unseen, He becomes all the more simply and purely the object of his faith, and also the spring of "joy unspeakable and full of glory."
Darby links this love to the Spirit's work while Christ is out of sight.
Christ is the object, and the Father's love too. But the Holy Spirit is the power by which I see Christ and realise the Father's love. Since Christ is gone and nothing is visible, my affections are more drawn out and exercised. This is blessed. He does not say, Blessed are those who have seen and believed, but, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Divine affection for Christ is much more drawn out by Christ being absent, and yet we long to see Him.
Did the people who walked beside Jesus have the advantage? Kelly says no.
None has such vantage ground for loving the Lord Jesus as the Christian. He knows His love as no one could before Christ came into the world, and beyond all that people knew during His ministry. He knows it in His humiliation, in His suffering beyond all comparison, in His rejection and cross. Though he never saw Him here, he begins by learning the depths of that love. This is where those who followed Him on earth had their difficulties settled and came into spiritual understanding, when He was raised from among the dead.
Where these writers quote "joy unspeakable and full of glory," the ESV reads "inexpressible and filled with glory." Kelly asks where its glory comes from.
"Glorified," or full of glory, is admittedly an unusual word. Yet it seems to fit the apostle's warmth to call this joy full of glory as well as too big for us to put into words at present. Christ on high is its source, and He might readily clothe the Christian's joy with that character of glory before they themselves are there.
Darby ties that joy to the Person Himself, whatever this life brings.
It is this which decides and forms the heart, which fixes it and fills it with joy, however it may be with us in this life. To our hearts it is He who fills all the glory. By grace I shall be glorified, I shall have the glory; but I love Jesus, my heart longs for His presence — desires to see Him.
Trials do not shut this joy down.
Christ Himself should always be before us while we pass through the sorrows that trial brings... This is indeed wonderful, something beyond the knowledge of the natural man. Though facing the deepest trials on earth, the believer, like his Master, can be enjoying what belongs to heaven. This is the joy the Lord spoke of to His disciples in John 15:11 — His own joy shared with His own.
F. B. Hole turns the verse on how we sing.
It is spiritually damaging to tell the Lord in song that we praise Him "in strains of deepest joy," when in fact our joy is very shallow. We have never known what we read of in 1 Peter 1:8. Joy of that depth would reduce us to silence, for it is "unspeakable."
- Unseen — no human love works like this. Loving a Person you have never seen marks out a Christian's faith.
- Rejected — this love is set on a rejected Messiah, not a visible king. Because He is unseen, faith rests on Him more purely.
- Drawn out — His absence does not weaken love; it exercises it. Jesus calls blessed those who have not seen and yet believe.
- Advantaged — the believer starts where the first disciples finished: he knows Christ crucified, risen and glorified.
- Glorified joy — Christ on high is its source, so the joy wears His glory before we get there. Joy that deep leaves us silent, not boastful.
receiving the end of your faith, [the] salvation of [your] souls.
Peter has just described believers who love a Christ they have never seen. Now he names what that faith lays hold of. Where the ESV says "the outcome," older translations say "the end of your faith," and the phrase raises two questions: is this outcome held now or still ahead, and why does Peter say souls rather than simply "you"?
One writer sets verse 9 beside verse 5, earlier in the same chapter:
Believing in Him, what have you received? Not salvation in the full sense of Peter's letter, but the salvation of the soul. In verse 5 you are kept "through faith to salvation," something you do not yet have, but will get through faith. In verse 9, salvation is the salvation of our souls, which we have now. You have not seen the Lord yet, but the moment you rest on Him by faith, your soul is saved.
The soul's salvation rests on a finished work:
We shall not receive salvation of the body until He comes, the One for whom we wait. But we are not waiting for the salvation of souls. The gospel announces this plainly and with certainty. Christ has done such a work for it that no addition could make it more complete. Nothing could make it more effective for the one who believes. He is not like the earthly priest, standing to repeat what could never be finished. When He had offered one sacrifice for sins, He sat down for ever at the right hand of God.
One writer measures this salvation against Israel's rescue at the Red Sea:
Take the salvation given to Israel at the Red Sea... That was a salvation the whole earth heard about... it was a salvation men could take account of; they could see it with their eyes, and it was a temporal salvation. But here is a salvation Peter calls "the salvation of the soul." That is not temporal at all, but spiritual. A man might be in the worst circumstances imaginable. But the word of God reaches him. The gospel comes to him, he believes it, and by it he is saved... There is no outward evidence that God has stepped in at all. His circumstances are just as wretched as before. But the man is different. His soul is set free.
Being kept out of judgment is not the whole of the phrase. Kelly draws a line between that and what Peter is describing:
If you think only of getting to heaven — of being delivered from judgment — then all the Old Testament saints were. But that is not what Peter calls the salvation of the soul... It means the soul comes, here and now, to know that everything is clear between God and itself. The soul knows that sins are gone and righteousness has come. Was that the case in Old Testament times? Certainly not. All you could say of an Old Testament soul was that he was hoping for righteousness; he was waiting for this salvation.
Another writer holds both sides together — the legal clearance and the enjoyment:
Soul-salvation in these Scriptures must include the judicial salvation which is ours when we believe. That is when God forgives our sins and justifies us on the principle of faith. But on its positive side it also takes in the soul's present enjoyment of that salvation. In its fullness, that salvation is ready to be revealed. It is ours in this world now, because it is "in Christ."
Darby reads the words as placed to keep testing from dimming the believer's hope and joy:
It is "unspeakable" because it is Himself, and "full of glory" because He is in the glory. The fire that tests must not cast the slightest cloud over the hope and the joy. So Peter says, "receiving the end of your faith." I have received the salvation of my soul. That is the end of my faith, though I may have to go through trial to burn away the dross.
Not every writer takes "the end of your faith" as something held now. One weighs the case that it points forward, like verses 5 and 10:
It is a question whether salvation in this verse is used with a different meaning from the one found in verses 5 and 10. In those there is no doubt: salvation is future... So we must weigh whether "the end of your faith" points to the same time. It is quite true that there is a present assurance of acceptance in Christ which the believer enjoys in the most adverse circumstances — but whether that is the teaching of this Scripture is another thing.
- Faith's outcome. Believing in an unseen Christ has a result you do not wait for. You receive it now.
- Faith's portion: the soul. Verse 5 keeps you for a salvation not yet had; verse 9 names one you already hold. The body's turn comes when He appears.
- Faith's certainty. It rests on one sacrifice, after which Christ sat down — a work no addition could improve.
- Faith's evidence. Unlike the Red Sea, nothing outward changes. The man himself is different: he knows his sins are gone.
- Faith's steadiness. The words come right after the testing fire. Trial cannot cloud a salvation already in hand. Commentators differ on whether Peter means a present possession or the future goal.
Concerning which salvation prophets, who have prophesied of the grace towards you, sought out and searched out;
Peter has just spoken about a salvation that comes through faith. Now he looks back at the prophets of Israel: they wrote about that same salvation, then had to search their own words to find it.
The salvation the prophets announced was not a vague hope. It was tied to one person, and it was never a reward for works.
"Salvation" was identified with the coming and work of the Messiah. Believers understood little, if anything, of how it would happen. But they had no doubt about the saving grace that would then be shown. They looked forward to the coming day as the goal of their hopes, when the Messiah would establish salvation fully and for ever. How clearly it is "grace," and not of works that human nature could boast in. Salvation is not a matter of birthright, nor of personal merit, but of grace.
God spoke through the prophets, but they still did not grasp all they had said. Their searching shows where the words came from.
Their prophesying did not remove the need or the value of careful research; it stimulated it. The honour of prophesying did not spare the men who held it. They still had to seek and search earnestly to understand what they were given to predict out of the fullness that is in God... No incidental fact proves more clearly that prophecy was not of man's will, nor a clever human guess, but of God. He spoke or wrote by His servant in the Spirit. The prophet still had to sift it carefully to understand what he had spoken from God. Salvation was a rich blessing from God. It went beyond all they already held in privilege, and it was bound up with the Messiah's day, which God alone let prophets foresee. But they still had to weigh and examine what they prophesied deeply, to make it truly their own.
Two pictures of the Messiah sat side by side in their own writings. God did not clear up the puzzle. He told them something else instead.
The prophets sought and searched into these writings — into the very writings, it seems, that they had themselves written under the control of the Spirit of God... They wanted to reconcile the apparently contradictory pictures of a Messiah whose path to the glory ran through suffering... God, in His wisdom, kept the true meaning of these things from them; but in His goodness He told them that they had been privileged to minister to a generation still to come.
The wording marks a real gap. The prophets wrote before the cross, and so before this salvation.
As to the salvation of souls, not even the prophets in the Old Testament could say they were saved. By the power of the Spirit of God they wrote in advance about such a salvation. But they enquired and searched hard into the full meaning of their own writings, and into the salvation still to be revealed — the grace that was to come to believers in the present age. They too will be in heaven, by grace through faith and on the ground of the sacrifice of Christ. Yet they did not then know the salvation of their souls, because Christ had not yet died to bring that salvation about. This is a truth that could not have been taught before His death.
The gap also shows in how the Spirit worked in each age.
Believers today all share this deliverance of the soul. For the prophets of the past age it was still a matter of enquiry. It is called "the grace that should come to you" — that is, it had not come in the previous age... Then predicted by the Spirit; now reported by the Spirit.
The ESV reads that phrase as "the grace that was to be yours."
Their limited grasp of their own words leaves the reader with a reason for thanks.
How little, it seems, the Old Testament prophets understood their own prophecies! How much we are indebted to the Spirit who now reveals a Christ already come!
The salvation named here spans three moments. Only the last is still future.
The prophets foretold this coming glory in days past. The Holy Spirit preaches it in the present day. It will be fully accomplished in the day of glory yet to come.
- Searched — the prophets studied their own inspired words. That need to search proves the words came from God, not from themselves.
- Grace — the salvation they wrote of was tied to the Messiah's coming and work. It never rested on works.
- Delayed — Peter calls it grace still to come. The prophets could not call their souls saved before Christ died.
- For you — God hid the meaning from them, but told them they served a later generation. Readers now hold what the prophets only reached for.
- Three stages — foretold by the prophets, preached now by the Holy Spirit, and fully given at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which [was] in them pointed out, testifying before of the sufferings which [belonged] to Christ, and the glories after these.
The prophets who wrote Israel's Scriptures did not fully understand their own writing. Peter says a Spirit was at work in them who knew what they did not. That Spirit marked out two things in a fixed order: suffering first, then glory.
Peter's title for the Spirit is surprising. When the prophets wrote, the Son had not yet come as the Christ.
A mind was at work far beyond that of prophets, yet at work intimately in them; "the Spirit of Christ." The phrase is even more striking because the Son did not become the Christ until long afterwards. But what He was revealing pointed forward to that wonderful fact, and testified of Him beforehand in that character.
One writer draws a further conclusion about who spoke through the prophets.
Christ had not yet been revealed in the age gone by. Even so, the Spirit in the prophets, speaking through them, could be called "the Spirit of Christ." So Christ was the Speaker by His Spirit even in Old Testament days.
Prophecy did not start with the men who spoke it. They had to study their own writing.
The prophets served, but the source of their prophecies, spoken or written, was the Spirit. The Spirit in them testified through them. He was so truly the source of their words that they had to search their own sentences with care and ask what they meant. They found that the full meaning was beyond the grasp of the age they lived in.
Their ignorance, one writer argues, shows who the real author was.
No prophet knew the full extent or depth of his own inspired messages. This proved that God wrote through them far better than if they had known everything. Jeremiah or Isaiah, Daniel or Habakkuk may not have understood; the Holy Spirit knew it all from the beginning. So what they wrote went far beyond their own understanding, and made plain the mind of the One who used them.
The prophets searched for the person and the time the Spirit pointed to. The same writer notes what their visions did not show.
Apart from special revelations, the vision of coming deliverance given to them did not separate the time between the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. Perhaps we may safely say that none of them seems to have known beforehand that a long gap would come between the two events. Yet now that the gap has come, we can bring passages from the prophets to prove it.
The wording is exact. One writer builds a point on the difference between two small words.
Notice that the language used is unusually precise. The sufferings are said to be not merely "of" Christ, but "for" Him. They did not just happen to Him as a fact; they were appointed to Him. Just as the grace was towards you, so the sufferings were towards Christ.
The order is not accidental. One writer ties it to the state of the world Christ came into.
The moral order is completely according to God: first He must suffer. So we read in 1 Peter 1:11 of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. It must be so in a sinful world, for one who seeks not his own glory but God's, and the real and eternal good of man. It would be impossible to take the Kingdom while man is in a state of sin and rebellion.
Peter writes "glories" in the plural. That raises the question of where believers stand now.
The saints addressed, like all other Christians, stand between the sufferings that came to Christ and the glories that should follow. If not the whole glory, certainly the greater part of those revealed "glories" is still to come. The magnificent scenes of the last days plainly wait for His coming from the heavens. Then He will take the earth and the whole universe under His direct and visible rule.
That gap is not empty, and Peter's next verse names what fills it.
There are three steps here. First, the Spirit of Christ in the prophets testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and of the glories that should follow. Next, these things are now reported to us by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, that is, after Christ was glorified. Then we are to be ready for action. We are to hope to the end for the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We stand between the sufferings and the glories.
- Between. The verse sets two fixed points: sufferings, then glories. Believers today live in the space between them.
- Speaker. Peter calls the Spirit who moved the prophets the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit spoke of the Son under a name He would bear only long afterwards.
- Searching. The prophets studied their own words and found the meaning ran past them. That is the strongest proof that God, not they, was the author.
- Appointed. Christ did not merely undergo the sufferings. They were appointed to Him.
- Order. Glory could not come first in a sinful world. Suffering had to come before the Kingdom, and the greater part of the glories still waits for His coming.
To whom it was revealed, that not to themselves but to you they ministered those things, which have now been announced to you by those who have declared to you the glad tidings by [the] Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, which angels desire to look into.
Peter has just described prophets searching their own writings. Here is what they found: the message pointed past their own day to us, and three groups now stand around it — prophets who searched, preachers who announced, and angels who long to look in.
The prophets did not simply write and move on. They studied their own words, and God gave them a further answer.
The ancient prophets studied their own prophecies. The Holy Spirit then acted again, to make them understand what those prophecies meant. They then found that it was not for themselves, but for us, that they ministered these things.
Daniel is a plain example. God sealed his message until a later day:
They searched out what was in their own writings. What they wrote was not measured by their own understanding. The Spirit of Christ carried them far beyond anything that may have prompted their prophecies. The answer they got to their searching was simply this: they were speaking of things that belonged to others, not to themselves. Daniel is a plain example. What God gave to him was "shut up and sealed until the time of the end."
If the meaning was always there, why did God not explain it at the time?
1 Peter 1:12 is in principle the inspired answer. Christ came and died for us, and then gave the Spirit when He ascended. That was the right time, and the right way, to teach plainly everything the pictures had wrapped up. They were wrapped up, but never uncertain. God declares it after 1500 years, and we can see it was His intention all along. The truth then comes out with all the more force as coming from God.
The same Spirit works in both eras, but not in the same way.
The apostles and others preached the Gospel to us by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. What they now report to us is what was only prophesied before. Then predicted by the Spirit; now reported by the Spirit. Then the Spirit was in the prophets for the purpose of inspiration, but now the Spirit is sent down from heaven.
What the Spirit now does for the believer goes beyond carrying a message forward to a future date.
The Holy Spirit sent forth from heaven at Pentecost is not giving a prophetic testimony to Jesus as then. Given to the Christian, He is a Spirit of present communion. That was not possible, and could not be, until Christ had come and accomplished redemption.
Israel's tabernacle had two golden angel figures, the cherubim, bending over the lid of the ark. One writer sees the same posture in this verse, and asks what held their gaze.
Their posture reminds us of 1 Peter 1:12: "things into which angels long to look." It is as though they were gazing in wonder and worship at the cover of the ark, the mercy-seat. That cover lay over the tablets of the law, so the cherubim were not gazing at the law... It is the blood on the mercy-seat that fixes the gaze of these ministers of justice and judgment.
Angels are not all-knowing, and that is part of why they watch.
Their intelligence is finite. So when God reveals what has been hidden for ages in His mind, it gives them something to think about. They watch His plans unveiled step by step before their eyes... There they learn God's will for them, and the service He wants them to give to the heirs of salvation. They also learn God's mind and purpose about His Son.
Angels wonder at the sacrifice of Christ from the outside. Someone else is brought inside it.
We know that they desire to look into these things (1 Peter 1:12)... But this is not given to angels. It is given to men — prodigals brought back to God in righteousness through that sacrifice. They enter into its meaning and have communion with God about it. They can do so because God has given the Holy Spirit to men who believe.
That nearness comes with a rebuke.
These angels bend down to look into the very things we have been brought into close contact with. How they rebuke us for how little hold those things have on us, even at our best!
- Searched. The prophets studied their own writings. God's answer was clear: the message belonged to a later generation, not to them.
- Timed. The long wait was not God holding back. The death of Christ, and then the gift of the Spirit, were the right moment to explain 1500 years of pictures.
- Sent. The Spirit once predicted these things from inside the prophets. Now He reports them as finished facts, sent down from heaven.
- Watched. Angels bend over this as the golden figures bent over the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat. Their knowledge is limited, and here they learn God's mind about His Son.
- Received. Angels look in from the outside. Forgiven people are brought inside. They understand the sacrifice and talk with God about it, because He has given them His Spirit.