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“search the scriptures” John 5:39
The Christian life is a pilgrimage. Our sojourn here is temporary, and we are travelling through this fallen wilderness of a world on our way to a heavenly inheritance. By reminding his readers of the trinitarian source and purpose of their salvation, Peter pastorally lifts their eyes to their heavenly destiny, so that they may bear with trials on the road to glory. Their eternal well-being was planned in accordance with the Father’s perfect knowledge, the Spirit’s sanctifying work, and the Son’s redemptive sacrifice2 leading to the saints’ obedience, v. 2.3 The apostle understood the rigours of following the Lord through this difficult scene; accordingly, he knew how to console, challenge, and encourage his fellow-saints on their weary trek. Though following Him entails suffering in this present age, believers may take solace in the divine eternal plan for His people.
The chapter divides this way:
Our identity - pilgrims linked to the triune God’s eternal purposes and covenantal grace, 1. 1, 2;
Our hope - a heavenly inheritance, 1. 3-12;
Our preparation - holiness through faith and obedience, 1. 13-21;
Our solidarity - brotherly love from new life that stems from and is sustained by God’s word, 1. 22 - 2. 3.
Being part of a dispersed people -the Jewish diaspora, as it is often called - the Hebrew-background readers were naturally attuned to a sense of otherness, stemming from their centuries-long wanderings during ‘the times of the Gentiles’, Luke 21. 24. In verse 1, Peter referred to them as ‘pilgrims’,4 alternatively rendered ‘sojourners’,5 or ‘those who reside as aliens’.6 These renderings reflect their true identity as those who are not yet home; they do not belong to this transient, fallen world, but pertain instead to the better country that is coming, Heb. 11. 13-16. Amid hardship, instability, and persecution, 1 Peter repeatedly focuses the believer’s vision of God and His purposes for this world and the one to come. The big picture view helps them to endure tribulation,7as well as providing an incentive for progressive sanctification, 1 Pet. 1. 13-16; 1 John 3. 2, 3.8
The believer’s life-journey is reminiscent of Israel’s wilderness wanderings, with Peter’s ‘inheritance’ terminology especially recalling the book of Numbers’ typology, vv. 4-9. The Father has begotten the saints to a living hope through Christ’s resurrection - one that provides motivation to progress through this world to a glorious heavenly inheritance, vv. 3-5. His triumph over death guarantees their security now and will bring them to an incorruptible reward. A. T. Robertson noted its imperishability, and praised its superiority compared with earthly legacies, commenting, ‘So many inheritances vanish away before they are obtained’.9 In verse 23, the same word ‘incorruptible’ describes the spiritual seed of God’s word, which is the source of our spiritual life.
The inheritance is also ‘undefiled’, like the Lord who graciously bestows it. Its description is rounded out by, ‘that fadeth not away’. While this world’s baubles are soon tarnished and often rot away, the believer’s inheritance is eternally pristine to the praise of His ineffable glory.10 It is safely ‘reserved’ for them, and they in turn are ‘guarded’ by God’s power mediated through faith for the culmination of their salvation, v. 5.11
Like Israel in the wilderness, the church encounters opposition in the present age. But verses 6 to 9 reveal that trials are actually being used by the Lord for a greater end. Like the crucible’s heat which reveals gold’s unalloyed lustre, trials demonstrate - and purify -faith. Christianity is no unliveable, ivory-tower philosophy; rather, it is designed for real world conditions and struggles. In tribulations, believers learn to lean on the Lord, as well as manifesting the reality of His sustaining power and mercy during varied hardships. The sufferings will be employed to strip away the world’s mistaken view of Christians, for the saint’s faith will receive commensurate praise, honour, and glory at Christ’s revelation, v. 7. Just as the Man of Sorrows’ sufferings resulted in His eventual glorification,12 so His people’s troubles will redound to His honour when He returns, v. 9.
The next section of the chapter demonstrates that while this preordained salvation was promised in the Old Testament, its realization only came to pass in the Christian era. God, who delights to reveal Himself to mankind, breathed forth His word through chosen prophets. They were tremendously interested in this message, ‘searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that would follow’, v. 11 NKJV. They foresaw Messiah and His two comings: one to suffer and the other to triumph in glory, Isa. 52. 13-15. But they also discovered that their prophecies pertained to believers of another time. Therefore, the saints in Peter’s day were privileged to receive things that the angelic world also desired to study, v. 12. They could take heart that their difficulties were within God’s knowledge and circumscribed by His sovereign grace. Just as their Lord suffered and then was glorified, Luke 24. 25-27, even so their tearful experience would culminate in glory.
Peter uses terms that evoke memories of the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread, vv. 13-21. ‘Gird up the loins of your mind’, v. 13, matches the physical dress of the Israelites in Egypt on the night of the original Passover, Exod. 12. 11. They were to have their flowing garments tied up in order to facilitate a quick departure.
Daniel Smith, who served the Lord in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Vancouver, wrote a highly recommended autobiography titled Pilgrim of the Heavenly Way.
‘Sprinkled is the technical term that is used in the Old Testament when it was a question of cleansing by blood. The priest would take blood and sprinkle it on the person or elsewhere, as they came for forgiveness of sins. Never in the Old Testament do we have washed in blood; always sprinkled by blood. Therefore, in talking of the great sacrifice of Christ and his atoning, cleansing blood, the New Testament uses the term, sprinkled’. David Gooding, The Holy Spirit: Three Aspects of His Work in the Believer, Myrtlefield Trust, 2018, pg. 25. Italics original.
‘What the Father plans and the Spirit empowers, Christ thus receives, as exalted Saviour and ruling Lord’, Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter, IVP, 1988, pg. 56.
NKJV; ‘temporary residents’, NKJV mg. Compare 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 17, where Darby translates a synonymous phrase as ‘pass your time of sojourn in fear’.
JND, F. W. Grant (Numerical Bible), RV.
NASB ‘77, NASB ‘95. The Legacy Standard Bible says ‘those who reside as exiles’.
‘Heaven would not be that to us which it will be, were we not prepared by the chequered scenes of life for its enjoyments … God is thus, by present bitters, preparing us for future sweets; he is now qualifying us, by endowing us with a relish that shall give a zest to those pleasures which are at his right hand forevermore’. Andrew Fuller, Works, Vol. 1. Sprinkle, 1988, pg. 391.
‘The mind which is inspired by the glorious expectation is grandly secure against the encroachment of the evil one. Hope-inspired thought is its own defence. It energises the will. The great hope feeds the will, vivifies it, makes it steadfast and unmovable. Into all this powerful hope are we begotten again by the abundant mercy of God’. J. H. Jowett, The Epistles of Peter, A. C. Armstrong, 1906, pp. 5, 6. Italics original.
A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, Broadman, 1933, electronic ed.
‘It is beyond the reach of death. No grave is ever dug on this estate. It is an inheritance “undefiled”. It is beyond the taint of sin. No contamination ever stains its driven snow. The robes of the glorified are whiter than snow. It is an inheritance ‘that fadeth not away.’ It is beyond the blight of change. The leaf never turns. “Time does not breathe on its fadeless bloom”’. Jowett, pg. 7.
Verse 5 refers to the future aspect of salvation, what Romans chapter 8 verse 23 calls ‘the redemption of our body’, at Christ’s second coming. See Rom. 8. 18-39; 1 Cor. 15. 50-58.
Phil. 2. 5-11. J. N. Darby comments, ‘The great secret is to have entire confidence in the love of God, in the certainty that He is the doer of it -not looking at circumstances or at second causes, but seeing the hand of the Lord in it, that it is the trial of our faith, and that it is only on the way. When the day comes in which God has things His own way … these very trials will be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. It is a process that He is carrying on now; it may be even the putting into the furnace to bring out the preciousness of the faith’. Works, Vol. 16, Stow Hill, 1962, pp. 187, 188.
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