Introduction

You hold in your hands a book about a letter. To be more accurate, about two letters, 1 and 2 Peter. But let's take them one at a time. We are accustomed to saying there are twenty-seven books in the New Testament, and so 1 Peter is a book in that sense. But this is one of the books that has the form of a letter, written by someone to someone. About author and readers it tells us this: Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to a certain group of Christian believers.

Professor Kenneth Jones notes: "all but six of the books of the New Testament are in the form of letters, or epistles." The only difference is that an epistle is more formal or more instructional than a letter. Either letter or epistle may be used in referring to the books of the New Testament.

"These letters . differ from ordinary letters in that they were especially inspired of God for the good of the church, and their contents are far more important than that of any other letters. But they differ from theological books in that they are written with all the freedom of expression, which is normally found in correspondence. They are actually written in the form of ordinary letters of the first century, as is clearly shown by ancient Egyptian papyri.

"So the epistles of the New Testament are really letters and should he read as such. But they are letters written with the exalted purpose of furthering the work of the kingdom of God. This is why the church preserved them so carefully." [Let's Study the Bible, Warner Press, p. 99.] First Peter contains only 105 verses. You yourself might very well have written a letter this long to family or friends. So 1 Peter is certainly not impressive in terms of its length. What else, then? William Barclay says that of all the General Epistles, 1 Peter "is the best known and loved, and the most read. No one has ever been in any doubt about its attractiveness and its charm. To this day [it] is one of the easiest letters in the New Testament to read, for it has never lost its winsome appeal to the human heart." [The Letters of James and Peter, Westminster Press, p. 164.] Bible translator James Moffat writes of it: "The beautiful spirit of the pastoral shines through any translation of the Greek text. The keynote is steady encouragement to endurance in conduct, and innocence in character." [Quoted by Barclay, op. cit., p. 164.] Professor Goodspeed said: "First Peter is one of the most moving pieces of persecution literature." [Ibid., p. 164.]

Other commentators have equally good things to say about this letter. But the best way to come to a fuller appreciation of it is to read it through at one sitting in one of the many fine modern speech translations.

Several great and recurring themes shine through the text, like the great stars, which give form to a constellation. There is the theme of hope. There is repetition of the dynamic word living, used with several nouns. One evident reason for the writing of 1 Peter is the expectation of suffering, and even the present experience of suffering, for those to whom it is addressed. The writer wants to strengthen, teach, and comfort them. This book is offered to you in the hope that it will prove to be a valuable aid to your understanding of the letters of Peter and their continuing relevance to our times, and that, like this writer, you will be strengthened, taught, and comforted by them.

1
A Letter From Peter
1 Peter 1:1,2

Imagine Yourself Hearing Peter for the First Time

You are a Christian living in Bithynia. You often relive with a thrill that moment when the evangelist told you in great excitement about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. How strange, and yet how reasonable it seemed that the Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, should have cared so much for you and your kind that he sent his only son, in some miraculous way, to become a man, and then to lay down his life in a way that somehow could put your heart right with God-bring you that deep inner peace you longed for.

You knew then and you remember now the indescribable sensation when the load of guilt on your conscience suddenly rolled away and you felt free enough to fly like a bird!

But that was many years ago. Some of your fellow Christians lost their jobs and their standing in the community because of the growing prejudice against Christians. You know some of the unjust charges that have been brought against them. And you have heard that in some places (Rome, for instance) Christians have been killed just for being Christians.

Bithynia itself, a region in northwest Asia Minor, lies along the fringes of the vast Roman Empire. Once a kingdom, it was bequeathed to Rome in 74 B.C. Its inland areas are covered with forests, and it has fertile agricultural lands along the Sangarius as it flows to the sea and on the plain near Mount Olympus. Christianity has found good ground to grow in here and has become relatively strong.

Living for Christ, however, has become difficult in Bithynia. Some of your fellow believers have given up their faith. But others in your community, thank God, have been so impressed by the inner strength and courage of those who have suffered for Christ that they have accepted the faith in spite of the dangers, and your assemblies are vital and growing. Now and then one of the men who knew Jesus in the flesh has visited your assembly. You will not forget the glowing power at work in them as they shared their stories of the things Jesus said and did.

You are very much aware of the disciple called Peter. What an unusual person he must be! According to the stories you have heard about him, he would surely liven up any group!

While you are thinking how very much you would like to know him, a knock at your door brings you suddenly back to the present. You feel half afraid to open it, remembering the caution that has descended upon you group recently. But then the knock comes again and you realize it is in the rhythmic code agreed upon by your Christian brothers and sisters. So you open the door and welcome Brother Justus, closing the door quickly behind him.

You can see at once that Justus is very excited. As soon as you have greeted each other he says, "My brother, be sure to meet with us at Jason's house tomorrow at sundown. We have a letter from Peter!"

"From Peter? Simon Peter, the Lord's disciple?" "Indeed we do! It is being carried by one of the brothers and read to all the churches throughout this territory. I understand that even we here in Bithynia are named in the greeting!"

"Thank you so much for coming! I'll be there-you can count of that!" "Good! We are all very excited! I must hurry on to tell the others. Just be sure your excitement doesn't make you forget your caution tomorrow." "Of course! But I can hardly wait! A letter from Peter!"

"God be with you, my friend!"

"And with you. Until tomorrow, then, good-bye!"

Peter, the Man and the Name...

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ identifies the writer of this letter in a simple but significant way.

Peter was not the name given him at his birth. His father John (Jonas) had called him Simon (or Simeon, in Hebrew).

As Simon he had become acquainted with himself and as Simon his family and friends had known him. As Simon he had gone to thy synagogue for worship and instruction, like other Jewish boys did. As Simon he grew into manhood and entered the fishing business at Bethsaida on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, in partnership with his brother Andrew and his friends James and John, the sons of Zebedee. As Simon he had married a wife and established a home, which included his mother-in-law and possibly Andrew as well. But Simon, the successful Galilean fisherman, needed a change of heart (as we all do). It could have happened something like this.

The news of the great excitement caused by the preaching of John the Baptist at the Jordan river, far to the South, near the Dead Sea, reached all the way up to Galilee. Groups of Galileans, moved by curiosity and hungry hearts, were going to hear John.

Simon was a man who didn't like to be left out of anything new and exiting. He was not longer content to go on fishing night after night. We can imagine that one morning as they were mending their nets he said to Andrew, "My brother, let's take a few days off and go to the Jordan to see what's going on." It suited Andrew just fine, and so they made the necessary arrangements and went. James and John went too.

A carpenter in the little village of Nazareth of Galilee was also moved to make the journey to hear John. His name was Jesus.

Enormous crowds gathered at the Jordan to hear John. It was later to be recorded (Mark 1:5) that "There went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."

The two sets of brothers, Simon and Andrew, James and John, were so taken with the preaching of John that they stayed around long enough to be considered his disciples (John 1:35). On a day when Jesus was also present, John the Baptist pointed him out in marveling words: "Behold, the Lamb of God!"

The two disciples to whom Jesus was pointed out as the Lamb of God spent some hours with him that same day and came away convinced that he was the Messiah. Andrew found Simon, brought him to Jesus, setting up that life-changing and world-changing interview in which Jesus said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas [which means Rock]" (John 1:42).

The change in the man was forecast by a change of his name. All the Gospels agree that Jesus gave Simon the name or Rock (Cephas in Aramaic, Petros in Greek), although the circumstances in which the name is given are not identical.

This new name is the name by which the Christian community knew Peter at the time he wrote this letter. In transitional stages, he was first Simon, son of John, then Simon Peter, but now just Peter, an apostle.

There is no evidence that Peter (Petros) was ever used as a proper name prior to this time. It is a testimony to his influence that so many baby boys since then have been given the name of Peter. (Think how many you know!)

It wouldn't have mattered what name might have been given to Simon if he had not in fact proven to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. To be called "rock" would not have meant any more than to have been called "tall tree" or "catcher of fish." But an apostle he was!

"Apostle" means "one sent on a mission." "Missionary" comes from the Latin counterpart of the Greek "apostolos."

Peter was born Simon, son of John, and only because he was changed by the power of God in Christ are we studying about him today. Because others have tried to make too much of the "rock" statement (Matt. 16:18) in accounting for the founding of the church, others may not have given Peter his due. Ask yourself, for example, what happens if your remove Peter from the first twelve chapters of the Book of Acts.

The Recipients of the Letter...

Exiles of the dispersion can be taken to mean Jewish people living away from (dispersed from) the Holy Land. Or, as is more likely, it can be taken to mean the Christian community of both Jews and Gentiles whose true home is heaven, and for whom this transient life is an "exile."

The five provinces in the address are all in northern Asia Minor. The bearer of this letter might enter Pontus at the seaport city of Sinope and, by moving in a broad clockwise circle, visit the churches addressed. Verse two gives the key words describing their position among the "saved."

May grace and peace be multiplied to you ("be yours in the fullest measure," NEB) expresses a positive and beautiful and loving attitude. How important is attitude! Suffering for Christ may be your lot, but inner grace and peace can sustain you.

In the Nazi prison camps, with hopeless prisoners dying around him, Victor Frankl, who survived, gives much credit to a remembered phrase of Nietzsche, that one who has a "why" to live can put up with almost any "how." When everything was taken away from him, and everything about his life was in the control of his captor, he found that he still had one freedom-he could still choose what attitude to take toward his captors!

What attitude to take! That's it! That's "where the rubber meets the road." It's not the gale but the set of the sail that determines which way the ship will go.

2
A Living Hope Through Christ...
1 Peter 1:3-12

Various problems with living in this current year of our Lord in North America go back to a shortage of hope. Many people find their lives lacking in meaning. They don't see much point in going to school. Their jobs seem boring. They have the blahs. Life, for them, is just a rat race. Such feeling of meaninglessness comes, at least in part, from not having much expectation for good to come out of where they are headed. They are not sure where they are going, but they are on their way. This is meaninglessness that comes from having little hope about life.

For others life takes on a dull gray hue out of pessimism. Things are bad now, for them, and they are likely to get worse. There are no rainbows in the sky, no gold around the edges of the clouds. They lack hope.

Peter said to Christians in his day and ours that there is reason to have hope. That reason is found in Christ, his life and message, his resurrection and victory over the powers of darkness. Because of what Jesus did, we can know that something good is going to happen, indeed is already happening. He provides that hope, and the Holy Spirit sustains it in our lives. It's a great day!

The Living Hope in the Christian's Inheritance...
(1:3-5)

Marvel at the compelling power of these verses! William Barclay devotes more than six pages of commentary to them, observing: "there are few passages in the New Testament where more of the great fundamental Christian ideas and conceptions meet and come together." [Barclay, op. cit., p. 201.]

Blessed does not here translate the same word as that which opens each of the beatitudes, where it speaks of a condition of man. It is the word from which we get "eulogy" and "eulogize." It means "to praise, to celebrate with praise."

Jewish prayers, like the Eighteen Benedictions, which were recited three times daily in the synagogue, characteristically began with "Blessed art Thou, O God." The Second Benediction begins, "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, that quickenest the dead."

How different is Peter's outburst of praise here! All of his praise-filled attention is focused on the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is not rehearsing a formal tradition.

Rejoicing inwardly, he plunges forward to explain that by his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope. The merciful God tenderly watched over his people in the times related in the Old Testament, but now his mercy is most fully realized in lives that have been changed, born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter knows this by personal experience. Perhaps here he recalls those dark days when Jesus was in the tomb. He must have felt like Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:41). But seeing the empty tomb on Resurrection morning swept away his gloom and replaced it with a living hope, a hope that was to vibrate in his innermost being through the rest of his life.

Hope is a condition of expectation, and it is a good condition. But without fruition of the thing hoped for, it would have been in vain. Peter not only knows the present reality of a pulsating spiritual fellowship with his Lord; he confidently looks forward to an inheritance, which is eternal salvation. This word inheritance deserves special study. It is the word regularly used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament for the inheritance of the promised land of Canaan. It represented more than just a place-it represented a secure and settled condition for the Hebrew people after the long years of struggle which with the help of God, had brought them into the land of promise. But as used here of the Christian inheritance it means vastly more.

First, it is imperishable. It is not like perishable goods. It keeps! But there is a further meaning-it cannot be ravaged by an invading army such as seemed always to be plaguing Israel. Not even the archenemy of the Christians can get at them in their final inheritance!

Second, it is undefiled. It is absolutely pure. No impurity or pollution can be mixed in with the Christians' inheritance-no false worship of false gods, no impious practices such as had defiled the Hebrew nation time and again, finally leading to their being taken captive and losing the land of their promised inheritance.

Third, it is unfading. Earth has nothing that does not change. Flowers fade. Youth fades. Rust corrupts. Material substances disintegrate. In the hymn "Abide with Me," we sing truly with Henry Lyte: "Change and decay in all around I see; O thou who changest not, abide with me." But the Christian's heritage will never be less than when God gives it to him. All that God has for him is his forever, with no chance of loss or decay!

Since these claims cannot be made of anything on earth, the next line follows naturally. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you who by God's power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Christian brother, sister, how do you feel to know that almighty God is guarding you so that as you continue in the faith you will be sure to attain this great inheritance of salvation! Think about it and rejoice in it as it becomes more and more real to you!

This Living Hope Sustains One in Time of Trial...
(vv. 6-9)

In this you rejoice, and rightly so! But now, in the midst of these wonderful thoughts about heaven, Peter touches down on the practical runways of earth. For a little while you may have to suffer various trials.

Here we come to the apostle's first reference to the present or impending persecution, which is probably one of the chief reasons for the writing of this letter. (He deals with this suffering again in 3:13-17; 4:12-19; and 5:9.) Suffering is never pleasant. Why there should be suffering at all in a world created and ruled over by a good God is a problem over which some have given up their faith. The problem is difficult enough at the level of thought, but when one is personally laid low by protracted pain, or sees a loved one destroyed by disease, the difficulty is intensified manifold. But Peter does not address himself to the general problem of evil in the world. The kind of suffering his readers face is not natural. It is instead brought on them because of their faith in Christ. But whether suffering is part of what it means to live on this earth, or whether it is inflicted by a misunderstanding world, it becomes the occasion for testing the genuineness of your faith. How can one say anything is strong if it has never been put to the test?

The testing also purifies, like fire purifies gold. In "A Song of Joy" do we not sing joyously "How blest the soul that's purged as pure as gold without alloy!" A faith that has been tested by fire is in a special position to redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Without having seen him you love him means that these provincials of northern Asia Minor were, as we are, acquainted with Jesus through an inner experience arrived at by faith in the testimony of another. In their case, it is possible that this "another" was Peter himself, who knew Jesus "in the flesh." We have no real evidence that this was so. We have only said it is possible. But the inner experience is self-vindicating. In his response to Thomas, who was able to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead only when confronted with the physical evidence, Jesus said, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" (John 20:29).

For Peter's readers, as for us, unutterable and exalted joy is the supporting evidence. Faith is the evidence. And as the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls. And so do we.

Hope Comes Alive Where God and Man Meet...

The prophets . searched and inquired. And it was revealed to them. These lines should be looked at together, because they say two important things. First in importance is that God reveals. God initiates. God created, and then from time to time revealed to men His purposes in creating.

But the second thing to notice is that this revelation did not come just willy-nilly to everybody. It came to prophets who searched and inquired. Peter speaks here of cooperation between God and God's men. Are men helpless pawns whom God makes to prophesy or otherwise do His will whether they will it or not? Not usually. God created men in order that they might know him. The man who might have spoken or written God's message without any consciousness of what he was saying, without any exercise of his own will in the matter, might not know God any more than the tree through which the wind blows knows the wind. This is not to say that God did not use anyone in history in ways beyond that man's understanding-Cyrus of Persia, for example. But these prophets of whom Peter spoke searched and inquired. That is, they applied themselves, made themselves available, became personally involved in their message, sought to understand it better.

There is God's part in revealing. There is man's part in consciously inquiring. There appears a divine and a human element in conveying the word of God. This was Peter's understanding of it.

They were serving not themselves but you. You are the recipients of the salvation, which is the subject of verses five and nine. The prophets of old could only point to it. Angels long to look into it. But it is you who have received it, now and in eternity!

One more note appears in this section regarding God's method. This living hope you have is sustained by the things, which have now been announced to you by those who preached the good news to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

The prophets of old prophesied. God sent His Son. Jesus lived, taught, and gave his life. God raised him from the dead. The Holy Spirit came, empowering men to witness. These men have preached the good news to you through the Holy Spirit.

The process goes on. We are still preaching. God is still saving souls. The number of those being tested and prepared for praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ is still growing!