1 Peter 2:1-10

INTRODUCTORY EXHORTATION FOUNDED UPON THE BENEDICTION

1 Peter 1:13 to 1 Peter 2:10

13–25. 13  The new life of hope, faith and privilege to which you have been begotten involves corresponding responsibilities on your part. You must gird up the loins of your mind in readiness for active service, have all your faculties under perfect command, and set your hope upon God’s favour which is ever being brought to you in the progressive unveiling to you of Jesus Christ. 14  Remember that as God’s children you are pledged to hearken to His voice and follow His guidance. You must not follow the fashion of your old heathen days, when you had no rule of life beyond your own erratic impulses. 15  You have been called by the Holy One, therefore you yourselves also must shew yourselves to be holy in all your dealings. 16  The ideal which God has laid down for you is nothing less than to imitate Him. 17  You must not presume upon your sonship (any more than might the Jews). In addressing God as “Our Father” you must remember that He is also your Judge. Under the New Covenant as under the Old, He will shew no favouritism to the children of the covenant if their works prove them to be unworthy of favour. Do not then be over confident or reckless. In all your sojourning as strangers in the world your dealings with those around you must be regulated by a sense of responsibility, by a reverent fear of being untrue to your high position. 18  You are God’s ransomed people rescued (like Israel from Egypt) from the slavery of your old vain heathen life, a slavery intensified by the inherited instincts and habits of past centuries of ancestors. Remember how much your deliverance cost. It was no perishable ransom of silver or gold. 19  It was nothing less than the inestimably precious Blood of Christ, who is our true Paschal Lamb, without inherent blemish or external stain of sin, 20  a victim designated by God before the foundation of the world, but only manifested in the fulness of time at the end of the long series of periods of preparation for the sake of you Gentiles who 21  through Him are faithful as resting upon God who raised Him from the dead and crowned Him with glory. God Himself then is the centre and object not only of your faith but also of your hope. 22  In your conversion and your Baptism you profess, by virtue of the obedience which springs from your possession of the truth, to have purified and consecrated your souls to enter into the spirit of your sonship by unfeigned love from the heart for your brethren in Christ. Fulfil that vow of consecration then by loving one another, not fitfully but with strenuous and steady earnestness. 23  A living and abiding love such as that is alone consistent with the new life into which you have been begotten. Your character, your love, ought to conform to the seed from which you are sprung, and that seed is no transient, perishable thing; it is incorruptible, it is the Word of God who liveth and abideth for ever. 24  For (to apply to you the prophet’s message assuring exiled Israel of the certainty of God’s promise of deliverance despite the weakness of all human hopes) the natural life of heathenism is perishable like grass, its brightness and attractiveness is as transient as that of flowers, it soon withers and wastes, 25  but the word of Jehovah abideth for ever. And that word, originally spoken to Israel, is the message of good tidings which was extended to you Gentiles.

1 Peter 2:1-10. GENERAL EXHORTATION CONTINUED

1  If then such sincerity and strenuousness of love is demanded in the new life imparted by the word of the living and abiding God, you must put away everything which is inconsistent with such love, every kind and form of malice whether secret or open, all guile and hypocrisy, all evil-speaking. 2  If, as you profess, you have been born again you must have the spirit of little children, nay of new-born babes at their mothers’ breasts. 3  If (as the Psalmist says) you have once tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is, you must crave for the milk which cannot be adulterated, milk to nourish the rational or spiritual element in your being, in order that thereby you may grow unto full salvation. 4  You Gentiles (are not merely, as I said, the new “Dispersion”), you are brought in as “Proselytes,” joined not only to a holy people but to the manifested Christ who is their Head. He is the stone which men rejected, but which with God is chosen and precious, 5  and moreover a living stone, in union with whom you yourselves also as living stones are gradually being built up (not to form an earthly Temple in which the Most High can never truly dwell), but to form a spiritual shrine intended for a holy work of priesthood to offer up (not material but) spiritual sacrifices, acts of self-oblation to God for the service of the community and as such acceptable to God through Jesus Christ as your Mediator and Head. 6  This is no new idea; it stands thus in writing in the words of Isaiah, “Behold I lay in Zion a stone that is elect, a corner-stone that is held precious, and he that believeth on it shall not be put to shame.” 7  Faith, therefore, is the condition laid down by the prophet for being united with the corner-stone, and having fulfilled that condition it is to you that the “preciousness” of that stone belongs (though it was laid in Zion and you are for the most part Gentiles). 8  But for such as are disbelieving the prophet’s words are also true. The judgment of worldly authorities who claim to be builders has been reversed. Christ, the stone whom they rejected, has become the head of the corner, and for them He is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, for they stumble at the word of God, rebelling against it. Yet even this stumbling, this rebellion, is no thwarting of God’s purpose! It is part of His loving plan (to make room for the inclusion of you Gentiles that ultimately the Jews may be brought back) (cf. Romans 11:11). 9  But all the titles of honour addressed to Israel of old now belong to you Christians. You are a chosen race, a body of priests in the service of the great King, a holy nation, a people whom God has made His own possession (as Malachi said) in order that you may tell forth the excellences of Him who called you out of the darkness of heathenism into His marvellous light. 10  Aforetime you were not a (chosen) people but now you are the people of God. Then you were not (special) recipients of God’s mercy but now that mercy has been extended to you in your conversion.