Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 Peter 1:15

1 Peter 1:15. But according to the Holy One who called you, prove ye yourselves also holy. Instead of letting their life revert to the type of those renounced impurities, they must show it conformed to no lower standard than that of God. The A. V. misses the point here. What it rendered ‘as' means ‘after the pattern,' or ‘after the measure of' (as in 1 Peter 4:6; Romans 15:5; Ephesians 2:2, etc.), and what it gives as a mere adjective ‘holy' is a personal name God obtains here a twofold designation appropriate to the precept, and furnishing motives for its observance. He is ‘the Holy One,' in the Old Testament the great theocratic title, expressing on the one hand the ethical separateness of God, His incomparable elevation above other gods, and above everything creaturely; and on the other hand, His approach to the creature in the selection of a separated people ‘Holiness would not be holiness, but exclusiveness, if it did not presuppose God's entrance into multifarious relations, and thereby revelation and communication' (Schmieder, cf. Oehler's Theology of the Old Testament, i. § 44). And He is the One ‘who called' them, here (as in 2 Peter 1:3; Galatians 1:6; Romans 8:30, etc., where we have the same tense) of the act of grace which took them effectually out of their old world, and brought them into their new relation. The act of the ‘call' (which is one of Peter's most familiar thoughts, occupying a larger space with him than even with Paul in proportion to the extent of his writings) corresponds, therefore, with the character of God as the Holy One, as the latter title implies His assuming men into near relation with Himself.

in your every walk. A holiness after God's pattern, and befitting children of obedience, must needs be a separateness from the world complete enough to show itself in all and every part of their behaviour. The word rendered ‘conversation' in the A. V. (cf. Shakespeare's ‘Octavia is of holy, cold, and still conversation,' Ant. and Cleo. 1 Peter 2:6; 1 Peter 2:13), but denoting the whole course of life, is another of Peter's recurrent terms. It is rendered by the Revised Version ‘manner of life' in 1 Peter 1:18; 1 Peter 2:16, and in all the Pauline occurrences (Galatians 1:13; Ephesians 4:22; 1 Timothy 4:12), but variously elsewhere, as ‘manner of living' here, ‘behaviour' in 1 Peter 2:12; 1 Peter 3:1-2; ‘life' in 2 Peter 2:7; Hebrews 13:7; James 3:13; and ‘living,' in 2 Peter 3:11.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

1 Peter 1:15

Old Testament

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