1 Peter 1:6-9

Only now does Peter introduce the sufferings of his readers. Before naming these, he has made the bright realities of their privilege pass in rapid vision before their troubled eye. He has led them to look at the hope which is in them, and the future which is before them. And when he comes now to speak or the ills they had to face, he has more to say of their feelings than of their temptations. With quick and tender touch he handles their afflictions, softening their sharpness by disclosing their object. Wisely and with delicate skill he so shapes his statement as to bring the light of the future in upon the darkness of the present, and to make the burdens of the time an argument for joy. Leighton has caught correctly, if not completely, the intention of the paragraph, expressing it also with his own devout simplicity. ‘The tame motives,' he says, ‘cannot beget contrary passions in the soul, therefore the apostle reduces the mixture of sorrowing and rejoicing that is usual in the heart of a Christian to the different causes of both, and shows which of the two hath the stronger cause, and therefore is always predominant. His scope is to stir up and strengthen spiritual joy in his afflicted brethren; and therefore, having set the matter of it before them in the preceding verses, he now applies it, and expressly opposes it to their distresses.'