1 Peter 1:2

elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father The word "elect" or chosen belongs, as already stated, to 1 Peter 1:1, but the English sufficiently represents the meaning of the Greek. The word and the thought that the disciples of Christ are what they are by the election or choice of God, characterises the whole teaching of the New Testament. Here there is the personal interest of noting that the word is prominent in the Gospel of St Mark, which we have seen reason to connect closely with St Peter's influence, and in that portion of our Lord's discourses recorded in it (Mark 13:20; Mark 13:22; Mark 13:27), to which the wars and tumults of Palestine must at this time have been drawing attention. Comp. also the prominence of the thought and of the verbs for "choosing" in John 13:18; John 15:16; John 15:19. The "elect" had, like the "saints" (Acts 9:13), become almost a synonyme for Christians (2 Timothy 2:10; Titus 1:1). And this choice is referred to the "foreknowledge" of God. The word hovers between the meaning of a mere prevision of the future, and the higher sense in which "knowing" means "loving" and "approving," as in 1 Corinthians 8:3; Galatians 4:9, and probably Romans 8:29; Romans 11:2. The noun occurs in the New Testament only here and in St Peter's speech in Acts 2:23, and is so far evidence of continuity of character and thought. In what way the thought of man's freedom to will was reconcileable with that of God's electing purpose the writers of the New Testament did not care to discuss. They felt, we may believe, instinctively, half unconsciously, that the problem was insoluble, and were content to accept the two beliefs, which cannot logically be reconciled. In the words "the foreknowledge of God the Father," we find, perhaps, the secret of their acceptance of this aspect of the Divine Government. The choice and the knowledge were not those of an arbitrary sovereign will, capricious as are the sovereigns of earth, in its favours and antipathies, seeking only to manifest its power, but of a Father whose tender mercies were over all His works, and who sought to manifest His love to all His children. From that stand-point the "choice" of some to special blessings was compatible with perfect equity to all. It should be noticed that in Romans 8:29 we have "foreknowledge" as a step in the Divine order prior to predestination, but it may well be questioned whether either Apostle had present to his thoughts the logical solution presented by the Arminian theory, that God, foreseeing the characters of men as they would have been, if not predestined, then predestined them accordingly. On that theory the question may well be asked, What made them such as God thus foreknew? The difficulty is but thrown further back, and it is wiser to accept the conclusion that the problem is insoluble, and that the language of Scripture issues in the antinomy of apparently contradictory propositions.

through sanctification of the Spirit The word for "sanctification," for which, perhaps, consecration would be a better equivalent, is used eight times by St Paul, once in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 12:14), here, and not elsewhere in the New Testament. Grammatically the words admit of the interpretation which sees in them the sanctification of the human spirit (genitive of the object), but the juxtaposition of the word Spirit with that of the Father and with Christ, is decisive in favour of the explanation which sees in the construction the genitive of the subject, or of the agent, and finds in the sanctification wrought by the Spirit the region in which the foreknowledge of God finds its completion.

unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ The clause is co-ordinate with that which precedes it, pointing to the end of the election as that points to the sphere in which it worked and the means by which it was to be accomplished. In "obedience" we have the active human side of the result, in the "sprinkling" the Divine side of pardon and acceptance. The word for "sprinkling" is found elsewhere only in Hebrews 12:24, where, as in this place, it refers definitely to the narrative of Exodus 24:8. Moses had sprinkled Israel according to the flesh with the blood of oxen, as being "the blood of the covenant," that by contact with which they were brought within the covenant of which he was the mediator (Galatians 3:19). In like manner, in St Peter's words, believers in Christ are brought within the new covenant by the mystical, spiritual sprinkling on their souls and spirits of the blood of Jesus, and for that sprinkling God had chosen them with a purpose supremely wise to which no time-limits could be assigned. The same thought, it may be noted, is expressed in St John's words, that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).

Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied The combination of "grace" and "peace" may be noted as a probable instance of St Peter's adopting the very phraseology of St Paul, as he found it in the letters with which 2 Peter 3:16 (assuming the genuineness of that Epistle) shews him to have been acquainted. In "peace" we have the old Hebrew formula of salutation (Matthew 10:12-13): in "grace" (χάρις) probably the substitution of the more definite Christian thought for the "joy" or "greeting" (χαίρειν) which, as in Acts 15:23; James 1:1, was the customary opening formula of Greek epistles. The addition of "be multiplied" is peculiar to the two Epistles of St Peter (2 Peter 1:2), and to the Epistle of St Jude (1 Peter 1:2), which presents so many points of contact with the second of those two.