1 Peter 1:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 1:3

Comments

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.

Application

Knowing the magnitude of these blessings we are armed in our battle against the world, temptation, and prepared to suffer for Christ’s sake. When the Christian knows that he has such treasure in heaven, he is delivered from wanting to hoard treasure on earth. Given a choice between two prizes, only one of which can be kept, all will naturally choose the greater, and obviously a treasure that lasts for ever and is prepared by God is greater than one which will pass away. It is important that we should know something of the vastness of our blessings while we are still engaged in this battle, for this knowledge keeps alive our hope and prevents turning aside. While we walk by faith and do not yet possess our promised inheritance, our patience is animated by the certainty of our hope, based on the promise of God who cannot lie.

Today you notice in the contemporary Christian worship movement, there are lots and lots of hymns which, rather read like choruses, are about Calvary and atonement and my blessing. You notice the absence of actual adoration of God, worship of him, and his mighty attributes, and thankfulness to him for who he is. It's all about us. But here are Peter's words: ‘worthy to be praised’, ‘worthy to be adorned’ is God. When we begin our prayers we must try to start with God, and worship and adore him, think of his attributes, his decrees, and his mighty acts, and wonder at him, the living God.

Do we possess an active anticipation of eternal glory? The answer may be, ‘Not very much of an expectation. I live the Christian life from day-to-day. I came to him; I believe I'm saved; I've tasted and known the power of God; my life has been changed. I love now spiritual things; I hate my sin and fight against it, but I have to confess’ – perhaps we say this – ‘I don't think much about eternal glory. I don't ever purposely reflect on it. If I get a grievous disappointment, a difficulty, an illness, I'm heavy and depressed and sad, and I do not set against it the blessings that God has given to me. An active anticipation or expectation of eternal glory: it's so important it; it fuels assurance.

Questions

We are told here about God choosing. We are told about God's love, and the feelings of God. Some years ago I read an article by a lady preacher online, who has a great following. She had written, ‘When you suffer, God suffers with you’, and she was urging Christians to take comfort on this basis. When you have grief you think of this: God is grieved with you. Well, the lady didn't understand her doctrine. The Westminster, Baptist, and Savoy Confessions all with one voice declare that God has no parts or passions such as human beings have. So comes about the doctrine which we call the doctrine of God's impassability. It simply means that God cannot suffer. This is a great theme because God does have feelings. He loved the people who would be saved. He loves them with unchanging, unfaltering love. He has wrath, indignation against sin. But he cannot suffer. God's feelings are pure and holy and never change. They do not drive him, like human feelings drive human beings. A human being may love someone, but in a moment of hurt, or grief, or offence, may momentarily act against them. Our feelings can carry us away. Not so with God. His feelings are fixed and infinite and permanent. When God makes an eternal decision – and that's impossible language when you analyse it, but it's just for us – it arises from the united operation of all his attributes: his infallibility, his infinite wisdom, his infinite kindness, his infinite indignation against sin. The feelings of God never act independently of all his attributes. So his immeasurable holiness, and everything is involved in every decision. Our feelings cut loose from our wisdom and our reason and our knowledge, and act alone and drive us. God's feelings are pure and consistent and not reactive. He is never petty. He never acts out of a wounded spirit. He is not capricious or arbitrary. Neither he cannot suffer. If God were to suffer, it would change him, and he is unchangeable, serene, above it all. Though he feels, he cannot suffer. When you suffer, you lose something. You are hurt, sometimes maimed by suffering, so God cannot suffer. What about Christ? That is the wonder of the incarnation. Because God cannot suffer and is eternally serene and happy, in order for an atonement to be made for us and for suffering to be sustained on our behalf, Christ had to become incarnate and assume human nature. He did it so that in his united divine human nature, through of that element of humanity he could suffer. Just as he could be wounded by the nails through his hands and feet, and the spear thrust into his site, so he could suffer because he wore humanity. Such is the amazing condescension of Christ. Furthermore he suffered so that he could be a merciful and faithful high priest who understood his people. He suffered on earth. When we suffer, God doesn't suffer with us, but if we pray, Christ remembers what it was to suffer on earth, and he has a sympathy for us, because he has been touched by it. God cannot suffer as God, but even God could suffer when in Christ he assumed human nature, and took it upon himself.

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Introduction

1 Peter 1:3 Commentary and Bible Study