The churches in Peter’s day were onto something compellingly beautiful in their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Their wholehearted devotion to loving Jesus, believing in Jesus, and rejoicing in Jesus stands as an inspiring testimony for us today.
Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.
1 Peter 1:8 ESV
Is this your daily experience with Jesus? You can’t fake joy. In your heart of hearts you know when joy in Jesus is really filling you up. Do the rhythms of your life include inexpressible, joy-filled rejoicing in Jesus? Now, I’m not laying a guilt trip on you but pointing you to this motivational picture of an inheritance God has freely made available to you to enjoy. This love, faith, and inexpressible joy in Jesus is not hypothetical or only available until we die and go to heaven. It was really happening—on earth. It was their here and now practice. These real flesh and blood people like you and me were encountering Jesus in a way that today’s church should marvel over. How exactly did they do this? Fortunately, Peter is going to tell us how. Peter’s secret sauce to spice up our soul-satisfying feast on Jesus awaits discovery. Peter’s secret sauce is the antidote to joylessness and boredom with Jesus.
What was it that ignited the churches in Peter’s day with this fiery, white hot love for Jesus Christ? Surprisingly, the primary ingredient wasn’t what’s prominent in today’s churches like praise and worship or revival meetings or sacraments. They are no doubt beneficial and have their place. It’s just not what Peter emphasized. May Peter’s words fully persuade you of the rich inheritance that’s yours, one marked by this passionate love, faith, and joy for Jesus. But in order for us to move from head knowledge to experiential knowledge, we first need to identify what hems us into our low expectation and experience. Some obstacles have to do with how we interpret Peter’s letter today versus the way the readers in Peter’s day understood it then.
So with this in mind, we’ll examine several hindrances we have today. As we understand these challenges, it will aid us along a path of illumination into Peter’s heart and burden. I confess here at the onset that 1 Peter has been for me a really challenging book to study. First, the way Peter writes, as is typical of all the biblical authors, is shaped by his unique personality. Peter’s personality is one that resists—defies even—analytical inspection. Let me explain what I mean by that. The systems engineer in me resonates more with Paul’s logical thinking that progresses from A to B to C to D to E. Take Paul’s exposition of Romans, for instance. He guides you along a linear path of linked arguments—A + B = C. I like that. Peter, however, is not that mathematical kind of guy. He’s more of an art guy. Yes, Peter’s words are organized but much different than Paul’s step by step, methodical thought process. As all the word of God is beautifully ordered, so Peter’s words are an orderly arrangement, but of a creativity that appeals to the beauty of art more so than the numerical precision of engineering. Following Peter along in his writings is more like appreciating a painting or admiring the aesthetics of a beautiful garden.
As I’ve immersed myself in Peter’s words, I’ve observed that his thought process is more like braids of a rope than links of a chain. He twists several related concepts together like braids that come together to form one rope. As I’ve labored to understand where Peter’s coming from, I’ve been frustrated at times because he’s not going step by step like I want him to. As he twists his line of reasoning around, it’s been a little dizzying and disorienting, like zipping through corkscrews on a roller coaster. Now, these braids truly are all one unified theme, but it forced me to adopt a different study approach than say one of Paul’s letters.
When I say braided together like a rope, what I mean is that a concept or theme can seem to vanish into thin air only to reappear later on. But its temporary disappearance did not abort its ongoing relevance to Peter’s developing point. It was there all along but on the backside of the rope briefly hidden from view while he presents the other braids that advance the fullness of meaning. Although Peter does repeat words, he isn’t enslaved to always using the exact same word for us to connect the dots. He expects his readers to match up equivalent ideas that he nuances with different words. So in one instance he may speak of the “revelation of Christ” and in another “His marvelous light.” Revelation and light are matching ideas, each having their own nuanced perspective. So to track with Peter we have to follow not just identical Greek words but recognize matching ideas that he crafts at times using different words. If we rigidly adhere to word for word connections to understand Peter, we’ll miss his masterfully crafted braids of divine wisdom. We’ll think that Peter is jumping around, switching topics and themes, when he’s not. As we unravel the letter, I’ll point out specific instances of Peter’s braided approach so you can better see what I’m talking about.
This braided approach opens up the challenge of theological rabbit holes, these tangents that are so intriguing in and of themselves that they suck you into themselves. They can sidetrack you from the main point. If we miss the continuity of these braids of the rope, we can digress down these rabbit holes that aren’t the main point but supporting actors of the main point. Peter adorns his prose with theologically deep assertions in which it’s easy to get lost in wonder. As I listen to various churches online, I hear Peter quoted a lot. That’s because he’s such a rich writer! He has many “nuggets” that one can lift totally out of its context and still be spiritually enriching. Yet if we fail to see how each nugget contributes to Peter’s artful arrangement, we can go off course into the proverbial wild goose chases. These literary gems are not intended to be admired as standalone exhibits in a museum. They’re organically interwoven in a developing theme that constitutes the apostle’s burden.
Another formidable challenge to grasping the letter’s message is that Peter begins with a review of what his audience was already familiar with. Peter acknowledged that his two letters were written with the intent to remind: “This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder” (2Pe 3:1 ESV). If you teach something for the first time, you must explain everything in more detail. But for a review or a reminder, you just touch on high points, expecting your audience to recall the other pieces and parts that you taught. They should be able to fill in the gaps that you left out of the summary. Bible scholar John H. Walton succinctly explains this kind of communication:
High-context communication is communication that takes place between insiders in situations in which the communicator and audience share much in common. In such situations, less accommodation is necessary for effective communication to take place, and, therefore, much might be left unsaid that an outsider might need in order to fully understand the communication.
John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 18
In other words, for us to fully understand what Peter was communicating, we have to do our due diligence to position ourselves as best we can in the shoes of the insider. This means we have work to do in “reading between the lines” of this summarized teaching that they all knew so well. The challenge for us as outsiders (that the insiders of Peter’s day didn’t have) is recognizing our need to spend the extra time and effort to deduce the unsaid communication, the “gaps,” in Peter’s summary.
So not only do we have a language barrier (they spoke Greek, we English), a cultural barrier (they lived in 1st century Greco-Roman culture, we 21st century American culture), and a communication barrier (they were insiders, we outsiders), but we have yet another hurdle to overcome. On top of all this Peter crafted his letter as meditation literature, after the manner of his Hebrew writer predecessors. His immersion into the Hebrew prophets influenced his own writing style that invites meditation. I’ve learned recently thanks to The Bible Project how the Hebrew Scriptures were painstakingly composed in such a way as to be meditated upon. Meditation requires slowing down and spending time thinking over the words repeatedly before they yield their rich illumination (by the Spirit, of course). You can’t just read it one time and think you’ve got it all figured out. You don’t see everything all at once. Meditation literature unfolds insight gradually to your heart as a bud increasingly opens its hidden petals to reveal the flower.
Herein lies a weak side to through-the-Bible commentators. By pointing this out I’m not being judgmental of commentators; I’ve benefited much from their meticulous attention to the biblical texts. But with every strength there’s usually a weakness, and we just need to be aware of how those weaknesses can potentially contribute adversely to understanding a book of the Bible. A scholar’s goal of working through all the books of the Bible of necessity constrains the amount of time that can be spent in a book. In order to cover the Bible from end to end, one must move on to 2 Peter, then 1 John, 2 John, and so on. These time constraints, though, can work at cross purposes against the prolonged time needed for meditation. Without meditation on a book like 1 Peter, key insights can be overlooked, resulting in some shortsightedness as to the bigger picture. While commentators offer many profitable insights, meditation contributes additional layers of depth to our understanding. There are no shortcuts to meditation; it requires lots of unhurried time. It’s the slow simmering of a Crockpot, not a microwave oven. So what I’m about to share with you is the result of years of studying and meditating. These insights have come slowly and piece by piece to me over time. I will try to persuade you from Peter’s words, our text, why I think he’s saying that, but you’ll profit all the more if you examine it for yourself. Don’t just take what I say at face value just because I say it. Be a good Berean and search the Scriptures for yourself to see if these things be so.
As I’ve had the privilege over the years to hear from a multitude of voices from preachers and commentators, I get the impression that there’s only one way to understand 1 Peter chapter 1. The prominent theme as clear as the nose on one’s face is obviously Christ’s second coming. Even a few English Bible translations go so far as to interpret it that way. Listen to the popular NIV translation: “Therefore…set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming” (1Pe 1:13, italics added). The phrase “at his coming” is not in the original Greek text; it’s the translation trying to be helpful to interpret for you what they think Peter is communicating. Herein lies the final challenge we’ll need to grapple with, one that will occupy our attention going forward. We’ll carefully examine our modern reading of first Peter 1 with its bias toward Jesus’ second coming.
Like everyone who holds God’s inerrant word in high esteem, I desire to understand what Peter originally intended to communicate to his readers. Now, I’m not interested in presenting an alternate reading to be novel or clever. As disciples of Jesus, our goal is to know what Peter truly meant to his original audience. What was his point? We don’t want to take something that’s true of the Bible and overlay the text of the book that we’re studying so as to commandeer its original meaning. It’s a huge blessing to know the Bible as a whole, but the downside of that is that we can unwittingly import Bible concepts into the text that weren’t intended by the original author. I’ve done this many, many times. That’s what theologians call “eisegesis,” reading into the text. The opposite of this is exegesis, critically interpreting the biblical text to discover its intended meaning. Exegesis, literally meaning “to lead out of,” is our goal, that is, we allow the text itself to lead us to conclusions. What’s the truth of 1 Peter? That’s where we’re going. We’ll slow down and take time to dwell on these passages so we can feel the pulse of Peter’s heartbeat and see his burden clearly before our eyes. So my intention, God assisting, over the next several blogs is to discover the majesty and wonder of Jesus as our inheritance as presented to us in Peter’s letter.
Glory Unveiled: Discovering Jesus 