1 Peter 1:3

εὐλογητός, worthy to receive blessing is nearly always restricted to God in the LXX. while εὐλογημένος, one who receives blessing, is used of men. The same form of benediction occurs in Ephesians 1:3 and 2 Corinthians 1:3.

ὁ θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ τοῦ κυρίου κ.τ.λ. The words are used in the same sense in which our Lord said to Mary Magdalene, “I go to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God,” and again on the cross He cried, “My God, My God,” but this must not be exaggerated into implying that the Son was Himself a creature as the Arians taught.

κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. St Peter in his speech on the day of Pentecost shewed from prophecy as fulfilled in the resurrection and ascension that God had made Jesus both Lord and Christ, and it seems to have been the earliest and simplest form of Christian creed to say “Jesus is Lord” or “Jesus Christ is Lord.” St Peter couples himself with his readers and shews that Jewish and Gentile Christians are one as owning the same Lord.

ἔλεος is specially used of God’s mercy in admitting Gentiles to the covenant, cf. Romans 11:30-32; Romans 15:9; Ephesians 2:1-4.

ἀναγεννήσας. The word occurs nowhere else in the Greek Bible except in 1 Peter 1:23, and as a Western reading in John 3:5, where in the preceding passage our Lord had said γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν. St Paul describes those who are in Christ as καινὴ κτίσις (2 Corinthians 5:17), and in Titus 3:5 he speaks of the “laver of regeneration” (παλιγγενεσία).

St Peter regards the resurrection of Jesus as having ushered in a new life of hope for mankind, reversing the sentence of doom. As members of the Church of Christ they enter into a new order of existence as children of God.

ἐλπίδα ζῶσαν, as members of Christ we are here and now “inheritors of the kingdom of heaven” but we are not yet in full possession of our inheritance. We have only the “earnest” or first instalment of it. But we have “the hope of glory” and this hope is not like the old Messianic hope of the Jews, which had become languid and conventional. Our hope is full of growth and vitality.