1 Peter 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Peter writes to Christians scattered as foreigners across five regions of Asia Minor. He praises God for giving them new birth into a living hope and an inheritance kept in heaven for them, and he tells them that their present trials test and prove their faith. He then calls them to clear-minded hope, to holiness, to reverent living during their stay here, and to deep love for one another, reminding them that they were bought with the blood of Christ and born again through God's word, which lasts forever.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • Peter is the author of this letter.
   • Peter is an apostle of Jesus Christ.
   • The letter is addressed to people who are chosen.
   • The recipients are resident foreigners scattered abroad in the Dispersion.
   • The recipients live throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.
2. 1:2
   • The recipients are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
   • The recipients are chosen through the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
   • The recipients are chosen for obedience.
   • The recipients are chosen for the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
   • Peter wishes that grace and peace be multiplied to the recipients.
3. 1:3
   • Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   • God has given us new birth according to his abundant mercy.
   • The new birth is into a living hope.
   • The new birth is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
4. 1:4
   • The new birth is into an inheritance.
   • The inheritance is incorruptible.
   • The inheritance is undefiled.
   • The inheritance does not fade away.
   • The inheritance is being kept in heaven for the recipients.
5. 1:5
   • The recipients are guarded by the power of God.
   • The recipients are guarded through faith.
   • The recipients are guarded for a salvation.
   • That salvation is ready to be revealed in the last time.
6. 1:6
   • In this the recipients greatly rejoice.
   • The recipients have been grieved for a little while now.
   • The grief comes if it is necessary.
   • The grief comes through many kinds of trials.
7. 1:7
   • The purpose is that the tested genuineness of the recipients' faith be found unto praise and honour and glory.
   • The tested genuineness of their faith is much more precious than gold.
   • Gold perishes.
   • Gold is tested by fire.
   • The praise, honour, and glory come at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
8. 1:8
   • The recipients have not seen Jesus Christ.
   • The recipients love him.
   • The recipients do not see him now.
   • The recipients believe in him.
   • The recipients rejoice with a joy that cannot be spoken.
   • That joy is filled with glory.
9. 1:9
   • The recipients are receiving the outcome of their faith.
   • That outcome is the salvation of their souls.
10. 1:10
    • Prophets searched and inquired carefully concerning this salvation.
    • Those prophets prophesied of the grace that was to come to the recipients.
11. 1:11
    • The prophets searched to find what time or what manner of time was indicated.
    • The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets.
    • The Spirit of Christ was indicating that time to them.
    • The Spirit testified beforehand of the sufferings appointed for Christ.
    • The Spirit testified beforehand of the glory that would follow those sufferings.
12. 1:12
    • It was revealed to the prophets that they were not ministering these things to themselves.
    • It was revealed to the prophets that they were ministering these things to us.
    • Those things have now been reported to the recipients.
    • Those things were reported by people who preached the gospel to the recipients.
    • Those preachers preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.
    • Angels desire to look into these things.
13. 1:13
    • The recipients are commanded to gird up the loins of their mind.
    • The recipients are commanded to be sober.
    • The recipients are commanded to hope fully upon the grace that is being brought to them.
    • That grace is brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
14. 1:14
    • The recipients are children of obedience.
    • The recipients are commanded not to be shaped by the desires they formerly had.
    • Those former desires belonged to their time of ignorance.
15. 1:15
    • The one who called the recipients is holy.
    • The recipients are commanded to be holy in all their conduct.
16. 1:16
    • It is written: Be holy, for I am holy.
    • The reason for being holy is that the one speaking is holy.
17. 1:17
    • The recipients call on the Father.
    • The Father judges without partiality toward persons.
    • The Father judges according to each person's work.
    • The recipients are commanded to conduct themselves in fear during the time of their sojourning.
18. 1:18
    • The recipients know the following.
    • The recipients were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver or gold.
    • The recipients were redeemed from their empty manner of life.
    • That manner of life was handed down to them from their fathers.
19. 1:19
    • The recipients were redeemed with precious blood.
    • That blood is the blood of Christ.
    • Christ is like a lamb without blemish and without spot.
20. 1:20
    • Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world.
    • Christ was made manifest in these last times.
    • Christ was made manifest for the sake of the recipients.
21. 1:21
    • The recipients believe in God through Christ.
    • God raised Christ from the dead.
    • God gave Christ glory.
    • The result is that the recipients' faith and hope are in God.
22. 1:22
    • The recipients have purified their souls by obeying the truth.
    • This purifying was through the Spirit.
    • This purifying is unto sincere love of the brethren.
    • The recipients are commanded to love one another fervently.
    • The recipients are commanded to love one another from a pure heart.
23. 1:23
    • The recipients have been born again.
    • They were not born again of corruptible seed.
    • They were born again of incorruptible seed.
    • They were born again through the word of God.
    • The word of God lives and abides forever.
24. 1:24
    • All flesh is like grass.
    • All the glory of man is like the flower of grass.
    • The grass withers.
    • The flower of the grass falls away.
25. 1:25
    • The word of the Lord endures forever.
    • This word is the word that has been preached to the recipients as good news.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"The strangers scattered" renders the language of the Dispersion, the term for Jews living away from their homeland. Peter applies it to his readers, who live as resident foreigners without the standing of citizens, whether or not they had literally been displaced. Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia were Roman provinces in what is now Turkey; "Asia" here is the province on the western coast, not the continent.

1:2

Sprinkling blood on people sealed an agreement: at Sinai Moses threw blood over the people to bind them to the covenant, and blood was also sprinkled to make priests and sacred objects fit for use. "Grace" means a gift given freely, nothing earned by the receiver and nothing owed in return.

1:3

"A lively hope" in 1611 English meant a living hope, one that is alive, not a cheerful or energetic one.

1:4

An inheritance, in Israel's law, was the family's allotted portion of land, held permanently and handed down to the children. The three things Peter says this inheritance cannot do, rot, be defiled, and fade, are exactly the three things that can happen to a piece of land.

1:5

"The last time" means the end of the present age, when what is now hidden is brought out into the open.

1:6

Two King James words have shifted sense. "Heaviness" means grief or distress, not physical weight. "Temptations" here means trials or testings of any kind, hardship that puts a person to the test, not enticement to do wrong.

1:7

The image is from metalworking: gold ore was melted so the impurities separated out and the metal was proved pure. "Tried" throughout this verse means tested and shown genuine, not merely attempted.

1:8

"Unspeakable" means beyond what words can express. It carries none of the modern sense of shameful.

1:9

"The end of your faith" means its goal or outcome, the thing faith was aimed at all along, not its ending.

1:10

The prophets are Israel's prophets, whose writings make up much of the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament. "Enquired and searched diligently" describes serious investigative work: they studied their own messages trying to work out what they meant.

1:11

The Greek behind "what, or what manner of time" can mean which moment, or what kind of season, and translators have long differed over which is meant. Either way the point is that the prophets did not know when, or under what conditions, their own words would come true.

1:12

"The Holy Ghost" is the Holy Spirit; "ghost" in 1611 English simply meant spirit, with no sense of a haunting. "Gospel" means good news, an announcement that something has happened. The verb behind "look into" pictures bending down to peer into something, the way a person stoops to see through a narrow opening.

1:13

"Gird up the loins" comes from daily life: a man wearing a long robe gathered the loose cloth and tucked it into his belt before running, fighting, or hard work. To gird up the loins of the mind is to get the mind ready for action. "Be sober" means clear-headed and self-controlled; it is wider than staying off drink.

1:14

"Lusts" in 1611 English meant strong desires of any kind, not sexual desire in particular.

1:15

"Conversation" in 1611 English meant a person's whole way of living, their conduct and dealings with other people, not their talk. The same word appears again in verse 18.

1:16

The quotation comes from Israel's law, where the line "Be ye holy; for I am holy" is repeated several times in Leviticus. "Holy" means set apart, belonging to God and marked off from ordinary use; moral purity follows from that, but the root idea is belonging.

1:17

"Without respect of persons" translates an idiom for a judge who does not lift up anyone's face, meaning one who cannot be swayed by rank, wealth, or family connections. "Sojourning" means a stay in a place where you are a resident foreigner rather than a citizen. "Fear" here is reverent awe before God, not fright.

1:18

"Redeemed" means bought back by paying a price; the word was used of buying a slave out of slavery or freeing a captive by ransom. "Corruptible" means perishable, able to decay or be used up. "Vain" means empty, without substance or result.

1:19

An animal brought for sacrifice had to be physically flawless. One that was injured, diseased, or marked was refused. "Without blemish and without spot" is that requirement, applied here to Christ.

1:20

"Foreordained" translates a word meaning known or marked out beforehand. "Manifest" means made visible, brought out where people could see. "These last times" is the period Peter understands to have begun with Christ's coming.

1:22

"Love of the brethren" translates philadelphia, the ordinary Greek word for the affection between brothers and sisters in one family, used here of fellow believers, women as well as men. "Unfeigned" means unpretended, with nothing put on for show.

1:23

"Seed" here is the ordinary word for what a father contributes in conceiving a child, carrying on the image of being born again from the start of the verse.

1:24

These two verses quote Isaiah 40:6 to 8, in the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures that Peter's readers used. "All flesh" is a Hebrew way of saying every living human being. In that climate grass springs up after the rains and dries out within weeks.

1:25

The quotation and Peter's comment on it use two different Greek words for "word", but both mean a message spoken aloud. He is identifying the enduring word Isaiah spoke of with the good news preached to his readers.