1 Peter 1:11

1 Peter 1:11. Searching what, or what manner of time, or better, searching with reference to what (season) , or what kind of season. This participial clause, introduced by the simple form of the in-tenser compound verb ‘earnestly searched,' takes up the prophetic study and specifies the particular point to which it was directed. It was the question of the era at which this grace was to come. Both pronouns refer to the word season. They are not to be dealt with separately, as if the ‘ what' meant ‘which person,' and the ‘what manner of' pointed to the time (so Peile, Mason, etc.). In that case the man in whom their expected Messiah was to appear would, as well as the date of his coming, be what they wish to ascertain. But the object of the prophetic reflection is here defined simply as the time itself, or the kind of time a phrase meaning not (as Steinmeyer) ‘the time or rather the kind of time,' but, in a descending climax, ‘the time, or, failing that, the kind of time.' By diligent reflection these prophets sought to discover the precise period (whether soon or late), or, if that were denied them, at least the signs of the times the kind of era (whether, e.g., one of peace or one of war) at which the revelation given them of the destined admission of the Gentile world into Israel's grace was to be made good.

the spirit of Christ fit them. This denotes the source of the communications which formed the subject of the study. So far, therefore, it also explains the impulse under which they both studied and declared them. They rose on the minds of the prophets in virtue of a power which, though in them, was not that of their own intelligence. The men were conscious that those future things of grace which they saw inwardly came to them not as the forecastings of their own sagacity, but as the communications of a revealing Agent. Hence they both ‘searched' them for themselves, and ‘prophesied' of them to others. The revealing Power in them is designated ‘the Spirit of Christ,' not in the sense of the Spirit that speaks of Christ (Augustine, Bengel, etc.), but in the sense of the Spirit that belongs to Christ, or possibly the Spirit that is identical with Christ. The designation is to be taken in the breadth which naturally belongs to it (cf. Romans 8:9, etc.). It is not to be reduced, contrary to the analogy of the Epistles, to anything so subjective as ‘the Messiah-Spirit,' or ‘the Messianic Spirit' (Mason), nor, on the other hand, is it used here with a view to the ‘procession' of the Third Person of the Trinity (Cook). Its point is caught rather in the well-known sentence of the Epistle of Barnabas (chap. 5) ‘the prophets having the gift from (Christ) Himself prophesied in reference to Him.' Peter does not draw any distinction here between the ‘Spirit of Christ ' as a purely official title, and the ‘Spirit of Jesus,' or the ‘Spirit of Jesus Christ' as the personal title, so that the designation should mean nothing more than that the Spirit of the Messiah (unidentified with the Christ of history) was in the prophets. He indicates rather that the Revealing Agent who gave the prophets their insight into a grace to come was Christ Himself the very Christ now known to the Church as the subject of O. T. prophecy and the finisher of salvation. This is in accordance with analogous modes of statement in Peter (1 Peter 3:20) and Paul (1 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Corinthians 10:9), as well as with the doctrine of the Reformed Church that the same Being has been, in all ages, the Revealer of God and the Minister of light and grace to the Church the Word of God, the Logos, pre-incarnate, incarnate, or risen. It is admitted, therefore, by cautious exegetes like Huther, that the great majority of interpreters are right in recognising here a witness to the pre-existence of Christ, and to His pre-incarnate activity in the Church. Other expositions which deal with the term ‘Spirit of Christ,' as if it were identical simply with ‘Spirit of God,' come short of Peter's intention here. More is expressed than the general identity of the work of grace in the O. T. with that in the N. T., or the identity of the Spirit of God in the former with the Spirit of Christ in the latter (de Wette), or the idea that the Spirit, who worked in the prophets, was the same Spirit of God that Jesus received at His baptism, and since then has possessed (Schmid, Weiss, etc.).

was declaring. The action of the Spirit in the prophets is described first by a verb which, though used often in a less definite sense, has here probably the force which it has in 1 Corinthians 3:13 (of the day that shall declare every man's work), and in 2 Peter 1:14 (of Christ showing Peter that he must shortly put off this tabernacle). This operation of the Spirit is further explained by the phrase

when it testified beforehand, or rather attesting beforehand. The verb is one of extremest rarity, scarcely known indeed elsewhere, whether in the N. T., in Ecclesiastical Greek, or in the Classics. It appears to have a definite and solemn force, explaining the inward declaration of the Spirit of Christ in the prophets to have taken a form which their consciousness could neither mistake nor withstand, the decided form of an attestation of certain facts of the future. It says nothing beyond this, however, and does not necessarily imply (as is supposed by Schott, etc.) that, in Peter's view, speech and not inward vision was the medium by which the Spirit's communications were conveyed to the prophets' minds. The future things thus attested are described as the sufferings unto Christ (i.e destined, or in store, for Christ), and the glories after these. But whose sufferings and glories? Some take them to be those of believers, and translate the clause, the sufferings (borne by Christians) in reference to Christ. Calvin (as also Luther so far, Wiesinger, and originally Huther) hold them to be those of the Church as the mystical Christ, or rather those of Christ and the Church as mystically one. An analogy is then sought in Paul's statement about filling up ‘that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ' (Colossians 1:24). The use of the official mediatorial name, Christ, both there and here (instead of the personal Jesus Christ), is also supposed to intimate that the Subject in view is not the Christ of history, but the Mediator in His official capacity, so that the phrase suggests the mystical application to Christ's spiritual body. Others (e.g. Plumptre) point to the different form of expression used by Peter when he speaks of Christ's individual sufferings (1 Peter 4:13; 1 Peter 5:1), and regard the present sentence as the converse of Paul's, ‘as the sufferings of Christ abound in us,' etc. (2 Corinthians 1:5), what believers endure for Christ's sake being viewed here as shared by Christ Himself. So Plumptre would translate it, the sufferings passing on to, or flowing over to, Christ. All this, however, brings in ideas foreign to the context, which speaks of those things as already reported to the readers, obviously as the burden of the preaching which made them Christians. It is not necessitated by the use of the distinctive name Christ. It does not suit the statement that the thing which the prophets searched into was the time of these sufferings. For the Church was always more or less a suffering Church, though the sufferings of Messiah were both future to the prophets and a perplexity to Israel. It is also inconsistent with the analogy of the cognate phrase in 1 Peter 1:10, ‘the grace unto you.' Hence most interpreters are right in understanding the sufferings to be those of Christ Himself. The glories, therefore, will also be those which were destined by God to come to Christ, in the train and as the reward of those sufferings. The reward of Christ is regularly expressed by the singular, ‘glory.' The unusual plural, ‘glories,' is chosen here, either in reference to the several steps of His glorification, in His resurrection, ascension, session at God's right hand, and Second Advent (so Weiss, Schott, etc.), or simply as a balance to the other half of the clause, the standing phrase for what Christ had to endure being the plural form, ‘sufferings.' The communications, therefore, unmistakeably attested by the Spirit of Christ to the minds of the prophets, concerned a Messiah who was destined to obtain glory only through suffering. A suffering Messiah was in any case a conception alien to the Israelite mind. A Messiah who, by His suffering, was to bring grace to the world outside Israel was still more so, and what the prophets strove to apprehend by diligent reflection on the revelations made to them was not the fact itself (which was too clearly borne in by the Spirit upon their consciousness to admit of doubt), but the period at which it should come to pass. The communications particularly in view, therefore, are probably those made to prophets like Isaiah, who, in his great Passional (Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12), speaks of the sprinkling of the nations.