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.