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.