1 Peter 5:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 5:1

Comments

First of all, the elders, the pastors are addressed, given exhortation, and then the people generally. The apostle Peter was also an elder, as he tells us. As an apostle, he was commissioned personally and directly by Christ. He was a witness of the resurrection and he was a penman of holy Scripture; these two epistles and in effect the Gospel of Mark also. It is without doubt the apostle Peter with his recollections who stands behind the Gospel of Mark. Unlike the apostle Paul, Peter doesn’t announce himself in the beginning of the epistle or throughout as an apostle, but he does indirectly. Peter has particularly in mind the preaching elders. Among the officers of the church in the New Testament there are deacons and there are elders, and we may discern from the pastoral epistles that the elders are divided into two sorts. There are preaching elders, and there are ruling elders. Now Peter here has particularly in mind the preaching elders or the pastors, because he goes on to say: ‘Feed the flock of God’, and while that can in a sense apply to ruling elders, it's primarily to those who teach and preach. Wherever Peter's main church was, he was also an elder there, as well as being an apostle. He describes himself here as ‘a witness of the sufferings of Christ.’ Was Peter a witness at Calvary? The record of the Gospels isn’t clear on that. The disciples forsook the Lord and fled, and we therefore tend to assume that they were nowhere in sight, with the exception of John, but the other apostles to be were obviously there somewhere nearby. Some say this possibly only applies to the fact that he was a witness in the Garden of Gethsemane to the pre-sufferings of Christ, but the more likely sense is that he witnessed the sufferings. In Luke's Gospel it tells us the same. The risen Lord says to all the disciples, when he explained to them the necessity of his death, ‘And you are witnesses of these things’, which strongly suggests that all the apostles saw the crucifixion. Also, ‘a partaker [a sharer] of the glory that shall be revealed.’ What does that mean? Our translators are very careful. Some of the modern translations try to correct this, and suggest Peter is writing that he will be a partaker of the glory shall be revealed. So they put it entirely into the future. So Peter says, I am a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and will be a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. No, say the old translators, although the future tense is employed in the Greek: ‘I am also a partaker of the glory, even now, which in due time will be revealed’, obviously much more fully. Peter particularly saw that tremendous manifestation of the glory of Christ at the time of the transfiguration and was overwhelmed by it. But he was a partaker in other ways too. He had been with the Lord, with the Son of God, and professed, ‘Thou art the Christ’ – he knew he was divine. The disciples knew that he could read his thoughts. They knew that he understood the Scriptures in a way that only the author of those Scriptures could. The scribes and the Pharisees set their cleverest and their best to outwit him and to make a fool of him in the temple, and he outshone them all with the depth of his answers. His love was unabating: his kindness to them. When he scolded them, there was no unpleasant anger about the Lord. They were aware of his holiness, his great majesty, and serenity. Then consider the compassionate healing miracles. They saw Lazarua walk out of the tomb, dead four days. They saw something of the glory of Christ.

Application

We too have seen something of the glory of Christ if we are truly born-again. We have seen just something of the glory of Christ. It's all part of what we call the earnest of the inheritance, the down payment or foretaste of glory that we receive. We have tasted the pity and compassion, which is in the love of Christ. You look back at some of the things that have happened to you, and some of your unworthy reactions, and some of your slidings, and the things you've done, and you think of the patience of Christ: that he still blesses me and helps me.

Calvin comments that if Peter had the gift of primacy, now was the time to assert it, for he might have used any such authority given him by the Lord to exhort the other leaders of the church not to ignore it, but instead he ignores even his apostleship in order to come alongside them.

Questions

There are those who teach (and this is quite commonly believed by more liberally minded people with a very low view of the precision and the inspiration of Scripture) that in the New Testament there were all kinds of different officers in the church and the text is really somewhat confused, one minute calling them by one name; one minute calling them by another. That is very sloppy reading and poor understanding of the word of God. There is a pattern church in the word of God. There is great precision here and these verses before us are rather interesting in that they take a number of equivalent terms for eldership and they put them all together. If only the people who criticise would notice these things. It isn’t one term here, another term somewhere else. There are different terms, but uniquely they are brought together in these verses of chapter 5 of 1 Peter. Why are there different terms? The terms speak for themselves. An ‘elder’ suggests something of the stature of the person – not a novice, not a youngster, somebody (hopefully) more experienced, more mature in the things of God – whereas some of the other terms like shepherd or pastor speak of function, shepherding, oversight. Each term speaks of one of the functions. The stature, then the functions of the office bearer. But there is another term in our King James Version translated ‘bishop.’ Elder/bishop, the two terms are interchangeable in the New Testament, but where does this term bishop come from? It is a rather clumsy translation of the word for overseer, or overwatcher, so you have got an elder one minute, then a shepherd, then an overwatcher, the bishop word. Is that word here too? Yes: ‘Feed [Shepherd] the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight’ – that is the bishop word, the oversight, an overseer, overwatcher. So you have got several terms there beautifully combined together. There is no confusion. The elder is also an overseer (bishop, in our King James Version) and also a shepherd, which is another term for pastor. They are all here.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

1 Peter 5:1 Commentary and Bible Study