1 Peter 1:3

1 Peter 1:3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The gifts of God's grace to the believer, and the believer's relation to God, depend upon the prior relation between God and Christ. Hence it is as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and neither as the God of Israel, nor yet merely as our God and Father, that the Giver of all grace is praised. The term used here for blessed, or praised, which is so frequent also in the Old Testament, and in the New is applied only to God, occurs repeatedly as an affirmative e.g., who is blessed (Romans 1:25; Romans 9:5; 2 Corinthians 11:31). Standing here not in a relative clause, but at the opening of a section, it is rather an ascription, Blessed be the God, etc. It is another form of the same verb that is applied to Mary (Luke 1:28; Luke 1:42). A totally different word is used in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), where the idea expressed is that of happiness merely. It is possible that in this doxological outburst Peter is simply adapting to Christian use an old liturgical formula of the Jewish Church, or repeating one already familiar to the Christian Church (Weiss). The similarity of phrase, however, between Peter here and Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:3; Ephesians 1:3, is striking, and suggests to many that the former framed his ascription on the model of that of the latter. In Ephesians, as here, the doxology introduces an exhortation which reproduces its contents, although there the exhortation does not come to expression till chap. 1 Peter 4:1, while here it follows almost immediately (1 Peter 1:13).

which according to his much mercy begat us again unto a living hope. The particular grace for the bestowal of which God receives this ascription is hope. And that hope is described in respect at once of its origin and of its quality. It is due to God's regenerating grace. We have it only because He begat us again, a phrase used in the New Testament only by Peter, and by him only here and in 1 Peter 1:23, embodying, however, the same truth as is conveyed in somewhat different terms by Paul (Titus 3:5; Galatians 6:15), James (1 Peter 1:18), and John (1 John 3:9; 1 John 5:1), and reflecting the Master's own instructions to Nicodemus (John 3:3, etc.). It is to be taken, therefore, in the full sense of the new birth or begetting, and not to be diluted into the idea of rousing out of hopelessness. The direct past (begat, not hath begotten) is used, because the change from death to life in the individual is regarded as a definite, historical act, once for all accomplished, or perhaps because the regeneration of all is regarded as virtually effected in the historical act of Christ's resurrection. In the latter case Peter would be again in affinity with Paul, whose habit is to speak of all as dying in Christ's death and rising in Christ's resurrection (Romans 7:4; 2 Corinthians 5:14, etc.). This historical act of regeneration had its motive or standard in God's mercy, His love being defined as mercy in reference to the natural misery of its objects, and that mercy being further described, in reference to what it had to meet and what it bestowed, as much or great. Compare the Pauline idea of God's riches (Ephesians 2:4; Philippians 4:19). The hope which originated thus in God's act is living. With the birth comes the quality of life which distinguishes the believer's hope from all other hopes. These are at the best dim, uncertain longings, dead or dying surmises

‘Beads of morning

Strung on slender blades of grass,

Or a spider's web adorning

In a strait and treacherous pass.'

‘They die often before us and we live to bury them, and see our own folly and infelicity in trusting to them; but at the utmost they die with us when we die, and can accompany us no farther. But this hope answers expectation to the full, and much beyond it, and deceives no way but in that happy way of far exceeding it' (Leighton). Peter's fondness for these two ideas, the hope and the living (see the adjective again applied to the Word of God, 1 Peter 1:23, to Christ, and to believers, 1 Peter 2:4), has been often noticed. It is for bringing us into a region of this kind that he here praises God. The ‘ unto ' here does not express the end or aim of God's act (= begat us in order that we might have a living hope), but has rather the simple local sense. When we come into the new life we come into a condition or atmosphere of hope, into a ‘region bright with hope, a hope which, like the morning, spreads itself over earth and heaven' (Lillie).

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This admits of being connected immediately either with the begat us again the idea then being that the regeneration takes effect only through Christ's resurrection or with the preceding clause as a whole, in which case Christ's resurrection becomes the event by means of which we are brought by God's begetting into this new life of hope (so Calvin, Weiss, Huther, Alford, etc., substantially). Or, as the position of the adjective perhaps indicates, it may be connected with the term living (so Luther, Bengel, de Wette, Hofmann, etc.), the sense then being that the hope gets its quality of life through Christ's resurrection because He lives it cannot but survive and assert itself as a living and enlivening principle.