1 Peter 1:8

1 Peter 1:8. Whom having not seen, ye love. With some good MSS. Scrivener reads known here instead of seen. The latter, however, is the better supported reading. The verse has a historical interest, being quoted (from the second clause onward) in the Epistle addressed to the Philippians (chap. 1) by Polycarp, the martyr bishop of Smyrna and the disciple of John, of whom also Irenaeus (Adv. Har. iii. 3), his own disciple, tells us that ‘he was instructed by the apostles, and brought into connection with many who had seen Christ.' From the brief vision of the future honour of believers, Peter turns again to their present position, and to that as one with the springs of gladness in it. He takes up the joy already referred to (1 Peter 1:6), and, having indicated how the end of their trials should make the burdened present a life of joy, he next suggests how much there is to help them to the same in what they had in Christ now. In presenting the ascended Christ first as the object of love, he uses the term expressive of the kind of love which rises on the basis of a recognition of the dignity of the Person loved a term which he had hesitated to adopt from the Risen Christ's lips in the scene by the Sea of Galilee (John 21:15-17).

on whom, though for the present not seeing him, yet indeed believing. The relative is connected not with the ‘rejoice,' but with the ‘believing.' It is as they believe on Him that they rejoice. The faith already noticed as the means through which they are ‘kept' is reintroduced as a belief in the unseen Saviour which carries unspeakable joy in it. Neither the writer himself, who once had seen Christ in the flesh, nor the readers who had not had that privilege, could now see Him, of whom it is said that ‘then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord' (John 20:20). Yet they had Him as the object of their love and faith, and in that they had enough to make their clouded life bright. Their present might seem grievous in comparison with that future of which Peter had given them a glimpse. But if it denied them Christ in the possession of sight, it admitted the deeper possession of faith. And to have that is to have joy. For joy is the reflex of love and trust. So joy stands next to love in Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). So Peter, perhaps with the Lord's words to Thomas in his mind (John 20:29), lets them into the secret of the blessedness of those who have not seen and yet have believed. ‘It is commonly true, the eye is the ordinary door by which love enters into the soul, and it is true in this love; though it is denied to the eye of sense, yet you see it is ascribed to the eye of faith.... Faith, indeed, is distinguished from that vision that is in glory; but it is the vision of the kingdom of grace, it is the eye of the new creature, that quick-sighted eye, that pierces all the visible heavens, and sees above them' (Leighton). Faith and love are associated as working together for a gladness of heart which rises to exultation. Their gracious inherence in each other is indicated. ‘There is an inseparable intermixture of love with belief,' says Leighton again, ‘and a pious affection, receiving Divine truth; so that, in effect, as we distinguish them, they are mutually strengthened, the one by the other, and so, though it seem a circle, it is a Divine one, and falls not under the censure of the School's pedantry. If you ask, How shall I do to love ? I answer, Believe. It you ask, How shall I believe? I answer, Love.'

ye rejoice greatly (or, exult). The verb is taken here again (so Huther, Wiesinger, Hofmann, etc.) to be future in sense, though present in form. This chiefly on the ground that the adjectives descriptive of the joy are too strong for the experience of the present. But its association here with the strict presents ‘ye love' and ‘believing,' stamps the verb as a present in sense as well as in form. The point, therefore, is not merely that over against the tossings of the present and the disadvantage of an absent Lord, there is a glorious future in which they shall yet certainly rejoice, but that in Christ believed on, though not seen, they have now a joy deeper than time's storms can reach. The quality of this joy is expressed both by the repetition of the verb already used to express exultant joy (1 Peter 1:6), and by the addition of two remarkable adjectives. The former of these, which is found in no other passage of the N. T., and is of very rare occurrence elsewhere, conveys a different idea from the ‘unspeakable' in 2 Corinthians 12:4, and is more analogous to the ‘which cannot be uttered' of Romans 8:26. It means, ‘too deep for expression,' and that in the sense of ‘not capable of being told adequately out in words,' rather than in the sense of not capable of being fitted to language at all. The latter adjective means more than ‘full of glory.' It designates the joy as one already irradiated with glory, superior to the poverty and ingloriousness of earthly joy, flushed with the colours of the heaven of the future. Compare the proleptic ‘glorified' of Romans 8:30, and better, the ‘spirit of glory' in 1 Peter 4:14.

receiving the end of your faith, salvation of souls. If the ‘rejoice' is taken as a quasi-future, the participle must now be rendered, ‘ receiving as ye then shall.' As a strict present, which it rather is, it may express the time of the ‘rejoicing' as coincident with the time of the ‘receiving,' or (so Huther, etc.) it may introduce the latter as a reason for the former: ye can cherish this joy now inasmuch as ye are now receiving the end of your faith. This term ‘receiving' occurs not un-frequently of judicial reward, specially that of the last day (1 Peter 5:4; 2 Peter 2:13; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Ephesians 6:8; Colossians 3:25). It may denote the getting of wages, the securing of a reward, the carrying off of a trophy, etc., and is used also in the more general sense of obtaining (Hebrews 10:36; Hebrews 11:39). The word ‘end.' again, means goal, that which faith has in view, or in which it is to issue. The idea, therefore, is more than that of securing reward. It is rather that they are even now in the process of reaching the goal of their faith, in the way to make finally their own that to which their faith looks, and therefore they may well find deep and constant joy even in the broken present. The mark which their faith is meant to reach is described as a salvation of souls, not because salvation is a spiritual thing, nor because it is the soul that is the chief subject of salvation, and the body only a future participant (so Bengel), nor because there is anything like a trichotomy or triple division of human nature in view (Brown, etc.), but simply because in the flexible psychology of the N. T. the term soul denotes the living self (cf. 1 Peter 3:20; James 1:21; James 5:20).