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.