1 Peter 1:2

1 Peter 1:2. The following words are connected not with the title apostle of Jesus Christ, but with the designation elect sojourners. They are not a vindication of the writer's claim to be an apostle, such as Paul offers (1Co 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:1, etc.), but a definition of the position of the readers. The definition is given with a detail which shows the security for their assured standing in grace to be nothing less than God Himself in the fulness of that Trinitarian relation wherein His love reveals itself.

According to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Their election is in virtue of this, in pursuance of this (Alford), or has this for its norm. The term foreknowledge (which is never used of the lost) is distinct at once from allied terms expressing the idea of predestinating or fore-ordaining (Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 2:7; Ephesians 1:5; Ephesians 1:11; Acts 4:28), and from those expressing the purpose, good pleasure, or counsel of God. It is coupled with, but distinguished from, the latter by Peter in Acts 2:23. It is more, however, than mere foresight. It is not the Divine prescience of the reception to be given to the decree of salvation, as distinguished from that decree itself. Neither does it imply that the Divine election or purpose of grace proceeds upon the ground of the Divine anticipation of character. It is knowledge, as distinguishable from decree. But as, both in the Old Testament (Psalms 1:6; Psalms 36:10, etc.) and in the New (John 10:14-15; Galatians 4:9; 2 Timothy 2:19, etc.), the terms for knowledge occur with the intense sense of a cognizance which claims its objects as its own and deals with them as such, it is a recognition which, resting eternally on its objects, embraces them as its own and cares for them as such. It is a foreknowledge, therefore, which comes near the ideas of predestination and creative or appropriating love, and which makes it certain that its objects shall be in the relation which God purposes for them. In God Himself, as the New Testament teaches, is the cause of the election. The name Father here added to the word God implies further, that this relation of theirs to which God's foreknowledge looks is the expression of a new relation which He bears to them. As elect, therefore, they are the objects not only of a historical act of grace which took them out of the world of heathenism, but also of an eternal recognition of God, in virtue of which their election has its roots in the Divine Mind, and is assured not by any single act of God's love, but by a permanent relation of that love, namely, His Fatherhood.

In sanctification of the Spirit. This points to the means by which, or rather to the sphere within which, the election is made good. The term here used for sanctification is a peculiarly Pauline term, being found eight times in Paul's Epistles, and elsewhere only in Hebrews 12:14, and this one passage in Peter. It is also a distinctively scriptural and ecclesiastical term, there being no certain occurrence of it in heathen writers. It is generally, if not invariably, found with the neuter sense, not with the active (Romans 6:19; Romans 6:22; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 1 Timothy 2:15; 1Th 4:3-4; 1 Thessalonians 4:7; Hebrews 12:14; Hebrews 12:22; less certainly 2 Thessalonians 2:13). Here, therefore, it expresses neither the act nor the process of sanctifying (Luther, Huther, and most), nor yet the ethical quality of holiness, but that state of separation or consecration into which God's Spirit brings God's elect. If their election has its ground and norm in the foreknowledge of the Father, it realizes itself now within the sphere or condition of a patent separation from the world, which is effected by the Spirit.

Unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. These words mark the twofold end contemplated in their election. Some place the phrase of Jesus Christ under the regimen of the obedience as well as of the sprinkling of the blood. If it were possible to take the latter as a single idea, that connection would be intelligible. It might then be = unto the obedience and the blood-sprinkling, which are both effected in us by Jesus Christ. But as this is uncertain, while it is also awkward to attach two different senses to the same case in one clause (some making it obedience to Christ and sprinkling of the blood of Christ), it is best to take the obedience here independently. It will then have not the more limited sense of faith, but the larger sense in which the idea occurs again at 1 Peter 1:14, in which Paul also uses it in Romans 6:16, and which is expressed more specifically in such phrases as obedience to the faith (Romans 1:5), the obedience of faith (Romans 16:26), the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), obeying the truth (R. V. obedience to the truth, 1 Peter 1:22). The second term is not one of those terms which are common to Peter and Paul. It is peculiar in the New Testament to Peter and the Epistle to the Hebrews. The noun occurs only here and in Hebrews 12:24, in which latter passage it is used in reference to the Sinaitic covenant. The verb occurs only in Hebrews (Hebrews 9:13; Hebrews 9:19; Hebrews 9:21; Hebrews 10:22). It is to be explained neither by the Levitical purification of the Israelite who had become defiled by touching a dead body (for the sprinkling there was with water, Numbers 19:13), nor by the ceremonial of the paschal lamb, nor yet by that of the great Day of Atonement (for in these cases objects were sprinkled, not persons), but by the ratification of the covenant recorded in Exodus 24. As ancient Israel was introduced into a peculiar relation to God at Sinai, which was ratified by the sprinkling of the blood of a sacrifice upon the people themselves, so the New Testament Israel occupy a new relation to God through application of the virtue of Christ's death. And the election, which is rooted in the eternal purpose of God, works historically to this twofold goal the subjective result of an attitude of filial obedience, and the objective result of a permanent covenant relation assured to its objects. Thus the note of comfort, struck at once in recalling the fact that the readers were elect, is prolonged by this statement of all that there is in the nature of that election to lift them above the disquietudes of time.

Grace to you, and peace be multiplied. The greeting embraces the familiar Pauline terms, grace and peace, but differs from the Pauline form in the use of the peculiar term multiplied, which occurs again in 2 Peter 1:2 and Jude 1:2, and in the salutations of no other New Testament Epistle. It is found, however, in the Greek version of Daniel 4:1 (LXX., Daniel 3:31) and Daniel 6:25. If the Babylon, therefore, from which Peter writes can be taken to be the literal Babylon, it might be interesting to recall (as Wordsworth suggests) the Epistles, introduced by salutations so similar to Peter's, which were written from the same capital by two kings, Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, of two great dynasties, and addressed to all their provinces. The grace is the richer Christian rendering of the hail! or greeting! with which Greek letter-writers addressed their correspondents. The peace is the Christian adaptation of the solemn Hebrew salutation. Those great gifts of God's love which Peter knew his readers to possess already in part he wishes them to have in their affluence. It is also John's wish, following his Master's word (John 15:11), that the joy of those to whom he wrote ‘may be full' (1 John 1:4). As the Father, the Spirit, and Jesus Christ have been just named, Peter omits mention of the sources whence these gifts come.