14 July 2025

Simon Peter and the kingdom we inherit.

1 Peter 1.1-9.

Simon Peter wrote a few letters before his death under Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus in the 60s. We have two of ’em in the New Testament—one which he wrote to the Christians of what is now Türkiye, and another which he wrote to Christians in general.

Some commentators think he wrote his letters under persecution, and some think he wrote ’em before. And of course that’s seriously gonna influence the way we interpret the letter. When Peter writes about “the testing of your faith” in verse 7 of today’s passage, we’re gonna wonder whether he’s writing about the usual difficulties of daily life in a largely pagan culture… or whether he’s writing about full-on tribulation, as the Romans tried to round up people whom they thought were terrorists. Nero blamed the Great Fire of Rome in 64 on them, and hunted them down like ICE hunts immigrants; to put ’em in island concentration camps like he did John, or to execute them like he eventually did Peter.

I mean, 1 Peter can be applicable in both situations—under life’s usual trials, or under a fascist purge. Most scriptures are flexible like that. But we don’t know which of the two the west Asian Christians were going through, and I’m gonna presume Peter wrote it before the persecutions… otherwise there’d be way more about persecution in the letter.

Now, some Christians insist it had to have been written during persecution, ’cause Peter talks so much about the second coming of Jesus. But that’s because Peter expected the second coming to happen in his lifetime. He was off by a few millennia, but he didn’t know that. All he knew was he was right there when Jesus got raptured into heaven, and the two men told him and the Eleven he coming back in the same way. Ac 1.11 He saw Jesus get transfigured. He knew this future kingdom of Christ is coming. He was excited about it! We should be excited about it! So this comes out in his letter. Doesn’t take persecution to bring it out of you.

1 Peter 1.1-9 KWL
1Peter, apostle of Christ Jesus,
to the “foreign” elect of the Diaspora—
of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Asia Minor, and Bithynia.
2By God the Father’s foreknowledge,
in the Holy Spirit’s holiness,
into obedience—
and the sprinkling of Christ Jesus’s blood—
may grace to you, and peace, multiply!
3Blessed are you God,
father of our Master, Christ Jesus.
By his great mercy he makes us born again,
into a living hope
through Christ Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.
4Born again into an inheritance,
unspoiled, untainted, unfading,
under guard in the heavens for you all.
5And you are guarded
by God’s power, through your faith,
for the salvation he prepared,
to be revealed in the End Time.
6In that, you can jump for joy—
for now, briefly, it’s necessary to grieve
from our various temptations.
7Thus the testing of your faith,
which is more precious than gold,
which perishes through fire,
might be found proven,
to the praise, glory, and honor
at the revelation of Christ Jesus.
8You don’t see him;
you still love him.
You can’t look upon him just now,
and you believers still jump
for inexpressible and magnificent joy
9at receiving the outcome of your faith:
Salvation of your souls.

Written to the Diaspora.

John, James, and Peter addressed their letters to the Diaspora, meaning the Jews who lived in different cities, usually in Jewish communities, all over the Roman Empire. Most of the time I’ve heard commentators claim these were the Jews whom the Assyrian Empire and neo-Babylonian Empire had dragged into captivity and scattered all over their empires. Thing is, those empires were located exclusively in west Asia; they’d never expanded to Africa or Europe. (The Persian Empire had tried, and failed; the later Umayyad Empire succeeded.) Yet Diaspora Jews were in both Africa and Europe. There was a huge Jewish community in Egypt; Paul found Jews in Macedonia, Greece, and Rome. Plenty of Jews had voluntarily left their homeland, to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and the Diaspora included them too.

The reason the apostles addressed them, is ’cause the ancient Christians were trying to spread Christianity through them. These were the guys with Messiah in their cultural background, which made it way easier to explain Jesus to them. That’s why Paul first went to Pharisee synagogues in the cities he visited, preached Jesus; and if they weren’t receptive, tried sharing him with the local gentiles. I suspect other apostles did the very same thing—partly because Jesus is their Messiah, and somewhat because they still had the old anti-gentile hangups they grew up with.

But just because the apostles addressed the Diaspora does not mean they didn’t expect gentiles to read these letters too. Gentiles joined the churches and became Christian. Peter was the guy who’d first shared the gospel with gentiles, Ac 10 as the Holy Spirit made it clear God wants the gentiles saved same as the Jews. The Jews were God’s chosen people, or ἐκλεκτοῖς/eklektís, “selected ones” or “elect”—and now gentiles had joined that group, for God has chosen them too. The Jews had been sprinkled with the blood of ritual sacrifices, Ex 24.7-8 and now Christians had been sprinkled, so to speak, with Jesus’s blood, and washed clean of our sins by it.

Peter starts with the usual Christian “grace and peace” greeting—the typical Roman greeting of χαίρειν/hérein, “hello,” which Christians subtly swapped with the similar-sounding word χάρις/háris, “peace”; and the typical Jewish greeting of שָׁלוֹם/šalóm, “peace,” but translated into Greek, εἰρήνη/eiríni. He also starts with a traditional Jewish blessing, “Blessed [are you] God,” similar to בָּר֨וּךְ אַתָּ֤ה אֲדֹנִ֗י/barúkh atáh Adonái, like we see when Jews say grace. The KJV has “Blessed [be],” but I switched that to “Blessed [are you],” because proper custom is to bless God directly.

And from there we get to why God’s blessed—look at all this awesome stuff he’s done for us. We’re gonna inherit his kingdom! Jesus is coming back, and bringing it with him! Yeah, we don’t see it yet; yeah, we gotta wait for it, and put up with the usual suffering we undergo in our fallen world. We gotta keep resisting temptation, we gotta stretch our faith and keep growing it, and grow in it. And that’s why, even though Jesus hasn’t yet returned, we can still praise him, rejoice in him, love him, and follow him: We know he’s coming. We know we’re getting saved.

“Whom having not seen.”

The KJV translates verse 8, “Whom having not seen,” in describing Jesus. I have a bone to pick with that translation, mainly because of the way I’ve seen Christians, particularly cessationists, spin it. The Greek verb isn’t past tense; it’s aorist, a verb tense we don’t have in English, which is why tends to get mistranslated as past tense. It’s not past, present, nor future; it’s timeless, so you gotta look at other time-based verbs in the sentence to figure out when it happens. The other verbs in this sentence? Present tense. Which is why I translated it, “You don’t see him.”

The problem with a past-tense translation of this verse, is you’ll get preachers claiming, “These Christians had never seen Jesus.” And no, we can’t say that, because we have no idea whether they’ve ever seen Jesus. Peter had no idea either. Other apostles—including other members of the Twelve!—were in those provinces, proclaiming Jesus and leading churches, and they’d seen Jesus. More than 500 people had seen Jesus after he rose from the dead, 1Co 15.6 and they were all over the place. And that’s not counting people whom Jesus appeared to later, like Paul.

These preachers try to claim the people Peter wrote to, had faith in Jesus despite never seeing him; despite never firsthand witnessing a miracle. Again, we can’t say that, because we’ve no idea if they never saw a miracle. And since most cessationists claim God turned off the miracles only after the New Testament was complete, why on earth would they say people who lived in the days of an incomplete bible, never saw a miracle? Well, because they’re trying to relate those folks to us—and they want us to believe we’ve never seen a miracle, just like they believe they’ve never seen a miracle. Even though lots of us totally have. Including a surprising number of the miracle-deniers.

Peter’s point was not to say his readers had never seen Jesus; it’s only to say we don’t currently see Jesus. He’s not on earth; he’s in heaven at his Father’s right hand. Cl 3.1 He might visit earth from time to time, and encourage or commission us Christians; but he’s not yet returned in power to rule the world. There’s a bit of distance between him and us; that’s why he had to send us the Holy Spirit, Jn 16.7 and there is no distance between us and the Spirit. You wanna talk with, and hear from, God? He’s right here.

And if the Spirit deems it necessary for us to see Jesus, we will.