1 Peter 1:22

1 Peter 1:22. Having purified your souls. The verb translated ‘purified' is one which occurs only seven times in the New Testament. It is of frequent occurrence, however, in the Old, being the technical term used by the Greek Version for the ceremonial purification of the priests in preparation for Divine service, and applied also to the ceremonial ‘sanctification' of the people (Joshua 3:5, etc.), to the ‘separation' from wine and strong drink which the Nazarite vow involved (Numbers 6:2-6), etc. In four out of the seven New Testament occurrences (John 11:55; Acts 21:24; Acts 21:26; Acts 24:18), it has the religious or ceremonial sense which it invariably has in the Old Testament. In the present passage, as well as in James 4:8, and 1 John 3:3, it has the ethical sense (expressed also by another verb, e.g. in Acts 15:9), although the original idea of a religious consecration or separation also adheres to it. What it implies, therefore, is a moral purification from everything inconsistent with a religious destination. And the subject of this is ‘your souls,' the word ‘soul' having here the sense of the ‘region of the feelings, affections, and impulses, of all that peculiarly individualizes and personifies' (Ellicott). The purification is to go, therefore, to the very ‘centre of the personal life,' and to purge out there the selfishness that is inconsistent with their Divine destination. And this is represented as the moral condition on which the fulfilling of the precept necessarily depends. This seems to be the point of the participle which, being in the perfect, exhibits the purification neither under the aspect of a process which must be continually sustained (so Calvin, the Vulgate, etc., deal with it as if it were a present), nor under that of a thing made good once for all at the crisis of conversion and now taken as the ground for the exhortation (so Bengel, Wiesinger, the ‘seeing that' of the E. V., etc., as if the tense had been the simple narrative past). It is intimately connected with the following imperative. Yet neither so as to become itself an imperative co-ordinate with that (Luther, etc.), nor as denoting what must always be attended to whenever effect is to be given to the charge (Schott, Huther, etc.), but either as pointing to the fact that ‘faith even in its first actings had purified, and in its continuous exercise was still purifying their souls' (Lillie), or as simply indicating a mental preparation which they are instructed to attend to as the sine quâ non to their observance of the charge. This last brings out best the marked difference between the tense of the participle and the tense of the imperative, and gives the pertinent idea, that in order to exhibit the acts of love of the kind here enjoined on all the particular occasions which may arise for them, they must first see to have the disposition of love the disposition of souls cleansed of selfishness. in the obedience of the truth. The same term (a peculiarly New Testament term, unknown to classical Greek, and occurring only once in the Greek Version of the Old Testament) for ‘obedience' is used here as in 1 Peter 1:2; 1 Peter 1:14, and is not to be identified with faith, but taken in the sense of obedience to God's will, and specially to that will as revealed in Christ. ‘Truth,' too, has here the objective sense of the contents of the Christian revelation, or the Christian salvation itself; ‘so far as being an unique and eternal reality, it has become manifest, and is set forth as the object of knowledge or faith' (Cremer). Subjection, therefore, to the permanent realities of grace, or to the saving will of God as revealed in Christ, is here the sphere or element in which alone this purified disposition at the very centre of the personal life can be attained. The best authorities are at one in regarding the clause, ‘through the Spirit,' which the E. V. inserts, as no part of the original text.

unto brotherly love unfeigned. The ‘unto' may express either the end or object which the purification aims at, or the result it actually reaches. The latter is more appropriate here, the idea being that if they have been so purified, they cannot fail to have the disposition here in view. The purification implies, the creation of a disposition which is alien to all love that is unreal or selfish. The term for ‘brotherly love' is of less frequent occurrence in the New Testament than might be expected, being confined to the writings of Peter (here and in 2 Peter 1:7) and Paul (Romans 12:10; 1 Thessalonians 4:9), and the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:1). Under various forms of expression, however, a large place is given by the New Testament writers, on the basis of Christ's own teaching (John 13:31), to the peculiar love which Christians are to cherish to each other. While Peter and Paul, however, exhibit it in its more general aspects, as an active grace taking shape in deeds of self-sacrifice, and as in some respects secondary to the wider grace of charity, it is John who specially unfolds it in the grandeur and newness which the new motive drawn from Christ's love, and the new standard presented in Christ's example, give to brotherly love. It is here described as ‘unfeigned,' not hypocritical or wearing a mask, as the term implies. For, as Leighton puts it, ‘men are subject to much hypocrisy this way, and deceive themselves; if they find themselves diligent in religious exercises, they scarce once ask their hearts how they stand affected this way, namely, in love to their brethren.'

from the heart love one another intensely. That is, see that ye have the purified personality which comes by receiving what God has revealed in Jesus Christ; and having the disposition of unfeigned brotherly love which that purification creates, let it display itself heartily, and without hesitation or hindrance, in acts of love to your fellow-believers. The phrase ‘from the heart' (the adjective ‘pure,' inserted by the E. V., is better omitted, the sentence being on the whole adverse to its genuineness) is to be attached not to the previous clause, but to the ‘love one another,' and expresses one quality of the affection, its spontaneousness (Romans 6:17) and sincerity; ‘let the clearness of the stream that brightens and gladdens the scenes of your daily intercourse attest the purity of the fountain whence it flows' (Lillie). The adverb ‘fervently' (an adverb of degree, not of time, meaning, therefore, more than merely ‘continuously') adds the note that it is to be with strained energies, as Huther, etc. put it; or ‘unfalteringly,' as Humphrey suggests. Here, therefore, as elsewhere, Peter speaks of the degree of grace (cf. 2 Peter 3:18). But while he limits himself here to the measure which brotherly love should itself attain, the Second Epistle (1 Peter 1:7) represents brotherly love as rather a step in a gradation of which charity is the height. So Paul (1 Thessalonians 3:12) urges an increase and abounding in love, not merely in the form of brotherly love, but as if the one, so far from arresting, promoted the other, in the larger form of a love embracing all men.