I Peter 1- Bible Commentary

I Peter 1

I Peter 1:1:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God's elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,

Peter announces himself as the writer. in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia

I Peter 1:2:
who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance

God knew before hand who would accept and would not accept. This does not mean He overrode free will. He just knew what every man's choice would be. It is the Spirit of God that does the sanctifying work. The carnal unbeliever sees this a paradox and an unfair one at that. Only God could change a persons perspective on many things as both sides of the coin can only look at each others position and claim it is foolish.

I Peter 1:8:
Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory – 1 Peter 1:8

Christian faith is a paradox. It loves someone you have never met, it believes in someone you cannot see, and it enjoys this person with a fullness that cannot be described or surpassed.

I Peter 1:13:
Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope fully on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ

Here Peter speaks of a spiritual girding of the mind, just as one girds his sword to the loins of his body. This is an admonition to faith, and the sense is this: While such things are preached to you and bestowed upon you through the Gospel as the angels would rejoice and desire to behold, rely on them and fix your confidence on them with all firmness, so that it shall be a real faith, and not a painted or fictitious fancy or dream.

It is as though he means to say: You have now heard the Gospel and have come to believe, therefore see to it that you abide in it, and do not permit yourselves to be drawn away with false doctrine, which will cause you to waver and run hither and thither with works. Be sober, he says. To be sober is the chief work of faith. For though a man has been justified, he still is not secure from evil lusts. Faith has indeed begun to subdue the flesh, but this flesh is ever bestirring itself, and running riot in all sorts of lusts, which would gladly break forth again and act after their own will. Therefore the spirit must daily work to restrain and subdue it. And fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Christian faith is of such a nature that it plants itself freely on the Word of God with entire confidence, risks to live freely in it, and goes joyfully onward. --Gnesio

Note also where this battle for holiness begins. It’s the believer’s mind that must be readied for war. When we strive to live holy lives, we often begin by attempting to curtail sinful behaviors: I should swear less. I should stop spending impulsively.
But Peter points us to the source of our sin: our thoughts. Every sinful action we engage in is the result of a sinful thought that fed a sinful desire. If we want to set our hope fully on grace, we must deal with our sin at the source.
Temptation presents itself to the mind as a reasonable choice. We allow our thoughts to dwell on its reasonableness, fueling our desires. And as James tells us, “Desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). For this reason, Paul admonishes us to seek transformation not through the renewing of our actions or our desires, but through the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2) -Jen Wilkin; Gospel Coalition

Then comes the main verb, and for the first time in this letter it's an imperative. It's a command: "Hope fully." Or: "Fix your hope completely." So the first command in this letter is an action you do with your mind and your heart. It's a command to hope. Hope is not an action of the body. It is an experience of the soul. Peter is commanding us to experience hope.
This is the main verb, the main clause, in this verse. The first two were subordinate participles: "Having girded the loins of your mind"—that's the first one; and "being sober"—that's the second one. Then comes the main predicate; "Hope fully!" Which simply means that girding up the loins of the mind and being sober are means to the end of the main thing, namely, hoping fully. -John Piper; Desiring God

I Peter 1:13:
Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope fully on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ

It’s interesting that Peter includes the word “fully” at all. Why not just tell us to set our hope on the grace that will be brought to us? Why “set our hope fully on grace”? Because it’s possible, and indeed common, for the believer to function as one with a hope placed partially on grace and partially elsewhere. We’re prone to placing our hope on our own good deeds, or on a spouse or our children, or on a pastor or president. We may place it on a bank account or a career, or even on the size of our social media accounts. We tell ourselves that we hope in Christ, but what we mean is that we hope in Christ and __________. -Jen Wilkin

“Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind.” Unless you know something about Greco-Roman culture back in the First Century when Brother Peter wrote these words, it’s hard to know just what he is telling us. What does he mean by “gird up”; and what are “the loins of your mind”?
To gird up means to bind about, especially with a belt. The picture here is one of a Roman soldier putting on the part of his armor that covered the groin or loins. The phrase “the loins of your mind” is much more difficult to understand.
For the meaning of that phrase, we must know how first century folks understood both “loins” and “mind.” The loins were the center of procreative power — which is the literal translation of the Greek root used here. The Greek root used here for “mind” is one which means deep thought. So, what we have here in “gird up the loins of your mind” is a phrase that means the mind in its full capacity, strength or power.
What Brother Peter is telling us to do here is to gird up, or bind, as with a belt, our full mental capacity or strength. Now, in English, this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. After all, the mind is not something around which you would put a belt. So, we have to forget our modern understanding and the limits that occur when translating from one language to another.
Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. (1 Peter 1:13-16 KJV)
We start with an image in our minds that closely approximates what Brother Peter is telling us. That image comes from the concept of girding up. As I said earlier, it is the image of a Roman soldier putting on a piece of his armor which is fastened with belts, such as the piece that covered his groin.
This, itself, requires at least some understanding of the cultures and practices in the time during which Peter wrote. We would have no understanding of what a Roman soldier’s armor looks like without the availability of historical accounts and descriptions of armor in the New Testament (see Ephesians 6:10-18 KJV).
But, because we do have such information available, we can get an idea of what Brother Peter is saying in this portion of his first epistle. And, as I also said earlier, we have to look at how someone in the first century would have understood what Brother Peter was writing here. -Rev Chancellor Carlyle Roberts II

I Peter 1:15:
But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation;

God swore by His holiness. “As He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” We find here that we are to be holy because He is holy. Holiness, like righteousness, is both imputed by God and achieved by us. Just as the vessels of the Tabernacle and Temple were holy, so are we when we are consecrated, set apart, for God’s use upon conversion (I Corinthians 3:16; Colossians 1:22). Holiness, however, is more than an imputed state of being. It is a process that we must pursue throughout our Christian lives (Hebrews 12:14). That is why God admonishes us to become holy, to be holy in our conduct (Romans 12:1; II Corinthians 7:1; Ephesians 4:24; II Peter 3:11; I John 3:3).

He wants us to be holy because He is with us and in us. He does not want to be contaminated by the impurities of His people. God wants to have close contact with His people. “I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be My people” (II Corinthians 6:16). If we want to have a fellowship with Him, we must start to become holy as He is. “‘Come out from among them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you’” (II Corinthians 6:17).
Israelites, God’s people, are advised to be separate so they can avoid every possibility of defilement: “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (II Corinthians 7:1). Flesh and spirit indicates “physical and spiritual” or “body and mind”—one’s total personality—outwardly and inwardly in all relations with God and fellow man. Our sanctification, part of which we do, sets us apart to walk the way of holiness.
Holiness is what makes God what He is. It is not an attribute of God like love, joy, or omnipotence. Holiness is the ground, basis, and foundation of God. It is His uniqueness and totality, His deity, and divinity itself. It is the perfect purity of God.
His holiness is symbolized in the construction of the Tabernacle: “The veil shall be a divider for you between the holy place and the Most Holy” (Exodus 26:33). A curtain separated the two chambers, and only the high priest could pass through the veil—and then only once a year. The phrase Most Holy is literally “holiness of holinesses.” It represents the height, the top, the very pinnacle of morality. God was isolated from Israel, not because He was unapproachable, but because He wanted us to see the difference between us and Him. He really is approachable; no one in the universe is more approachable than God.

I Peter 1:22:
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,

1. Believers have the opportunity to get love right (1:22)
Peter shows us four features that Christian love includes if we’re doing it right.
Feature 1: It’s familial (φιλαδελφία… ἀλλήλων) Two terms in 1:22 reveal who is to be loved: “love of the brethren” (ESV and others: “brotherly love”), and “love one another.” The first phrase translates the Greek philadelphia—and usually carries the idea of an affection and commitment of the sort that goes with kinship. (Pulpiteers ofen present it as inferior to the famous agape love, but there is really not much evidence for that. It just has a more familial connotation.)
The second phrase “love one another” uses agape and links to our Christian family: “one another.” The familial quality of Christian love is more important and profound than it might seem. We’re all somewhat selective about whom we love, especially in the intense and deep way this passage describes a bit later. So on what basis do we “discriminate”? Peter says every Christian in the body should be loved just because they are brothers and sisters. They’re family. We don’t love because someone is a blessing to us, because someone is smarter, more talented, better looking, richer, or even holier. It’s because he or she is our brother or sister in Christ. We’re linked. We’re in this together.
Feature 2: It’s genuine - “sincere” (ἀνυπόκριτος) The KJV uses a wonderful old word here: “unfeigned.” The word has fallen out of use, but still works well in this context because the Greek here is the word for hypocrisy, but with the equivalent of “not” or “un” tacked on the front. This is unhypocritical love. “Unfeigned” also sounds a bit like “unfaked,” and that captures the idea pretty well too!
When we’re getting it right, Christian love flows from a “real” place in our values, convictions, and longings. But it’s quite often not “real” at all in the popular sense of “feels completely natural and effortless”!
Feature 3: It’s intense - “fervently”/ “earnestly” (ἐκτενῶς)
Christian love is an expression of beliefs, commitments, and values, but it’s not supposed to be cold—not at all! If you’re wired more for abstraction and analysis (like me) you find this part difficult. Christian love done right reaches the emotions. It doesn’t begin there, but it gets there.
Note the only two other places this particular word for “fervently” occurs in the NT.

Jesus in Gethsemane - “He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood” (NKJV, Luke 22:44)
Believers interceding - “Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church.” (ESV, Acts 12:5)

Do a survey some time of how emotional Paul is about his love for the churches and you’ll see the point even more clearly. Christian love is not merely emotional, but it truly reaches as far as the emotions.
--Sharper Iron

1 Peter 1:23 - 25:
having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, 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, But the word of the LORD endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you."

We are so temporal in this existence. Here today and then gone from this earth. In the grand concept of "time," we are but like the grass. The Word of God, which we heard, produced our faith in the first place. This Word of God will also preserve us and keep us in the faith. The word breeds prayer and praying increases our faith. Never allow anything to take the place of God's Word in your life for it is the source of your faith. The mystery of faith is hidden in the Word. It does something in your heart that your mind and intellect is not always aware of. The word and the Lord are the same: they both stand forever.