1 Peter 1:17-23 Commentary

Some biblical phrases are so theologically rich that gospel proclaimers might be tempted to preach entire sermons on them alone. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson offers one example of that. In 1 Peter 1:17b the apostle summons his scattered readers to “Live out [anastraphete*] your time [chronon] as foreigners [paroikias] here in reverent fear [phobo].”

Preachers might ask ourselves to what part of this invitation our mind’s eye goes. I quickly thought of the sometimes close relationship between foreigners and fear. When I was fourteen, I lived with my parents and siblings for six months in northern Germany. We lived in a tiny village where many people stared at us because we were among the first Americans they’d ever seen in person. My sister and I attended a German middle school before we knew more than ten words of German.

Our status as foreigners made us afraid in some basic ways. We didn’t fear for our safety, but for people’s reactions to relative strangers like members of our family. We were afraid of not fitting in. We were afraid of making mistakes in our German grammar and vocabulary. We were afraid of coming off as ugly Americans. I now realize that we experienced just something of the fear people who are refugees and exiles face in the United States today.

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Peter is writing to a group of Jesus’ friends whom a variety of factors have scattered. His greeting has already identified them as “God’s elect, strangers in the world [parepidemois Diaspora]” (1). So his readers aren’t just literally what Americans once euphemistically called “resident aliens.” They are also literally “resident aliens of the diaspora.” Since Peter basically underlines their status as strangers in their lands, we might even say Jesus’ friends whom the apostle addresses are “exiled exiles.”

To understand why the apostle refers to Christians that way, preachers might point our hearers back to verses 13-16 where he reminds us of what makes us parepidemois Diaspora (“strangers in the world”). It isn’t Jesus’ friends’ country of origin or first language. Nearly wherever we go, we are strangers because of what and who we long to be.

After all, we live in a society that indulges in rather than refuses to be controlled by its “evil desires” (14). Christians are part of a culture that glorifies unholiness rather than the holiness to which God graciously summons us (15-16).

Yet we can admit that being “foreigners” in our society is not a comfortable place for most of us to be. Christians have always enjoyed great privileges especially in North American society. In fact, the increasing estrangement from our culture some of us feel has led some Christians to try to reclaim our place of privilege.

Yet preachers might wonder with our hearers if feeling alienated from society isn’t precisely the “place” God summons God’s dearly beloved people to be. It isn’t, after all, merely where God in Christ chose to be in his culture. It’s also that Christlikeness seems so weird to so much of society.

In countries that have long been tempted to settle our disagreements with various forms of violence, Jesus invites Christians to love and pray for our enemies. In countries that struggle to pay the bills that come due to pay for care for vulnerable people, Jesus summons his friends to care for people on society’s margins. In countries whose citizens worship a plurality of gods, the living God invites us to worship only the Lord of heaven and earth.

In fact, we might argue, this counter-cultural lifestyle is part of what it means to “live out” our time “here in phobo (‘reverent fear’).” Jesus’ exiled friends live in the constant awareness of the enormous chasm between God, and those God creates in God’s image. We never forget the huge gap between God and our society’s holiness and righteousness. God’s adopted children let our reverence for God shape each part of us, including our every thought, word and action.

This majestic God on whom we “call [epikaleisthe],” Peter insists in verse 1a, “judges [krionta] each person’s work [ergon] impartially [aprosopolemptos].” The living God is, in other words, so holy that God doesn’t “grade” people on some kind of sliding scale or curve. The Lord of heaven and earth is so righteous that not even the most virtuous saints can somehow buy God’s affection with our good works. The God whom we worship in Jesus Christ is so holy that not even God’s adopted children dare to approach him without a deep sense of reverence.

At the same time, however, God’s adopted children don’t avoid God because we’re terrified God will somehow reject or even destroy us. Peter calls the God on whom we epikaleisthe (“call”) not some deranged despot but our “Father” [Patera] (17) for Jesus’ sake. God’s adopted children’s fear of the God to whom we appeal is not a holy terror, but a reverent awe.

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Peter reminds Christians who are strangers that the God whom we reverence loves us so deeply that God rescues us from our sin, sins, and sinfulness’ vacuousness that we somehow inherited from our ancestors. But God didn’t redeem God’s dearly beloved people with what Peter calls “silver or gold” (18). Instead, God rescued us “with the precious blood [timio haimati] of Christ, a lamb without blemish [amomou] or defect [aspilou]” (19).

This is, of course, Old Testament language and imagery. God, after all, summoned God’s Israelite people to offer to God sacrifices of lambs that had no visible flaws. In fact, 1 Peter 1:18 seems especially closely linked to the Passover lambs whom God commanded be “without defect” (Exodus 12:5) when the Israelites slaughtered them and spread their blood over their doorframes.

The Church has long seen in these “flawless” lambs symbols of the crucified but risen Christ. He, after all, wasn’t just perfect. Christ also allowed the Romans to shed his blood in order to rescue his adopted siblings from what The Message paraphrases as the “dead-end, empty-headed life” we “grew up in.”

The Father, adds Peter in verse 20, “chose” [proegnosmeriou] the eternal Son of God for this rescue mission even “before the creation [kataboles] of the world.” God’s people’s redemption wasn’t, in other words, God’s “Plan B” God implemented because of our sin. No, Peter professes that the Son was part of the Father’s rescue plan all along. This at least implies that God knew full well that our first parents would somehow welcome sin into their lives and world.

Yet Peter professes while the Father and Son always knew God would have to redeem God’s dearly beloved people, God didn’t go public with that plan until “these last times [eschatou ton chronon] for” our “sake [di hymas]” (21). Jesus’ friends believe God hinted at that project throughout the Old Testament. However, it wasn’t until the eternal Son of God became incarnate, lived, died, rose from the dead and ascended to the heavenly realm that God’s rescue plan’s divine executor was, in fact, shown to be Jesus Christ.

Because of this Redeemer and work on our behalf, the apostle concludes in verse 21, we “believe [pistous] in God, who raised [egeiranta] him from the dead and glorified [doxan] him, and so your faith [pistin] and hope [elpida] are in God.” God has graced us who are foreigners in this world and culture with the faith that professes Jesus is our Rescuer. God graces us, what’s more, with hope that God will someday soon rescue not just believers, but also the whole creation.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

My wife and I recently joined our dear Jewish friends Sarah, Rachel and Leah* to share a Seder meal with them on the first night of Passover. In word, song and ritual we spent most of the evening recounting and celebrating God’s great work of liberating God’s Israelite people from their Egyptian slavery.

Our friends seek to live out their relationship with God by observing Torah. They are what our culture sometimes calls “religious” or “observant” Jews. So my wife and I remain somewhat puzzled as to why Sarah, Rachel and Leah don’t yet see the Jesus who they recognize existed as the Passover Lamb.

In this and other regards I find Peter’s profession that Christ was phanerothentos (“revealed”) as the world’s Rescuer to be helpful. It reminds us Christ’s true identity was not obvious to either his or our culture. While Christians read part of the Old Testament as prophesying Christ’s coming, that link is not obvious to people in whom the Spirit doesn’t yet live.

This Sunday’s Epistolary lesson reminds Jesus’ followers we need God to reveal Christ as Redeemer in order for anyone to faithfully recognize him as Redeemer. Jesus’ friends need the Spirit’s help to see with the eyes of faith predictions of Jesus in the Old Testament. We continue to pray that Spirit will empower Sarah, Rachel, Leah and our other Jewish friends to come to see Jesus as the Messiah for whom they’re waiting.

(*not their real names)