1 Peter 1:4

1 Peter 1:4. Unto an inheritance. Some connect this closely with the hope, as a definition of that to which it points a living hope looking to the inheritance. Most connect it with the begat, the two clauses introduced by ‘unto' being regarded as dependent on the same verb, and the latter clause defining the former more nearly. When we are begotten, that is to say, into the hope, we are begotten into the inheritance. To have the one is to have the other. So perfect is God's act, so secure against failure the hope which comes by that act. In relation to His begetting us, the future is as the present, the possession is as the expectation. The term inheritance, another characteristically Pauline term, and used by Peter only here (although in 1 Peter 3:9; 1 Peter 5:3, we have cognate words), is the familiar O. T. phrase for Israel's possession in the Land of Promise. It is used sometimes of Canaan as a whole, sometimes of the particular lots of the several tribes, and, with few exceptions, in the sense of a portion assigned. The idea of a portion coming by heirship to Israel has as little prominence as the idea of Israel as God's son. In the N. T. it occurs both in the sense of the portion assigned (Acts 7:5; Hebrews 11:8) and in that of the inheritance proper (Matthew 21:38; Mark 12:7, etc.). It is used, specially by Paul, to express the believer's possession in the future. But while Paul regards the believer as an heir because he is a son (Romans 8:17, etc., he does not appear to connect the idea of possession by way of heirship with his use of the particular word inheritance, probably (so Huther) on account of the O. T. sense being so deeply impressed upon the term. He uses it, indeed, where the notion of heirship is inapplicable, e.g. of God's inheritance in the saints (Ephesians 1:18). It is doubtful, therefore, whether Peter has in view an inheritance which comes in virtue of sonship, although the ruling idea of our being begotten favours that. He uses the word in the large sense, inclusive of all that the kingdom of God has in store for the believer in the consummation.

incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. This inheritance he describes first negatively and, as suits his character and style, by a number of adjectives, as incorruptible, subject to no dissolution or decay, undefiled (a term applied also to our High Priest, Hebrews 7:26), neither tainted nor tarnished, and unfading or unwithering (a word used only here, and in a slightly different form in 1 Peter 5:4). There is perhaps a climax in these negatives, from what has in itself no seeds of decay, to what is proof against external touch of pollution, and from that to what is superior even to the law of changing seasons and bloom succeeded by blight; or, as Leighton conceives it, the gradation may be from the perpetuity to the purity, and from that to the immutability of the inheritance. The sad realities of Israel's heritage in the Land of Promise may be in the background. It is too much, however, to find in these epithets (as Weiss does) allusions to the pollutions which defiled the land, or to the simoom which scorched it. The inheritance is further described positively (in terms much used by many of the Fathers as an argument against the Millenarian doctrine) as reserved in heaven (or, in the heavens) for you. The participle, which is in the perfect tense (has been reserved), points to the inheritance as one which has been prepared from the beginning, and the sphere within which it has been laid up in reserve is the heavens, where God Himself dwells. It is thereby made doubly safe, ‘laid up and kept,' and that ‘among God's own treasures, under His own eye, and within the shelter of His omnipotence' (Lilley), although it is yet a thing of the future. Thus is it secured, too, in the possession of the qualities ascribed to it; for into heaven nothing can intrude that corrupts, defiles, or makes to fade. Similar is our Lord's teaching on the treasure and the reward in heaven (Matthew 6:20; Matthew 19:21; Matthew 5:12), and Paul's conception of the hope which has been laid up or deposited in heaven (Colossians 1:5). With finest feeling, too, for his readers, Peter puts this as all in reserve precisely for them. No longer using ‘us,' as before, he now says ‘ for you ' for you, sojourners in a land that is not your own, an inheritance is in waiting, which is strange to peril from the ‘worm at the root of all our enjoyments here' (Leighton), from the foul hand that mars them, from the doom that makes nothing here abide ‘of one stay.'