PETER’S EPISTLES: PREPARING FOR ETERNITY

I. Chosen Of God To Obey Him

(1 Peter 1:1-2)

I. Introduction

A. Before the Apostle Peter began to minister for the Lord in the Church, his outlook was impacted by Christ’s prophecy in John 21:18-19 that he would be crucified for Christ. Eternity was thus always in Peter’s mind.

B. We study Peter’s epistles that focus on preparing for eternity, and in 1 Peter 1:1-2, Peter taught that we believers were chosen by God to obey Him in our lives in preparation for eternity. We view it for our insight:

II. Chosen Of God To Obey Him, 1 Peter 1:1-2.

A. Peter’s opening salutation in 1 Peter 1:1-2 KJV states that Peter’s Christian readers were chosen by the foreknowledge of God the Father unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. This statement is interpreted by Calvinists to mean that God sovereignly chose Peter’s readers to believe the Gospel of Christ that they might be justified where God did not choose those who would go to hell to believe to be saved.

B. However, viewing Peter’s opening salutation in its historical and literary contexts reveals that Peter did not there teach that God chose certain people to believe the Gospel, but that God selected those He foreknew would believe in Christ to have a holy walk in their Christian lives after they had been justified (as follows):

1. Peter introduced his first epistle by identifying himself and declaring that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ who was writing to “the strangers scattered through” (KJV) Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, five of Asia Minor’s Roman provinces, 1 Peter 1:1; Bible Know. Com., N. T., p. 839.

2. The words “strangers scattered” translate the Greek noun diaspora, a technical term that “referred to Jews who were separated from their homeland” (U. B. S. Grk. N. T., 1966, p. 791; B. K. C., N. T., loc. cit.).

3. That Peter would here write to Christian Hebrews is also supported by Paul’s report in Galatians 2:7-9:

a. Paul had reported that when he went to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles, they realized that he had been sent to disciple Gentiles where Peter had been sent to disciple the Hebrew people, Gal. 2:7-8.

b. Thus, Peter, James and John, the inner group of Christ’s original twelve apostles, formally gave Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship to go to the Gentiles while they went to the Hebrews, Galatians 2:9.

4. Consequently, Peter’s word use in 1 Peter must be understood in a Hebrew context, what we explain:

a. Peter’s readers were “elect” according to God’s “foreknowledge,” chosen by God the Father based upon the fact that He foreknew them, 1 Peter 1:2a.

b. They were “elect” through means of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit, that sanctification referring to the positional sanctification that occurs when one believes in Christ and is born again, cf. Titus 3:5. Thus, God’s selection of Peter’s Hebrew believing readers occurred in connection with God’s foreknowledge of their being born again through the Holy Spirit’s regenerating and sanctifying ministry.

c. Peter’s readers were then elect “unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,” 1 Peter 1:2b. This “obedience” and “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” when read by Hebrew Christians in Peter’s day would lead them to recall the only other place in all of Scripture where people were sprinkled with blood – “at the inauguration of the Mosaic Covenant” in Exodus 24:8; Bible Know. Com., N. T., loc. cit. At that event that occurred at Mount Sinai right after God’s giving of the Law to Moses, the people of Israel had said that they would obey the Law, so Moses had then taken some of the blood of the sacrificed oxen and sprinkled Israel’s people with it, Exodus 24:1-8.

d. In application, then, Peter’s Hebrew Christian readers understood that he meant to tell them that just as their forefathers in the Exodus at Mount Sinai had agreed to obey God’s Law, what was ratified by their being sprinkled with the sacrificial blood of oxen, now they had been sprinkled with the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God (1 Peter 1:19; John 1:29), for a holy walk in the power of God the Holy Spirit!

e. The near context of 1 Peter 1:13-16 in particular emphasizes this same idea: Peter’s believing Hebrew readers were chosen by God the Father to be His “obedient children,” called to be “holy,” that is, separate from sin, just as God the Father Himself is holy, separate from sin!

Lesson: In his opening greeting, Peter revealed that God the Father had foreknown His Hebrew Christian readers to be believers, so the Father had chosen them to live holy lives once they were sanctified by faith in Christ Jesus.

Application: Since God the Father has foreknown that we would trust in Christ so that He chose us to live as His obedient children, may we obey the Lord and live lives that are separate from sin just as He is separate from sin.