1 Peter 1:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Worship and adoration and praise is our vital response. ‘Blessed’ in the New Testament very often translates the Greek word which means ‘supremely happy’, but here it translates another word which means ‘worthy to be praised is’, ‘worthy of blessing is’, and it calls us to worship. Striving to rouse us to gratitude, Peter pours out an abundance of reasons why we would be thankful for all our spiritual blessings and all the goodness which God has freely given us. All these blessings come from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has offered up his own Son in an act of love that surpasses all our powers to measure. Far from being reluctant in this, the Father has initiated the plan of salvation so that every detail of that plan not only comes with his permission but out of his boundless love.God is called the ‘Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ because the revelation of the Son of God to the world was the revelation given by the Father in the most explicit manner possible to finite creatures, God revealing himself to them in their own nature in the most complete revelation possible, which was created in the image of God for this very purpose. We have been begotten by the Father, made in his image not just physically, but with the spiritual likeness of Christ restored in us. We therefore possess a living hope. For hope, read anticipation. It is about something definite to us, and clear in our minds. Think of the illustration of a will. You have been left something in a will, and you are assured of it – a very large sum of money, or some estate left you. You've never seen it; you never visited, but you hear about it and you know that it is left to you because you are named in that will. Why is this hope called ‘lively’ or living? Because it is a hope of life, a hope that holds out to men and women what they value most highly. It is also a lively or life-imparting hope, a hope that invigorates us even in this world. Only a hope of life could do this when we are under the sentence of death by nature. ‘By the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’ Our thinking begins with the resurrection. This is a very cumbersome statement, and you can see that Peter means it to be so, deliberately. He doesn't just say, ‘by the resurrection of Christ’; he very ponderously says, ‘the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Isn’t that obvious? Yes, but he wishes to emphasise the wonder of this. He was dead. Death is final. The body is still. It will breathe no more. Those eyes will not open. Christ died on a cross in agony, bearing away the penalty of our sins. The spear was thrust through his side to make absolutely certain, to establish that he was dead. He was buried in a tomb. The disciples before they realised fully the meaning and the sense were shaken to the core, and so despondent and shattered and broken. But he rose by his own power, and by God's affirming word he rose from the dead. He rose to prove that he had the power of life, to prove that his suffering and death on Calvary was entirely successful, and all the sin of his dear people had been borne away. But also to provide a demonstration. Up to this point we had heard of resurrection and eternal life, but now it is seen in Christ. Think about that, says Peter. We should be more like the Russian Christians, who developed the habit of using, as a greeting: ‘he is risen’. It is precisely through the resurrection of Christ from the dead that this hope has come into existence, for if Christ had not risen, there would be an insuperable barrier to hope. Since the beginning of the world man’s universal experience has been death. God promised life to those who trusted in him, but this life was linked to the resurrection of Christ. While he had not yet come into the world, the elect could hope on the basis of God’s word alone, but once he came in the likeness of sinful flesh there could be no continued hope without a fulfilment of the promise. The hope of the apostles including Peter (Matthew Poole) had been ready to expire, but Peter had experienced the revival of his hope by the raising of Christ from the dead and knew by experience the transformation that that hope brings.