Commentary on 1 Peter 1:17-23

One of the most striking features of 1 Peter 1:25 is its reiteration of God as a heavenly Father and Jesus as the one who radiates the righteousness of God. God’s attributes are draped in the all-enveloping shroud of the death and resurrection of Jesus: There is no doubt about the impartiality of God. The salvation, holiness, and love of God are central faith tenets or principles Christians should live by and model in the world. So, Peter exhorts Christians never to stop invoking God, who has no favorites but loves all who call upon his name.

Peter ensured that the future life of Christians would remain forever at the center of his message’s theological attention. In the previous verses, Peter exhorted Christians to view their suffering as a mark of distinction for those destined for a future with Jesus. In 1 Peter 1:17–23, the apostle Peter cautioned Christians to remember the impartiality of God as a heavenly Father who shows no favors but loves all people equally. However, God’s impartiality does not negate irresponsible Christian living, and as such, believers must not take God’s love for granted by living immoral and unethical lives. 

God, as the Father of Jesus Christ and our Father, calls on all Christians to live up to the name of God through faithfulness and obedience to him (1 Peter 1:17). God’s impartial love and grace were demonstrated in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the one who lived in obedience to God. It is this assurance and firm foundation that Peter’s audience was called to live under; consequently, the 21st century is included in the message of this Petrine epistle. 

As a holy and gracious community of God’s children who invoke God as the judge of all humanity, ancient and modern Christians may feel like foreigners in a hostile world, but that does not signal the absence of God (1 Peter 1:17). Embedded in Peter’s message is a reminder that Christians are unique beneficiaries of all that God did in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As such, Christians are not just loved by God, but they are privileged to be part of God’s mystery, a mystery that will be revealed in the parousia, or the second coming, of Jesus. The key for Christians is to live faithfully and in love with everybody in a hostile environment and a socially complicated world. 

Many times, Christians are tempted to think that social dislocation is a punishment from God; instead, the presence of the one who cares deeply is felt in seasons of pain, being ostracized, excluded, and at most, isolated. It is in painful moments and out-of-place ancestral traditions that mature faith is incubated (verse 18). The parenthood of God needs to be explained, especially in a world where abusive parents do not live up to their social, moral, and ethical roles. I would present that in this passage, God’s role points to a unique creative power of God, whose relationship with all humanity points to an earthly and eternal heavenly relationship. God weeps when vulnerable people, children, women, and men are abused. 

Peter affirms this unique divine role of God, the one who sent Jesus Christ to ransom lost humanity from traditional, religious, and cultural slavery. To be counted as a beloved child of God signifies that one has a home in God’s heart, because the gift of the precious blood of Christ was destined before the foundation of the world, so that faith, love, and hope can only be set on God (1 Peter 1:18–21). Therefore, to know the blood of Jesus is to be drawn into the compassionate love of the Trinity, an avalanche of flooded grace, mercy, and forgiveness. This passage, I am arguing, represents the move toward imitating Christ’s humanity demonstrated in the New Testament. 

I would also argue that in the Gospels, Jesus did not call people into a Christian Church, but first and foremost, he humanized them. It is in imitating Jesus’s way and his love for all humanity that believers are brought into the embrace of God. Jesus loved and cared for humanity, especially the vulnerable, religious leaders, the hungry, the poor, the sick, and all who were demon-possessed. In one word, we can say that Jesus had the gracious gift of empathy. While Jesus worked with Jewish symbols, he also transformed them. Similarly, the Global Christian Church must first seek to empathize with all people, love people without strings attached, and deeply care for one another using the heart of Jesus Christ. 

All cultures are complex and complicated, but Christians should see their worldview through the lens of Jesus the Messiah. The life of Jesus and his death on the cross open new ways for cultures, organizations, and individuals to appropriate the holiness of Jesus. I have emphasized that Jesus was born, raised, and nurtured in the ancient Jewish cultural and religious world, but his death and resurrection brought forth a new world order of love for all people. It was and still is a world of love, faith, and hope (1 Peter 1: 22). 

Salvation history is God’s way of bringing humanity under his orbit, and Peter’s comment on “the Word of God that endures or stands forever” calls on Christians to stand under God’s everlasting promise (1 Peter 1: 22–25; Isaiah 40:7–8). The Church as we know it might change and at times rationalize the Word of God, but God will defend God’s Word and shatter all the evils of humanity. Christian believers should never stop loving their fellow human beings; instead, they should be steadfast and stay rooted in the transformational power of the Word of God. 

In our present journey of trials, political upheavals, ideologies, cancers, and rationalization of the Gospel, Christians are covered and shielded in the eternal hope and compassionate love of God, our heavenly Father; Jesus Christ, our Lord; and the power of the Holy Spirit. We as believers are the good news, and we must always continue to immerse ourselves in the living, precious blood of Jesus. The apostle Peter calls on Christians to see the gospel as it is, from God’s perspective. And that is the good news that Jesus announced from the beginning as humanity became the ecclesia of God.