1 Peter 1:22-25

The exhortation to brotherly love, which is next introduced, is not without a living connection with the preceding. The circumspect walk which has been enjoined is a walk such as befits those who are travelling toward a home which it would be misery to miss, and are conscious of what it cost to redeem them. But a walk so recommended leads naturally to brotherly love. If they are sojourners together in an alien community, all the less should they think of falling out by the way. If they are redeemed together by the same great price, all the more should they take a common interest in the household of faith. The terms in which this counsel is given contain nothing to warrant the supposition that Peter had to deal with dissensions which had burst out between Jew and Gentile in these scattered churches. The trying circumstances of the churches may have been sufficient occasion for the counsel. Times of fear and threatening develop latent selfishness, and provoke hardness of feeling toward others. The injunction, however, is not merely to brotherly love, but, as if that might be taken for granted as existent, to a brotherly love of a particular kind and measure. As he has already urged those who were born anew into hope to set their hope intensely on its proper object (1 Peter 1:13), so now he urges those whom grace inspired with the new spirit of brotherly love to let it be earnest and unreserved. And this duty, like the previous duties, is shown to rise naturally out of the prior gift of God, His gift of a new life through the great deed of regeneration.