1 Peter 1:23

being born again Better, having been begotten again, the verb being the same as that in 1 Peter 1:3. The "corruptible seed" is that which is the cause of man's natural birth, and the preposition which St Peter uses exactly expresses this thought of an originating cause. In the second clause, on the other hand, he uses the preposition which distinctly expresses instrumentality. The "word of God" is that through which God, the author of the new life, calls that life into being.

by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever The Greek order of the words leaves it doubtful whether the two predicates belong to "the word," or to "God," but the sequence of thought is decisive in favour of connecting them with the former. They are used to shew that the word of God, which is the seed of the new birth, is, as has been said, incorruptible. They prepare the way for the emphatic reiteration in 1 Peter 1:25, that the "word of the Lord" endureth for ever, the same word being used in the Greek as for the "abideth" of this verse.

It is obvious that the word of God is more here than any written book, more than any oral teaching of the Gospel, however mighty that teaching might be in its effects. If we cannot say that St Peter uses the term LOGOS with precisely the same significance as St John (John 1:1; John 1:14), it is yet clear that he thinks of it as a divine, eternal, creative power, working in and on the soul of man. It was "the word of the Lord" which had thus come to the prophets of old, of which the Psalmist had spoken as "a lamp unto his feet," and "a light unto his path" (Psalms 119:105). St Peter's use of the term stands on the same level as that of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who speaks of "the word of God" as "quick and powerful … a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12-13). It is, i.e., nothing less than God manifested as speaking to the soul of man, a manifestation of which either the preached or the written word may be the instrument, but which may work independently of both, and is not to be identified with either.