1 Peter 1:13–25

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Dean, School of Christian Studies, University of Mobile

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1 Peter 1:13–25

A Life of Holiness (13–21)
“Prepare your minds for action” points to girding the loins. “Girding” involved catching up the slack in one’s robe and tucking it into one’s belt in order to be able to run or work better. In modern times, a man takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeves. Loose thinking makes for loose living. “Self-controlled” refers to a calm, cool and collected spirit.

Peter continued with a call to live a life in keeping with God’s grace (14). Having vowed to obey Christ, a Christian must no longer give in to the desires that drove him or her before he or she came to know God in Christ. The word translated “conform” suggests assuming an outward appearance that neither comes from nor represents one’s true nature. No Christian is to masquerade as an unbeliever. Instead believers must show themselves outwardly as what they really are on the inside. “Holy” came to mean morally pure, but its first meaning is “different” or “dedicated to God.” The realm in which Christians must publicly demonstrate their difference is “in all you do,” i.e. the whole of life. The author gives various motives for dedicated living — the return of Christ (13), the character of God (15), the impartiality of God (17) and the price paid to redeem believers (18).

In 1:17, Peter made the point that those who call God “Father” ought not presume on His fatherly nature. He judges all without respect of persons, i.e. no one gets special favors. Because Christians know this, they should spend their pilgrimages on earth in “reverent fear.”

From an empty way of life — one with no meaning and purpose — God redeemed Christians. In ancient times, “redeemed” referred to the payment of a price to free a slave or prisoner of war. The price God “paid” for the Christian was the blood (a symbol of death) of Christ. To ask to whom God paid this price is wrongheaded. Men who died in the American Revolutionary War paid the price for freedom but paid it to no one. God did what had to be done to save, no matter what it cost Him. Christ, in turn, is compared to a spotless lamb (cf. Lev. 22:17–25) — perhaps the Passover lamb of Exodus 12:1–13 or perhaps Peter thought of Isaiah 53:7. That Christ would substitute as the sacrificial lamb was determined before the foundations of the universe were laid. The cross was not Plan B that God fell back on when Plan A fouled up; it was a well-established counsel from eternity past.

A Life of Love (22–25)
In the original language, the text reads, “Now that you have purified your souls,” the soul being the self, the whole person. It is purified by obedience to the truth of the gospel with the intent of producing love for other Christians. Peter had in mind love with distinctive qualities. In 1:22, the apostle used two words for “love.” “Love for your brothers” translates philadelphia, the warm affection held by those who are brothers by natural birth — or in this case, by spiritual birth. “Love one another deeply” translates agape, love without regard to merit, self-sacrificial love that seeks only to give.

Peter added three qualifiers that expanded the distinctive nature of Christian love. He called for “sincere” — literally “unhypocritical” — love, void of all pretence and sham. “With all your hearts” indicates a love that is not an assumed pose but a reality. And he called for Christians to love “deeply,” literally “with full intensity, at full strength, or in an all-out manner.” Believers must strain every muscle of the heart to love like this.

Christians are motivated to such love by their salvation experience, which Peter described under two figures. First, “purified” suggests an inner cleansing of the life that took place not by water baptism but by obedience to the truth, the Word of God. Second, they were born again through the Word of God. This was Peter’s way of stating what Jesus presented in the parable of the sower, the seed and the soils (Matt. 13:1–9). God’s instrument for salvation is His Word. The quotation from Isaiah 40:6–8 contrasts the permanence of the Word of God with the temporariness of everything else.