1 Peter 4:14

‘If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you; because that which is of glory and the Spirit of God rests on you.'

For if it is for the name of Christ that they are misused and reproached and persecuted then they can take it as an indication that they are truly blessed, because it will be an indication that they are indwelt by the glory of God, and have the Spirit of God resting on them, as was promised to the Coming One of old (Isaiah 11:2; compare Acts 2:1). From the beginning persecution had arisen because men followed ‘the Christ' (Matthew 10:22; Mark 13:13; Luke 21:17; and compare Mark 9:41). That was the cause of the persecution in Acts 7-9. It was what differentiated them from others.

‘That which is of glory.' Peter may have in mind here the glory of the transfiguration (2 Peter 1:15) combined with the promise of His coming in glory (1 Peter 4:13), and thus be meaning ‘the Christ of glory rests on you'. Or he may have in mind the Shekinah glory which originally rested on the Tabernacle and Temple, and which now abides in their hearts because they are His, as it originally accompanied His people through the wilderness (Exodus 40:34). In that case the thought is that ‘the very glory of God Himself rests on you' (compare 2 Corinthians 6:18). Or he may be signifying the glory of the Holy Spirit as revealed at Pentecost in the flaming tongues of fire (Acts 2:1), at work in them through His power (2 Corinthians 3:18). Indeed he may have included all. The glory of the triune God through the Spirit of God would rest upon them.

‘That which is of glory and the Spirit of God.' There is a bringing together here of the ideas of ‘the manifested glory of God' and of ‘the active Spirit of God', the one resting on His people the other active through His people, which is elsewhere in mind when Christians are seen as the Temple of the Holy Spirit. They are the evidence of God's glorious presence in the world, and the means by which He exercises His power. And indeed it is by the Spirit of the Lord that His people grow from one degree of glory to another as they behold and reflect the glory of Christ in their lives (2 Corinthians 3:18). They are to be the means by which God is glorified (Matthew 5:16).

‘Rests on you.' Compare Isaiah 11:2 LXX, ‘And the Spirit of God shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness shall fill him, the spirit of the fear of God.'

Some translate as ‘the Spirit of glory and of God' The above still applies.