1 Peter 1:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 1:11

Comments

The prophets knew a great deal; more than many give them credit for. They knew that God was going to send the Messiah, the Christ, into the world and that he would be a suffering Saviour, fulfilling all the Old Testament types and making an atonement for his people. Collectively, they knew where he would be born, the nature of his ministry, certain events surrounding his death, his betrayal, his death, resurrection and victory over Satan, and many other details of his work. Every aspect of his life and ministry was intensely interesting to them and they made every effort to obtain as much insight as they could into the revelations that God had given them. They knew much already, but they especially wanted to know the time of Christ’s coming. When will he come? How will he come? In what form will he come? Just precisely how will the Gentiles be brought in? Is it soon? Is it in the medium term or the distant future? They strained and they wondered, and God, we are told, showed them that clarity on these things was reserved for future generations. There must therefore wait for events to fully reveal God’s plan. We however have had the amazing privilege of seeing the fulfilment of their prophecies. This was certainly the subject of the exalted dialogue that took place on the mount of transfiguration when Moses and Elijah spoke with Christ.The Spirit who was in them was the Spirit of Christ. Though the Spirit was not yet given because Christ was not yet glorified, he was already at work in the world, inspiring the prophets and giving them infallible prophecies concerning the future. The Spirit of Christ looked forward to the great work which Christ was going to do as the climax of God’s revelation of himself to mankind. In particular, he spoke of the sufferings of Christ, those sufferings which would accomplish the redemption of his people as Christ made himself a propitiation for their sins by taking our eternal punishment to satisfy the justice of God. Only then could countless elect men and women be forgiven and released from the prison house of death and hell. The glories that would follow were the glorification of the God-man, Jesus Christ, to the right hand of the majesty in the heavens, the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the gathering of the Gentiles into the international church of Christ.

Application

The Bible is not like any other book, because God is not like any other author. It contains revelation of the future which only God knows and only he can reveal. If then we treat the Bible as if it was written by uninspired human beings whose understanding was limited, and if we say they could not have spoken better than they knew, we no longer have an inspired Bible in our hands. This verse tells us the prophets came to be instructed by their own prophecies since they knew them to words which God had spoken through them and not words that came only from their own understanding.

Never forget that Christ was the author of the Old Testament. That's why, when we read the Old Testament and we read a prophet or we read the books of Moses, we don't say – as we do it when we are analysing human literature – ‘I must find out about the author of this book of the Bible. I must find out about Isaiah or Jeremiah, because, like human authors, they will have been influenced by their childhood, and what they learned when they grew up, or what historic events they witnessed, and this will colour their writings and help us to understand what they mean.’ We don't analyse divine literature like that in a humanistic way, as we would if we were studying Shakespeare or anyone else in time, because Isaiah wasn't the author, ultimately, and Jeremiah wasn't the author. The Spirit of Christ which was in them spoke; Christ was the divine author of it all. So we don't stoop to human technicalities in the interpretation of the Bible. Many try to and it leads them astray. This is like no other book.

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1 Peter 1:11 Commentary and Bible Study