Click ⟳ | Please refresh this document to insure the latest copy. Note, the Firefox browser does not reliably give an updated copy. One may try the “F5” key as well to request a fresh copy from the web-server.
1:13
preparing your minds for action. This is an AORIST MIDDLE PARTICIPLE used as an IMPERATIVE. Its form denotes that a decisive act of personal choice is demanded. (Utley)
It is no accident that “hope” is a noun in v 3, a verb (imperative) in v 13, and a noun again in v 21. (Michaels, p 52)
The mood of the letter changes at this point throughout the proceeding section the indicative mood has always been used almost exclusively to offer a factual statement of the situation of Christians as they experience the grace of God that leads to salvation. From this point onward impaired has become dominant, and the tone is one of command. This order of indicative followed by imperative is not a chance one. First must come the gospel and only then the response to it. First we hear of what God has graciously done for us, and then of what we are to do in obedience to him the latter is not possible except when it is made so by the former. (Marshall, p 49)
The Scottish preacher Murdo MacDonald used to speak of the necessity of having “adequate internal resources.” (Marshall, p 49)
Christian can never be lost in dreams of the future; he must always be virile in the battle of the present. So Peter sends out three challenges to his people. (Barclay)
“Therefore” ties in with everything that Peter had explained thus far (vv. 3-12). He said, in effect: Now that you have focused your thinking positively, you need to roll up your sleeves mentally, pull yourselves together, and adopt some attitudes that will affect your activities. (Constable)
“… the thought is: ‘Make up your mind decisively!’”[74]
“The English phrase ‘pull yourselves together’ would express the meaning.”[75]
“In Israel an ordinary person wore as the basic garment a long, sleeveless shirt of linen or wool that reached to the knees or ankles. Over this mantle something like a poncho might be worn, although the mantle was laid aside for work. The shirt was worn long for ceremonial occasions or when at relative rest, such as talking in the market, but for active service, such as work or war, it was tucked up into a belt at the waist to leave the legs free (1 Kings 18:46; Jer. 1:17; Luke 17:8; John 21:18; Acts 12:8). Thus Peter’s allusion pictures a mind prepared for active work.”[76]
The object of the hope that Peter commands is “the grace to be brought to you when Jesus is revealed …” (Michaels, p 55 f)
1:14
[Peter is calling for two breaks:] the meaning is much the same whether the command is to break with the present for the sake of the future or to break with the past for the sake of the present. (Michaels, p 57)
As we read the records of that world into which Christianity came we cannot but be appalled at the sheer fleshliness of life within it. There was desperate poverty at the lower end of the social scale; but at the top we read of banquets which cost thousands of pounds, where peacocks’ brains and nightingales’ tongues were served and where the Emperor Vitellius set on the table at one banquet two thousand fish and seven thousand birds. Chastity was forgotten. Martial speaks of a woman who had reached her tenth husband; Juvenal of a woman who had eight husbands in five years; and Jerome tells us that in Rome there was one woman who was married to her twenty-third husband, she herself being his twenty-first wife. Both in Greece and in Rome homosexual practices were so common that they had come to be looked on as natural. It was a world mastered by desire, whose aim was to find newer and wilder ways of gratifying its lusts. ¶ It was a life characterized by futility. Its basic trouble was that it was not going anywhere. Catullus writes to his Lesbia pleading for the delights of love. He pleads with her to seize the moment with its fleeting joys. “Suns can rise and set again; but once our brief light is dead, there is nothing left but one long night from which we never shall awake.” If a man was to die like a dog, why should he not live like a dog? Life was a futile business with a few brief years in the light of the sun and then an eternal nothingness. There was nothing for which to live and nothing for which to die. Life must always be futile when there is nothing on the other side of death. (Barclay)
Consequently, they did not realize that their desires were evil. But now as God’s children they have no excuse for ignorance or for conforming their lives to the pattern of the sinful world. (Marshall, p 52)
"To be chosen by God is to enter, not only into great privilege, but also into great responsibility. … The Christian is God’s man by God’s choice. He is chosen for a task in the world and for a destiny in eternity. He is chosen to live for God in time and with him in eternity. In the world he must obey his law and reproduce his life. There is laid on the Christian the task of being different. (Barclay)
1:15-16
Holiness is to characterize the day to day conduct of Christian believers always and everywhere. (Michaels, p 59)
They are Gentiles invited to stand before the God of Israel with the same privileges as the Jews and, more to the point in our passage, with the same responsibilities: “be holy because I am holy.” (Michaels, p 59)
1:17-21
In 1 Pet. 1:13-17, Peter asks believers to do six things to protect themselves:
1. gird their minds, 1 Pet. 1:13
2. keep sober in spirit, 1 Pet. 1:13
3. fix their hope on end-time grace, 1 Pet. 1:13
4. do not be conformed to present age, 1 Pet. 1:14
5. live holy lives, 1 Pet. 1:15
6. live in respect of God, 1 Pet. 1:17
7. fervently love one another (seventh added from 1 Pet. 1:22) (Utley)
Reverence is the attitude of mind of the man who is always aware that he is in the presence of God. In these five verses Peter picks out three reasons for this Christian reverence. (a) The Christian is a sojourner in this world. Life for him is lived in the shadow of eternity; he thinks all the time, not only of where he is but also of where he is going. (b) He is going to God; true, he can call God Father, but that very God whom he calls Father is also he who judges every man with strict impartiality. The Christian is a man for whom there is a day of reckoning. He is a man with a destiny to win or to lose. Life in this world becomes of tremendous importance because it is leading to the life beyond. (c) The Christian must live life in reverence, because it cost so much, nothing less than the life and death of Jesus Christ. Since, then, life is of such surpassing value, it cannot be wasted or thrown away. No honourable man squanders what is of infinite human worth. (Barclay)
Most Works Cited. Please click here to access the web-page for all of the works cited, save those above–if any. Most of the works cited on the linked web-page correspond to the verses they are outlined with. In the case of background information and other general reference citations, one will find cited material with the Bible books the citations are associated with.
Marshall, I. Howard. 1 Peter. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, Ed. Grant Osborne, et al., InterVarsity Press, 1991.
Michaels, J. Ramsey. Word Biblical Commentary: 1 Peter. Ed. David Hubbard, et al., Word Publishers, 1988.