1 Peter 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Peter, writing as a fellow elder, tells the leaders of the churches how to care for the people in their charge: willingly, without greed, and by example rather than by force. He then tells younger members to accept their leaders, tells everyone to be humble, and urges them to hand their worries to God and to stand firm against the devil while suffering. He closes with a promise that God will restore them after they have suffered a little while, and with greetings sent through Silvanus, from the church in Babylon and from Mark.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • Peter exhorts the elders among the recipients
   • Peter says he is himself also an elder
   • Peter says he is a witness of the sufferings of Christ
   • Peter says he is also a partaker of the glory that is about to be revealed
2. 5:2
   • Peter tells the elders to shepherd the flock of God that is among them
   • Peter tells them to exercise oversight of the flock
   • Peter says the oversight is not to be by constraint
   • Peter says the oversight is to be willingly
   • Peter says the oversight is to be according to God
   • Peter says the oversight is not to be for shameful gain
   • Peter says the oversight is to be eagerly
3. 5:3
   • Peter says the elders are not to lord it over those allotted to their charge
   • Peter says the elders are to become examples to the flock
4. 5:4
   • Peter says the chief Shepherd will be manifested
   • Peter says that when the chief Shepherd appears the elders will receive the crown of glory
   • Peter says that crown of glory does not fade away
5. 5:5
   • Peter tells the younger ones likewise to submit themselves to the elder
   • Peter tells all of them to be subject to one another
   • Peter tells them to clothe themselves with humility
   • Peter says God resists the proud
   • Peter says God gives grace to the humble
6. 5:6
   • Peter tells them to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God
   • Peter says the purpose is that God may exalt them in due time
7. 5:7
   • Peter tells them to cast all their care upon God
   • Peter says God cares for them
8. 5:8
   • Peter tells them to be sober
   • Peter tells them to be watchful
   • Peter says their adversary is the devil
   • Peter says the devil walks about like a roaring lion
   • Peter says the devil seeks someone to devour
9. 5:9
   • Peter tells them to resist the devil
   • Peter tells them to be steadfast in the faith
   • Peter says they know that the same sufferings are being accomplished in their brotherhood in the world
10. 5:10
    • Peter calls God the God of all grace
    • Peter says God has called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus
    • Peter says they will have suffered a while
    • Peter says God will make them perfect
    • Peter says God will establish them
    • Peter says God will strengthen them
    • Peter says God will settle them
11. 5:11
    • Peter ascribes glory to God for ever and ever
    • Peter ascribes dominion to God for ever and ever
    • Peter says Amen
12. 5:12
    • Peter says he has written by Silvanus
    • Peter says Silvanus is a faithful brother to them
    • Peter says he reckons Silvanus to be faithful
    • Peter says he has written briefly
    • Peter says he wrote exhorting them
    • Peter says he wrote testifying that this is the true grace of God
    • Peter says they stand in this grace
13. 5:13
    • Peter says the church at Babylon greets them
    • Peter says that church is elected together with them
    • Peter says Marcus greets them
    • Peter calls Marcus his son
14. 5:14
    • Peter tells them to greet one another with a kiss of love
    • Peter wishes peace to all of them that are in Christ Jesus
    • Peter says Amen

Words Worth Explaining

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

5:1

"Elder" here is a job title, not a statement about age. The Greek word is presbyteros, the name for the men who governed a local congregation, borrowed from the councils of elders that ran Jewish synagogues and towns. The English words "presbyter" and "priest" both descend from it. The word for "witness" (martys) can mean either someone who saw an event or someone who testifies about it, and readers have taken Peter's claim both ways.

5:2

"Filthy lucre" is not a strong term of disgust in modern English so much as a flat description: "lucre" simply means money or gain, and "filthy" marks it as shamefully acquired. The single Greek word behind it means greed for profit. "Taking the oversight" translates a verb built on episkopos, "overseer," the word that later became "bishop." The whole verse runs on one image: the leaders are herdsmen, the congregation is the flock.

5:3

"Ensamples" is just an older spelling of "examples." "God's heritage" renders the Greek plural klēroi, meaning the portions or allotments assigned to someone, as land was allotted by lot. Here the congregations are the portions assigned to each leader's care. The same word eventually gave English the word "clergy."

5:4

The "crown" is a stephanos, the wreath awarded to a victor at the games or to a person publicly honored, not a king's crown. Since such wreaths were woven of leaves and withered within days, calling this one unfading is a deliberate contrast.

5:5

"Be clothed with humility" uses a rare Greek verb for tying on a garment, most likely the apron or overgarment a household slave fastened before serving. The saying quoted at the end is from Proverbs 3:34, in its Greek form; the same verse is quoted in James 4:6.

5:6

"The mighty hand of God" is a fixed Old Testament phrase, used again and again for the power by which God brought Israel out of Egypt. It carries both senses at once: the hand that presses down and the hand that rescues.

5:7

The King James uses "care" twice for two different Greek words. The first is worry or anxiety, the thing you hand over. The second means to be concerned about someone, the way a person minds what happens to another. The verse turns on that difference.

5:8

"Be sober" in 1611 English means clear-headed and self-controlled, with literal freedom from drink only in the background. "Adversary" translates a legal word for an opponent in a lawsuit, and "devil" (diabolos) means slanderer or accuser, so both terms picture a prosecutor as much as a predator.

5:9

"The same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren" is hard to hear correctly now. "Accomplished" means being carried through or completed, not achieved as a success: the same sufferings are being worked out in fellow believers elsewhere. "Brethren" covers the whole community, men and women alike.

5:10

"Make you perfect" translates katartizō, a workaday verb for putting something back into working order: mending a torn net, setting a broken bone. "Stablish" is simply the older form of "establish." The four verbs are near synonyms piled up for weight, all meaning to restore, secure and steady.

5:11

"Dominion" here translates kratos, meaning might or power exercised, rather than territory ruled. "Amen" is a Hebrew word carried straight into Greek and then English, meaning roughly "so be it" or "this is sure."

5:12

Silvanus is the fuller Latin form of the name Silas, Paul's traveling companion in Acts. "By Silvanus" most likely means he carried the letter, and may also mean he wrote it down at Peter's dictation. "As I suppose" attaches to "a faithful brother": it is Peter vouching for the man, not hedging about him.

5:13

"The church that is at Babylon" has been read two ways since ancient times. Many early readers took Babylon as a covert name for Rome, the great imperial city, a usage found elsewhere in early Christian writing; others take it as the actual city in Mesopotamia, where a Jewish community still lived. "Marcus my son" uses "son" in the sense of a younger man trained up by an older one, and Marcus is the Latin form of the name Mark.

5:14

"Charity" in 1611 English means love, not giving to the poor; that narrower sense came later. A kiss on the cheek was the ordinary greeting between family members and close associates in that world, and the early congregations adopted it as the greeting believers gave one another when they met.