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A ‘Letter’ to the Pilgrims of the Dispersion
1 ¶ Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,
2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied. (NKJV)
Peter is writing to a group of ‘pilgrims’. Who are they? Who are they, from an earthly and historic perspective? And who are they from God’s viewpoint?
Let’s explore answers to these questions.
They are called ‘pilgrims of the Dispersion’. In the primary and literal sense, this refers to the Jews who came from captivity many years earlier and settled in areas other than Israel proper. We often refer to them as the ‘lost ten tribes’ of Israel.
That is the original meaning of the term, ‘Pilgrims of the Dispersion’. But Peter’s use of this familiar term held a very different meaning. The ones that he is writing to, many of them, would have been physical or ethnical Jews … but that is not why these particular Jews are living where they are. They were ‘dispersed’, not because of any historic captivity and release. They are Christians who were scattered …Christians who ran for their lives from Jerusalem, when persecution against Christians suddenly started after Stephen was murdered (martyred) by the Jewish mob.
So for Peter to call them ‘The Dispersion’ is unique. It would cause them first to think … “No, we are not from the 10 dispersed tribes, so why is he calling us that?”. And then, “ … Oh, I see what he means, he is calling us that because, as Christians, we ran from persecution and so we are dispersed … and we are Israel in a second sense … We are Spiritual Israel.”
Peter writes two letters to this group of scattered believers. But this is not the first letter ever to have been written to this group of people. The first letter they received was written by James. Actually, the letter that James wrote was one of the very first New Testament books to have been written. He prefaced his book with , 1 ¶ James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad: Greetings.
Just like Peter, James was not writing to Jews … but to spiritual Jews.
So the scattered Christians had first received a letter from James, and then two letters from Peter to guide them in their lives as Christians in a very gentile world. These same Christians would be connected to the churches that Paul planted as he travelled. Paul’s personal ministry to them would have served to strengthen them even further, and then Paul’s letters would arrive and be copied and recopied and circulated from one church to another.
But the letters of Peter would have arrived at a time when these Christians were at a very early stage of their Christian development.
This does not mean that what we read will be too ‘simple’ or too elementary for us today. Christians today are at every stage of development. So there will be something here for all of us.
Peter realises that some of his readers are not that ‘new’ in the faith, and so he covers a lot … from the elementary to the advanced.
In the very next verse, even though Peter is simply starting his letter, he touches on some very complicated things. He calls these people,
2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ:
If this phrase, elect according to the foreknowledge of God, is taken as a ‘stand-alone’ verse, we might make some assumptions, like …
God chose us to salvation, we did not choose Him. But if that is true, why did He only choose some of us? Why not choose everybody? Why, before the creation of the earth would He choose to send most people to Hell? Would it not be His fault for not having chosen (or elected) them?
Did God, according to His foreknowledge, chose some people to be saved … and did not choose the rest?
And judging from general averages, if this were true, it appears God only chose less than 10% of humans to be saved. And what about the millions of babies that died due to abortion … are only about 10% of them chosen … or elected to salvation? And if for some reason we would say, No, God would not send ANY aborted babies to hell’, … would that mean that God ‘pre-elected’ 100% of aborted babies to go to heaven?
All of these things can be questioned if we take Peter’s opening statement as a stand-alone remark. But thankfully Peter has more to say about it. We will go into this a bit more when we get to chapter 2 verse 9.
We will leave the topic of ‘election’ for a later time and move on to Peter’s next phrase.
2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.
The word ‘sanctified’ does not mean ‘purified’ or cleansed or anything like that. It only means ‘set apart for a specific reason’.
So Peter has just said, you are God’s elect … his special people, and it is the Holy Spirit that has taken you from where you were and set you into a different place and purpose.
And what is that purpose that he has appointed each one of us to? Obedience, for one.
We are living in difficult times, just as were these scattered Christians. Obedience to God is always important … but it is even more crucial during dangerous and hard times. We have been ‘set apart’ to be a people who listen to the voice of God and say yes to His requests on our lives.
The next phrase is, … and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ:
This expression would mean more to the former Jews than it would to the gentile Christians to whom Peter is writing. To the former Jews, their thoughts would be directed back to the Jewish practices of taking the blood of a sacrifice and sprinkling it on various objects within the temple (or, going back further, the Tabernacle), thereby declaring these objects as holy and for use only in Holy ceremonies etc. So … that is us. We are set apart by the blood of Jesus, to be used and to serve Him.
We are part of a new spiritual temple worship. Paul asked the Corinthians a question … Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? I Corinthians 3:16 (KJV)
And this question, taken from the King James version for a reason, speaks to our new temple worship.
Notice the word ‘ye’ in the above verse. Most modern translations would say ‘you’. And they are not actually wrong, however, to translate it as ‘you’ misses something. ‘Ye’ is old English for a plural ‘you’. It is more like the American ‘you all’ (or y’all).
In other words, you, as an individual, are not a temple of God. The ‘ye’ refers to the body of believers, the church, is the temple of God. The ‘sanctifying’ operation on each of us, is to assign us to the realization that we are to serve Him obediently together, in unity.
Continuing in verse two: Grace to you and peace be multiplied. This greeting seems to be somewhat ‘standard’ in our way of thinking. But remember, writing letters to churches at that time was kind of a new thing. This ‘expression’ would not yet be common in scripture, because at this time not much new testament scripture had even been written.
All that to say, I don’t think this expression is ‘glib’. It is thoughtful and meaningful.
Grace (favor) be multiplied. Peace be multiplied. Both of these are very wonderful things for Peter to wish upon his readers.
Peter now turns his attention from the ‘recipients’ of his letter, to God Himself.
He is saying … God has blessed us with some very wonderful things … and we bless His name for it.
3 ¶ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
And what are these wonderful things for which we praise Him? Through the fact that He raised Jesus from the dead … we have a living hope.
The word ‘hope’ is not a word that expresses any doubt. Used in this way, it is a word that means that we have something given us by God that is being held in store for just the right time.
This thing held in store is 4 an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
So, in case you have a question in your heart that goes something like this, ‘So, I have an inheritance in heaven, set aside just for me … to be given to me when I get there … but will I get there?!!, in case that question is in your heart, Peter adds this:
It is for you, 5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
There it is … you are kept, not by your own strength and will power, but you are ‘kept’ by God’s power. Amen!
6 ¶ In this you greatly rejoice, I should say so. This is what being a Christian is all about. We are kept by God until that day that we join Him and He gives us our eternal inheritance that will never fade away.
Notice Peter’s choice of words; imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is hard to tell how much of this wording is Peter’s and how much is directly from the Holy Spirit. It is all inspired by God and without error, but somehow God allowed for the writers to say things in their own words.
Regarding our promised inheritance … Peter says what he says, by faith. He has not been there and come back to tell us just how wonderful it is. On the other hand, the apostle Paul says that he was actually there and came back to tell about it. Only he was told that he was not allowed to say anything more than; It is better than you could ever imagine!” So we rejoice as we think about it.
But, says Peter, our rejoicing is somewhat clouded by present suffering. He says, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
What kind of trials? Persecution. These people have been uprooted from their normal lives. Here is what we know about the situation: “Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.”
Acts 8:4 (NKJV)
God allowed persecution to scatter the believers. The end result was, the gospel is now reaching new areas, other than just home town Jerusalem.
We too, may be facing times in the near future, that would behoove us to not live in the center of persecuting sources.
In Peter’s day the believers’ motive to ‘flee’ might have been to save their own skins, so to speak … but they never for a moment lost sight of their mission to present Jesus as Saviour, and man’s need for salvation.
On social media I have ‘subscribed’ to a group calling themselves ‘post-trib preppers’. I don’t agree with them particularly, but I wanted to see what they are all about.
They advocate preparing for the great tribulation which they believe is about to come upon us. Their view of ‘preparation’, although they include spiritual preparation, is largely singling out a place to which to flee or hide, setting aside items for sustaining life, and making provision to protect their belongings.
These ‘scattered’ believers that Peter is writing to, have had to go through all of the emotionally charged options of leaving their present church oriented lives.
So many questions would come to their minds. Like, should I run? Where will I go? How will I survive? What should I take with me? How can I just ‘ditch’ my church that I am so much a part of? How can I ‘cover my tracks’? Should I convince others to run with me? Family? Church family?
But at the point that we are reading Peter’s letter to them … they are out there, having to some degree, resettled in their new locations.
Although we are going through difficult times with the Covid pandemic, we are aware of many other changes in our world and surroundings that point quite clearly to the possibility that the return of Jesus may be much closer than we think. Jesus told us to keep our eyes open and watch for the signs He gave us so that we will not be caught off guard. The writer of Hebrews had this in mind when he told us that we will be able to see the day approaching.
Do we see the day approaching? If the day is as close as we think it is, … can we identify areas that might easily be recognized as potentially volatile where Christianity is concerned? Will we at some point be faced with the same questions that the believer’s of Peter’s day needed to answer?
At any rate, the readers of Peter’s letter were living in times of persecution. Peter’s words are to show them how to live in hard times.
Why does God allow His children to endure suffering? Peter speaks to this in the very next verse: He says, God allows it … 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I wonder how many of us Christians hope to just make it into heaven . Receiving praise, glory and honor would be a bonus. We should not be satisfied with just barely making it. God is not satisfied with that. He longs to give you praise and glory and honor some day. God allows us to be tested now, during this temporary life, so that He can give to us eternal rewards.
Does this perspective seem new or strange to you? This may be something that has to ‘sink in’. This is why we spend time in God’s word. The Apostle Paul tells us to … Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Col 3:16 (ESV)
The more faithfully we spend time in God's word, the better we get to know Him. Peter says that we will reach the point that, 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,
Do you want to be experiencing that incredible joy … even in the midst of difficult times? There is only one way … get closer to Him, get to know Him better, spend more time in His word and prayer.
So Peter has been saying that, even though we have not seen Him in person, it is possible to reach the place where we will be incredibly joyful.
And I like how the Philips translation renders the next verse: 9 and all the time you are receiving the result of your faith in him — the salvation of your own souls.
Peter has just reversed our thinking. Too often we dwell on (merely?) making it to heaven. Peter talks about the overflowing Joy we should be living with all the time … and then, O yes, and we get to go to heaven to boot!
But Peter is not trying to minimize salvation. He spends some time taking a much closer look at it. And what Peter is about to point out is the advantage that we happen to have living in this present church age. He says, 10 ¶ Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,
11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
Peter is comparing certain advantages that are ours that did not exist in Old Testament times. But let me be very clear about something … we are not talking about two different ways to salvation. More specifically, we are not saying that in the Old Testament days, people were saved by keeping the law, but today we are saved by grace.
So then what IS meant by the phrase the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours? At first glance it sounds like the prophets of old looked ahead in time and saw something new … that we would be saved by grace. But that is not the case. They too were saved by faith through the grace of God.
The key to understanding this is for us to gain a better understanding of the word ‘grace’. You may have heard that it means ‘unmerited favor’, and you may assume that it always applies to salvation. It doesn't. The word ‘grace’ consistently throughout scripture very simply means ‘favor’.
Underserved is a fitting word when it comes to any favor that God shows toward us, but the meaning ‘undeserved’ is not inherent in the definition of grace.
For example, when scripture said, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord … there is nothing hinting toward that Noah was undeserving. In fact, just the opposite. No one else was deserving of the favor of God EXCEPT Noah.
And here is a New Testament example, an angel showed up and spoke to the virgin Mary and greeted her with these words, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”
In this verse the word, favored is actually the same original Greek word as is usually translated, grace. Let’s use the wrong definition here of grace and see how it sounds. “Rejoice, you who are so highly undeserving of favor, ... Clearly she is favored of God, highly favored of God and this favor is obviously deserving. She was a Godly young woman.
There are other examples that I could give but this will suffice. Grace=favor. And grace is not always about salvation. It is simply about some particular kind of favor.
So what the prophets looked ahead and saw, is that we in this age would be enjoying a different kind of favor than what they themselves had.
So allow me to give an example that we might be able to identify with.
Picture this. You are a young man employed by your father. Your father owns a newspaper. He prints news items that he feels are essential for the public. He has hired you to deliver the news.
He has given to you a printed list of addresses of those to whom he wants his news delivered. You take the newspapers and the address list and go to work. You find that, very often, you actually have to consult a road map in order to locate a certain address. To make matters worse, next time you go out, you find the list has changed a bit, and you cannot do it without a map.
One day your father tells you that he is working on a device that you will be able to hold in your hand, type in an address … and wonder of wonders … point you street by street right to the correct address.
Your first impulse is to rejoice. What a favor this will be! But when he sees you rejoicing, he quietly says to you, but I won't have this ready for you … it will be for your youngest brother who will be able to use it when he gets to be your age. Sorry, but it won't be for you..
That is a little bit how the prophets of old must have felt. God said He was going to do a new thing. The prophets, Peter says, searched and enquired carefully. They wanted to know when. When would the Messiah come and complete the salvation plan of God. And they wanted to know what. What would be the subsequent glories. In other words, what other blessings and benefits would accompany salvation that will be given to believers at that time.
Looking back we can make the comparison. Accompanying the payment for sin, the forgiveness of our sin, the regeneration of our spirits making us new creations, we also have the indwelling Spirit of God. He directs us like a built in gps, bringing to our remembrance God’s word at just the right times. What a blessing. What a great favor God has given us.
The prophets of old came to realize that when they passed on to us messages regarding the coming Savior who would suffer and die for us … they were, in fact, predicting something, some of the benefits of which would not be for them, but for us. They were serving us.
But with all that we now know and have regarding salvation comes a very sobering reality … and that is, we have a greater responsibility. And this is just a simple truth, ‘to whom much is given, much is required’.
So Peter says, 13 ¶ Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
How should we live, act and think in difficult times like these? In light of our being given the wonderful salvation which includes God living in us, to guide and direct … how can we best make use of this gift in our day to day lives?
And Peter makes mention of one more gift or favor. He calls it, the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We look forward to another gift of grace. Again, grace mentioned here is not salvation. Salvation is something we have now. We ARE born again.
The gift of grace, the favor of God that we will receive at that time is the unspeakable joy of resurrection life in a new body, a new place, a totally new life!
Peter advises us to place our hope FULLY on this coming favor of God. Think about it. Talk about it. Include it in your conversations with God.
Remember what Peter is doing here? He is telling believers how to live and cope during difficult times. So what he is saying is foundational. This is our essential starting point. Every other aspect of our lives will be affected by this foundational attitude: Minds that are dwelling on what we have; we have God in us, directing us. Supporting us. Consoling us in times of loss. We have an expectation of even greater things. This will change our outlook on all of the pain this life might throw at us.
Peter does not openly say that he is now going to talk about the fact that we believers have two natures, but he obviously has it in mind. Because if we dwell on the heavenly grace that is to be realized in our lives one day soon … as powerful as that is, we still have our old ugly sin-prone nature to deal with. And so he says,
14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
We all have the old original nature that is filled with all of the normal passions. Whether these passions are all sinful is not really the point. Even if they are only natural passions, such as eating well, driving the best car, making the most money … just like the world does, is not the point. “Just like the world …” is the problem.
How should we live in difficult times? We must live in such a way that our priorities are clearly seen by others. Peter talks later on about being ready to answer people who ask us about our faith. The thing is, they won’t be asking us about our faith if our priorities are the same as theirs. Peter says that we need to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Actually it was Jesus who said that. Peter says we must be holy.
15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
Peter reminds us that the One to whom we pray, is not only our Father … but He is a judge. He is our impartial judge. this means that we cannot hope that we are one of His favorites … and perhaps He may go easier on us than He might on others. No, says Peter, He is impartial.
17 If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear: (WEB Version)
Reverent fear is an interesting thought. I am sure we could all have our own idea what this might mean. But rather than compare ourselves with others, just stop and think how you might adjust your conversation if you were to walk into your living room, and to your surprise discover that Jesus has let Himself in and is sitting there on your sofa. What has He just heard you talking about? Do we need to adjust our thought life to include a consciousness of His presence?
And lest we should bristle at the thought of His having an affect on our thought lives and begin to think He has no right … Peter reminds us that He bought us.
18 For you must realise that you have been ransomed from the futile way of living passed on to you by your traditions, but not by any money payment of this passing world. 19 No, the price was in fact the life-blood of Christ, the unblemished and unstained lamb of sacrifice. (Philips)
We have been bought. The price was Jesus’ blood. And He bought us from something … out of something. And that something is this natural sin-cursed world and is habits and attractions. Our homeland has been changed from here to Heaven. We are no longer citizens here.
As Peter said in verse 17, this makes us foreigners.
With regard to the sacrifice of Jesus for us, Peter tells us that this was something planned from the beginning.
20 who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of times for your sake,
For something to be foreknown renders the outcome of that thing to be unchangeable. In other words, there is no way that the plan of God to send His Son into the world to ransom us could ever have failed. Foreknown means that God could see ahead … past the creation that He was planning, and could see that man would abuse his privilege of ‘freedom of choice’ and would sin.
Therefore He put into place the only possible salvation plan that could honestly, justly and legally be put into place.
Peter mentions that this plan came into being and was revealed to ‘us’ at the end of times. By this he is recognising that there have been eras and times in the past, each one different from the other. There was a time from Adam to the flood, in which there seems to have been no organised forms prescribed for worship. It would appear that worship form and style was left up to each individual family.
This actually continued until God formed the nation of Israel and put a lot of things in writing. The Jewish nation served as the spiritual and physical people of God until Jesus came and formed His church. And this, says Peter, is called ‘the end of times’. There will be no more eras or dispensations. We are in the final one until Jesus returns.
Peter has been saying that Jesus our Saviour was revealed in this last era and we … 21 through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.
We are believers … and by believing that the shed blood of Jesus has washed us clean, we find ourselves in the position that all our hope is in God. In ourselves we are hopeless. In God we have hope.
How should this affect us, our thoughts, our attitudes?
Peter tells us how, 22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
Simply put … you are saved, washed, made pure, born again .. but you are not alone. You are part of a huge family of people that have believed the same things that you have. The world needs to see this family. Therefore love one another fervently, let everyone see!
You literally have been 23 … born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
You and I owe our spiritual lives to the Word of God. That is one name for Jesus. But he has also given us His written word, and through hearing it, placing faith in it (the gospel message) you were born again. What a wonderful word it is! Everything in this world fades away, says Peter, except the word of God.
Here is how he put it, 24 ¶ because “All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away,
25 But the word of the LORD endures forever.”
In these very uncertain times it is so wonderful to base our faith and our way of life on an immovable foundation. And says Peter, Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
Based on the unchanging word of God, Peter is going to tell us how to live in these difficult days. His instructions will be clear.
Because of all that we have looked at in this chapter, Peter will begin the next one with, “Therefore, …”
2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied. (NKJV)
Peter is writing to a group of ‘pilgrims’. Who are they? Who are they, from an earthly and historic perspective? And who are they from God’s viewpoint?
Let’s explore answers to these questions.
They are called ‘pilgrims of the Dispersion’. In the primary and literal sense, this refers to the Jews who came from captivity many years earlier and settled in areas other than Israel proper. We often refer to them as the ‘lost ten tribes’ of Israel.
That is the original meaning of the term, ‘Pilgrims of the Dispersion’. But Peter’s use of this familiar term held a very different meaning. The ones that he is writing to, many of them, would have been physical or ethnical Jews … but that is not why these particular Jews are living where they are. They were ‘dispersed’, not because of any historic captivity and release. They are Christians who were scattered …Christians who ran for their lives from Jerusalem, when persecution against Christians suddenly started after Stephen was murdered (martyred) by the Jewish mob.
So for Peter to call them ‘The Dispersion’ is unique. It would cause them first to think … “No, we are not from the 10 dispersed tribes, so why is he calling us that?”. And then, “ … Oh, I see what he means, he is calling us that because, as Christians, we ran from persecution and so we are dispersed … and we are Israel in a second sense … We are Spiritual Israel.”
Peter writes two letters to this group of scattered believers. But this is not the first letter ever to have been written to this group of people. The first letter they received was written by James. Actually, the letter that James wrote was one of the very first New Testament books to have been written. He prefaced his book with , 1 ¶ James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad: Greetings.
Just like Peter, James was not writing to Jews … but to spiritual Jews.
So the scattered Christians had first received a letter from James, and then two letters from Peter to guide them in their lives as Christians in a very gentile world. These same Christians would be connected to the churches that Paul planted as he travelled. Paul’s personal ministry to them would have served to strengthen them even further, and then Paul’s letters would arrive and be copied and recopied and circulated from one church to another.
But the letters of Peter would have arrived at a time when these Christians were at a very early stage of their Christian development.
This does not mean that what we read will be too ‘simple’ or too elementary for us today. Christians today are at every stage of development. So there will be something here for all of us.
Peter realises that some of his readers are not that ‘new’ in the faith, and so he covers a lot … from the elementary to the advanced.
In the very next verse, even though Peter is simply starting his letter, he touches on some very complicated things. He calls these people,
2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ:
If this phrase, elect according to the foreknowledge of God, is taken as a ‘stand-alone’ verse, we might make some assumptions, like …
God chose us to salvation, we did not choose Him. But if that is true, why did He only choose some of us? Why not choose everybody? Why, before the creation of the earth would He choose to send most people to Hell? Would it not be His fault for not having chosen (or elected) them?
Did God, according to His foreknowledge, chose some people to be saved … and did not choose the rest?
And judging from general averages, if this were true, it appears God only chose less than 10% of humans to be saved. And what about the millions of babies that died due to abortion … are only about 10% of them chosen … or elected to salvation? And if for some reason we would say, No, God would not send ANY aborted babies to hell’, … would that mean that God ‘pre-elected’ 100% of aborted babies to go to heaven?
All of these things can be questioned if we take Peter’s opening statement as a stand-alone remark. But thankfully Peter has more to say about it. We will go into this a bit more when we get to chapter 2 verse 9.
We will leave the topic of ‘election’ for a later time and move on to Peter’s next phrase.
2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.
The word ‘sanctified’ does not mean ‘purified’ or cleansed or anything like that. It only means ‘set apart for a specific reason’.
So Peter has just said, you are God’s elect … his special people, and it is the Holy Spirit that has taken you from where you were and set you into a different place and purpose.
And what is that purpose that he has appointed each one of us to? Obedience, for one.
We are living in difficult times, just as were these scattered Christians. Obedience to God is always important … but it is even more crucial during dangerous and hard times. We have been ‘set apart’ to be a people who listen to the voice of God and say yes to His requests on our lives.
The next phrase is, … and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ:
This expression would mean more to the former Jews than it would to the gentile Christians to whom Peter is writing. To the former Jews, their thoughts would be directed back to the Jewish practices of taking the blood of a sacrifice and sprinkling it on various objects within the temple (or, going back further, the Tabernacle), thereby declaring these objects as holy and for use only in Holy ceremonies etc. So … that is us. We are set apart by the blood of Jesus, to be used and to serve Him.
We are part of a new spiritual temple worship. Paul asked the Corinthians a question … Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? I Corinthians 3:16 (KJV)
And this question, taken from the King James version for a reason, speaks to our new temple worship.
Notice the word ‘ye’ in the above verse. Most modern translations would say ‘you’. And they are not actually wrong, however, to translate it as ‘you’ misses something. ‘Ye’ is old English for a plural ‘you’. It is more like the American ‘you all’ (or y’all).
In other words, you, as an individual, are not a temple of God. The ‘ye’ refers to the body of believers, the church, is the temple of God. The ‘sanctifying’ operation on each of us, is to assign us to the realization that we are to serve Him obediently together, in unity.
Continuing in verse two: Grace to you and peace be multiplied. This greeting seems to be somewhat ‘standard’ in our way of thinking. But remember, writing letters to churches at that time was kind of a new thing. This ‘expression’ would not yet be common in scripture, because at this time not much new testament scripture had even been written.
All that to say, I don’t think this expression is ‘glib’. It is thoughtful and meaningful.
Grace (favor) be multiplied. Peace be multiplied. Both of these are very wonderful things for Peter to wish upon his readers.
Peter now turns his attention from the ‘recipients’ of his letter, to God Himself.
He is saying … God has blessed us with some very wonderful things … and we bless His name for it.
3 ¶ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
And what are these wonderful things for which we praise Him? Through the fact that He raised Jesus from the dead … we have a living hope.
The word ‘hope’ is not a word that expresses any doubt. Used in this way, it is a word that means that we have something given us by God that is being held in store for just the right time.
This thing held in store is 4 an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
So, in case you have a question in your heart that goes something like this, ‘So, I have an inheritance in heaven, set aside just for me … to be given to me when I get there … but will I get there?!!, in case that question is in your heart, Peter adds this:
It is for you, 5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
There it is … you are kept, not by your own strength and will power, but you are ‘kept’ by God’s power. Amen!
6 ¶ In this you greatly rejoice, I should say so. This is what being a Christian is all about. We are kept by God until that day that we join Him and He gives us our eternal inheritance that will never fade away.
Notice Peter’s choice of words; imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is hard to tell how much of this wording is Peter’s and how much is directly from the Holy Spirit. It is all inspired by God and without error, but somehow God allowed for the writers to say things in their own words.
Regarding our promised inheritance … Peter says what he says, by faith. He has not been there and come back to tell us just how wonderful it is. On the other hand, the apostle Paul says that he was actually there and came back to tell about it. Only he was told that he was not allowed to say anything more than; It is better than you could ever imagine!” So we rejoice as we think about it.
But, says Peter, our rejoicing is somewhat clouded by present suffering. He says, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
What kind of trials? Persecution. These people have been uprooted from their normal lives. Here is what we know about the situation: “Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word.”
Acts 8:4 (NKJV)
God allowed persecution to scatter the believers. The end result was, the gospel is now reaching new areas, other than just home town Jerusalem.
We too, may be facing times in the near future, that would behoove us to not live in the center of persecuting sources.
In Peter’s day the believers’ motive to ‘flee’ might have been to save their own skins, so to speak … but they never for a moment lost sight of their mission to present Jesus as Saviour, and man’s need for salvation.
On social media I have ‘subscribed’ to a group calling themselves ‘post-trib preppers’. I don’t agree with them particularly, but I wanted to see what they are all about.
They advocate preparing for the great tribulation which they believe is about to come upon us. Their view of ‘preparation’, although they include spiritual preparation, is largely singling out a place to which to flee or hide, setting aside items for sustaining life, and making provision to protect their belongings.
These ‘scattered’ believers that Peter is writing to, have had to go through all of the emotionally charged options of leaving their present church oriented lives.
So many questions would come to their minds. Like, should I run? Where will I go? How will I survive? What should I take with me? How can I just ‘ditch’ my church that I am so much a part of? How can I ‘cover my tracks’? Should I convince others to run with me? Family? Church family?
But at the point that we are reading Peter’s letter to them … they are out there, having to some degree, resettled in their new locations.
Although we are going through difficult times with the Covid pandemic, we are aware of many other changes in our world and surroundings that point quite clearly to the possibility that the return of Jesus may be much closer than we think. Jesus told us to keep our eyes open and watch for the signs He gave us so that we will not be caught off guard. The writer of Hebrews had this in mind when he told us that we will be able to see the day approaching.
Do we see the day approaching? If the day is as close as we think it is, … can we identify areas that might easily be recognized as potentially volatile where Christianity is concerned? Will we at some point be faced with the same questions that the believer’s of Peter’s day needed to answer?
At any rate, the readers of Peter’s letter were living in times of persecution. Peter’s words are to show them how to live in hard times.
Why does God allow His children to endure suffering? Peter speaks to this in the very next verse: He says, God allows it … 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
I wonder how many of us Christians hope to just make it into heaven . Receiving praise, glory and honor would be a bonus. We should not be satisfied with just barely making it. God is not satisfied with that. He longs to give you praise and glory and honor some day. God allows us to be tested now, during this temporary life, so that He can give to us eternal rewards.
Does this perspective seem new or strange to you? This may be something that has to ‘sink in’. This is why we spend time in God’s word. The Apostle Paul tells us to … Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Col 3:16 (ESV)
The more faithfully we spend time in God's word, the better we get to know Him. Peter says that we will reach the point that, 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,
Do you want to be experiencing that incredible joy … even in the midst of difficult times? There is only one way … get closer to Him, get to know Him better, spend more time in His word and prayer.
So Peter has been saying that, even though we have not seen Him in person, it is possible to reach the place where we will be incredibly joyful.
And I like how the Philips translation renders the next verse: 9 and all the time you are receiving the result of your faith in him — the salvation of your own souls.
Peter has just reversed our thinking. Too often we dwell on (merely?) making it to heaven. Peter talks about the overflowing Joy we should be living with all the time … and then, O yes, and we get to go to heaven to boot!
But Peter is not trying to minimize salvation. He spends some time taking a much closer look at it. And what Peter is about to point out is the advantage that we happen to have living in this present church age. He says, 10 ¶ Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,
11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
Peter is comparing certain advantages that are ours that did not exist in Old Testament times. But let me be very clear about something … we are not talking about two different ways to salvation. More specifically, we are not saying that in the Old Testament days, people were saved by keeping the law, but today we are saved by grace.
So then what IS meant by the phrase the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours? At first glance it sounds like the prophets of old looked ahead in time and saw something new … that we would be saved by grace. But that is not the case. They too were saved by faith through the grace of God.
The key to understanding this is for us to gain a better understanding of the word ‘grace’. You may have heard that it means ‘unmerited favor’, and you may assume that it always applies to salvation. It doesn't. The word ‘grace’ consistently throughout scripture very simply means ‘favor’.
Underserved is a fitting word when it comes to any favor that God shows toward us, but the meaning ‘undeserved’ is not inherent in the definition of grace.
For example, when scripture said, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord … there is nothing hinting toward that Noah was undeserving. In fact, just the opposite. No one else was deserving of the favor of God EXCEPT Noah.
And here is a New Testament example, an angel showed up and spoke to the virgin Mary and greeted her with these words, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”
In this verse the word, favored is actually the same original Greek word as is usually translated, grace. Let’s use the wrong definition here of grace and see how it sounds. “Rejoice, you who are so highly undeserving of favor, ... Clearly she is favored of God, highly favored of God and this favor is obviously deserving. She was a Godly young woman.
There are other examples that I could give but this will suffice. Grace=favor. And grace is not always about salvation. It is simply about some particular kind of favor.
So what the prophets looked ahead and saw, is that we in this age would be enjoying a different kind of favor than what they themselves had.
So allow me to give an example that we might be able to identify with.
Picture this. You are a young man employed by your father. Your father owns a newspaper. He prints news items that he feels are essential for the public. He has hired you to deliver the news.
He has given to you a printed list of addresses of those to whom he wants his news delivered. You take the newspapers and the address list and go to work. You find that, very often, you actually have to consult a road map in order to locate a certain address. To make matters worse, next time you go out, you find the list has changed a bit, and you cannot do it without a map.
One day your father tells you that he is working on a device that you will be able to hold in your hand, type in an address … and wonder of wonders … point you street by street right to the correct address.
Your first impulse is to rejoice. What a favor this will be! But when he sees you rejoicing, he quietly says to you, but I won't have this ready for you … it will be for your youngest brother who will be able to use it when he gets to be your age. Sorry, but it won't be for you..
That is a little bit how the prophets of old must have felt. God said He was going to do a new thing. The prophets, Peter says, searched and enquired carefully. They wanted to know when. When would the Messiah come and complete the salvation plan of God. And they wanted to know what. What would be the subsequent glories. In other words, what other blessings and benefits would accompany salvation that will be given to believers at that time.
Looking back we can make the comparison. Accompanying the payment for sin, the forgiveness of our sin, the regeneration of our spirits making us new creations, we also have the indwelling Spirit of God. He directs us like a built in gps, bringing to our remembrance God’s word at just the right times. What a blessing. What a great favor God has given us.
The prophets of old came to realize that when they passed on to us messages regarding the coming Savior who would suffer and die for us … they were, in fact, predicting something, some of the benefits of which would not be for them, but for us. They were serving us.
But with all that we now know and have regarding salvation comes a very sobering reality … and that is, we have a greater responsibility. And this is just a simple truth, ‘to whom much is given, much is required’.
So Peter says, 13 ¶ Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
How should we live, act and think in difficult times like these? In light of our being given the wonderful salvation which includes God living in us, to guide and direct … how can we best make use of this gift in our day to day lives?
And Peter makes mention of one more gift or favor. He calls it, the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We look forward to another gift of grace. Again, grace mentioned here is not salvation. Salvation is something we have now. We ARE born again.
The gift of grace, the favor of God that we will receive at that time is the unspeakable joy of resurrection life in a new body, a new place, a totally new life!
Peter advises us to place our hope FULLY on this coming favor of God. Think about it. Talk about it. Include it in your conversations with God.
Remember what Peter is doing here? He is telling believers how to live and cope during difficult times. So what he is saying is foundational. This is our essential starting point. Every other aspect of our lives will be affected by this foundational attitude: Minds that are dwelling on what we have; we have God in us, directing us. Supporting us. Consoling us in times of loss. We have an expectation of even greater things. This will change our outlook on all of the pain this life might throw at us.
Peter does not openly say that he is now going to talk about the fact that we believers have two natures, but he obviously has it in mind. Because if we dwell on the heavenly grace that is to be realized in our lives one day soon … as powerful as that is, we still have our old ugly sin-prone nature to deal with. And so he says,
14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,
We all have the old original nature that is filled with all of the normal passions. Whether these passions are all sinful is not really the point. Even if they are only natural passions, such as eating well, driving the best car, making the most money … just like the world does, is not the point. “Just like the world …” is the problem.
How should we live in difficult times? We must live in such a way that our priorities are clearly seen by others. Peter talks later on about being ready to answer people who ask us about our faith. The thing is, they won’t be asking us about our faith if our priorities are the same as theirs. Peter says that we need to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Actually it was Jesus who said that. Peter says we must be holy.
15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
Peter reminds us that the One to whom we pray, is not only our Father … but He is a judge. He is our impartial judge. this means that we cannot hope that we are one of His favorites … and perhaps He may go easier on us than He might on others. No, says Peter, He is impartial.
17 If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man’s work, pass the time of your living as foreigners here in reverent fear: (WEB Version)
Reverent fear is an interesting thought. I am sure we could all have our own idea what this might mean. But rather than compare ourselves with others, just stop and think how you might adjust your conversation if you were to walk into your living room, and to your surprise discover that Jesus has let Himself in and is sitting there on your sofa. What has He just heard you talking about? Do we need to adjust our thought life to include a consciousness of His presence?
And lest we should bristle at the thought of His having an affect on our thought lives and begin to think He has no right … Peter reminds us that He bought us.
18 For you must realise that you have been ransomed from the futile way of living passed on to you by your traditions, but not by any money payment of this passing world. 19 No, the price was in fact the life-blood of Christ, the unblemished and unstained lamb of sacrifice. (Philips)
We have been bought. The price was Jesus’ blood. And He bought us from something … out of something. And that something is this natural sin-cursed world and is habits and attractions. Our homeland has been changed from here to Heaven. We are no longer citizens here.
As Peter said in verse 17, this makes us foreigners.
With regard to the sacrifice of Jesus for us, Peter tells us that this was something planned from the beginning.
20 who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of times for your sake,
For something to be foreknown renders the outcome of that thing to be unchangeable. In other words, there is no way that the plan of God to send His Son into the world to ransom us could ever have failed. Foreknown means that God could see ahead … past the creation that He was planning, and could see that man would abuse his privilege of ‘freedom of choice’ and would sin.
Therefore He put into place the only possible salvation plan that could honestly, justly and legally be put into place.
Peter mentions that this plan came into being and was revealed to ‘us’ at the end of times. By this he is recognising that there have been eras and times in the past, each one different from the other. There was a time from Adam to the flood, in which there seems to have been no organised forms prescribed for worship. It would appear that worship form and style was left up to each individual family.
This actually continued until God formed the nation of Israel and put a lot of things in writing. The Jewish nation served as the spiritual and physical people of God until Jesus came and formed His church. And this, says Peter, is called ‘the end of times’. There will be no more eras or dispensations. We are in the final one until Jesus returns.
Peter has been saying that Jesus our Saviour was revealed in this last era and we … 21 through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God.
We are believers … and by believing that the shed blood of Jesus has washed us clean, we find ourselves in the position that all our hope is in God. In ourselves we are hopeless. In God we have hope.
How should this affect us, our thoughts, our attitudes?
Peter tells us how, 22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart,
Simply put … you are saved, washed, made pure, born again .. but you are not alone. You are part of a huge family of people that have believed the same things that you have. The world needs to see this family. Therefore love one another fervently, let everyone see!
You literally have been 23 … born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
You and I owe our spiritual lives to the Word of God. That is one name for Jesus. But he has also given us His written word, and through hearing it, placing faith in it (the gospel message) you were born again. What a wonderful word it is! Everything in this world fades away, says Peter, except the word of God.
Here is how he put it, 24 ¶ because “All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away,
25 But the word of the LORD endures forever.”
In these very uncertain times it is so wonderful to base our faith and our way of life on an immovable foundation. And says Peter, Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.
Based on the unchanging word of God, Peter is going to tell us how to live in these difficult days. His instructions will be clear.
Because of all that we have looked at in this chapter, Peter will begin the next one with, “Therefore, …”