1 Peter 1:23

1 Peter 1:23. Being born again, or rather, having been begotten again. On this see also 1 Peter 1:3. The tense denotes a subsisting state due to an act in the past, and, therefore, here a new life in which they stand in virtue of a decisive change equivalent to a new birth. If the three verses which follow are regarded, as they are by almost all interpreters, as making one paragraph with the preceding verse, they must be understood to enforce the exhortation to a sincere and intense brotherly love. There is some difficulty, however, in establishing a sufficient connection, specially in view of the fact that there is no reference to community of life as the consequence of regeneration, but only a reference to the nature of the life which comes from an incorruptible source, through a Word which has the qualities of life and permanence. This being the case, and the injunction to brotherly love, as given in 1 Peter 1:22, being complete within itself, it is suggested to connect 1 Peter 1:23-25 with 1 Peter 2:1-3. We should then have an exhortation (in 1 Peter 2:1-3) to a right use of God's Word, based here on the consideration (thrown forward, as is the case with so many of Peter's counsels, before the charge itself) that it is to that Word that we owe our new life. The run of thought then would be clear and simple ye are possessors now of a new life which, in contrast with the transitoriness of the natural life and its glory, is an incorruptible, permanent life; but this you owe to the power of God's living and abiding Word; therefore use that Word well, feed on it, nourish your life by it. Following the usual connection, we shall have to regard the previous exhortation to a brotherly love of a pure and whole-hearted order as now supported by the consideration that, in virtue of God's act of regeneration, ‘there is the same blood running in their veins' (Leighton, and virtually Schott), or that the regeneration, which alone makes this kind of love a possibility, also makes it an obligation (Huther, etc.). Or better (with Weiss and, so far, Alford), we shall have to suppose that Peter now finds a further reason for holding themselves pledged to a life of love of this tenor, in a fact of grace of earlier date than even the purification of soul already instanced, namely, the decisive deed of God's grace in bringing them first into the new life by the instrumentality of His Word. The special qualities of the instrument of their regeneration, namely those of ‘living' and ‘abiding,' are then named as arguments for rising to that high strain of persevering, undecaying love which befits a life which itself is lifted above the inconsistency, fitfulness, and perishableness of the natural life.

not of (or, from) corruptible seed, but incorruptible. The preposition denotes the source or origin of the life, and declares it to be in that respect unlike the natural life. The latter originates in what is perishable, and is itself, therefore, transitory and changeful. The former originates in what is incorruptible, and therefore is itself unsusceptible of failure or decadence. The word here translated ‘seed' occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is taken in that sense by almost all commentators, and this seems to be favoured by the qualifying adjective attached to it. Neither is that a sense absolutely strange. It is found, though with extreme rarity, both in the classics and elsewhere (2 Kings 19:29; 1Ma 10:30). The word, however, would mean naturally ‘sowing,' which sense (along with the secondary meanings of ‘seed-time and ‘offspring') it has in the Classics. Here, therefore, it refers to the Divine act, described as a begetting, which is the point of origin for the new life.

through God's living and abiding Word. There is a change in the preposition now, of which some strange explanations are given. It is not because Peter now passes from the figure to a literal designation of the medium of regeneration (Schott, Weiss, etc.), nor because the Word of God is now to be distinguished as a regenerating instrument from the Spirit of God implied in the foregoing ‘seed' as the regenerating power in the Word (de Wette, Brückner), nor is it even to mark out two different aspects of the same Word, namely the Word as external instrumentality in the production of the new life, and the Word (in the character of ‘seed') as internal principle of the new life (Huther). It is due simply to the fact, that having named the act of God, which is the originating power, Peter now names the medium through which that takes effect (cf. James 1:18). The Logos or ‘Word' by which God begets us is neither the Personal Word, Christ, by whom God has spoken finally, nor the written Word, the ‘Scripture,' with which Paul opens his quotations, but, as in Hebrews 4:12, Revelation, or the declared will of God, and here that will as declared specially in the Gospel. Though the Word of God does not assume in Peter the form to which John carries it, it may yet be fairly said that it is ‘more here than any written book, more than any oral teaching of the Gospel, however mighty that teaching might be in its effects' (Plumptre). The context shows Peter to be viewing it as a voice which penetrates man's nature like a quickening principle, ‘a Divine, eternal, creative power, working in and on the soul of man' (Plumptre), and nearly identified with God Himself, just as in Hebrews 4 there is an immediate transition from the Word (1 Peter 1:12) to God Himself (1 Peter 1:13). It is not quite clear which of the two subjects, God or the Word, is qualified by the adjectives ‘living' and ‘abiding.' The order in the Greek is peculiar, the noun ‘God's' being thrust in between the two adjectives. Most interpreters agree with the E. V. in taking the Word to be the subject described here as ‘living' and ‘abiding,' in favour of which it is strongly urged that the passage which follows from the Old Testament deals not with God's own nature, but with that of His Word. The peculiar order of the Greek is then explained as due to the quality ‘living' being thrown forward for the sake of emphasis. On this view the thing most decidedly asserted is the life which inheres in the Word, and the subsequent citation from Isaiah would be introduced to express the contrast between the Word of God in this respect and the best of all natural things. The arrangement of the terms points, however, more naturally to God as the subject described by the epithets, and in support of this, Daniel 6:26 is appealed to, where God is similarly described, and, indeed, according to one of the ancient Greek translators, in precisely the same terms. Calvin, therefore, supported by the Vulgate, and followed by some good exegetes, prefers the view that these epithets ‘living' and ‘abiding' are given here to God Himself, with reference to His Word, as that in which ‘His own perpetuity is reflected as in a living mirror.' In this case we should have the same kind of connection between God and His Word as we have also in Hebrews 2:12-13, where the conception of the former as having all things naked and opened to Him, and that of the latter as quick, powerful, and piercing, lie so near each other; and the following citation would have the more distinct design of affirming the Word to be partaker of the very life and perpetuity which inhere in God Himself. In either case the quality of ‘abiding' is not a mere superaddition (as Huther, etc., make it), but rather so weighty an inference from the ‘living' that it alone is expounded in what follows. For the dominant idea is still the kind of love which believers should exhibit toward each other, namely, persevering, lasting love, and the general intention of the closing verses is to show that while to the unregenerate all that is possible may be a love changeful and transient like the nature of which it is born, the regenerate are made capable of, and thereby pledged to, a love of the enduring quality of that new life which, like God Himself and God's Word, lives and therefore abides. The words ‘for ever' are omitted by the best authors.