Category Archives: 1 & 2 Peter

Really Glad About This Article

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I’m pretty excited about this new resource just added to DG’s Resource Library. It’s excellent content that has been inaccessible on the web. The process to get this up included transcribing the original document into electronic format (contracted out), translating it into HTML (including the 72 hyperlinked footnotes), inserting the images for the content that’s irreproducible otherwise.

Here’s the post. Below’s the body copy…

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If you want to understand the message of 1 Peter,
or how hope in God’s grace affects our command to love,
or if you just want to see a lucid example of careful exegetical method. . .

let me commend to you John Piper’s 1980 article for Cambridge’s New Testament Studies: “Hope as the Motivation of Love: 1 Peter 3:9–12.”

A new web version has just been added to our Resource Library, full of the original British –ours, German lines, Greek inserts, and 72 footnotes (now hyperlinked).

Read the full article.

Here’s a snapshot of the work:

Method

In the long run it is the mutually correcting interaction between detailed analyses of particular texts (at the risk of conceptual myopia) and more general syntheses of an author’s total thought (at the risk of superficiality) which will yield the most balanced and true picture of how he may conceive of ethical motivation (or anything else).

Outline

  1. Introduction: the problem at hand
  2. The motif of hope as it’s grounded in the work of Christ and functions to motivate Christian behavior.
  3. 1 Peter 3:9–12 considered in detail.
  4. The conclusion as a result of points 2 and 3: general synthesis of the author’s thought and detailed analysis of a paritcular text.

Conclusion

Rather, when we hold the two parts together [points 2 and 3 above] a more balanced and true picture emerges of how 1 Peter aims to motivate enemy–love. . . .

Instead (taking the whole message of 1 Peter into account) we will recognize in our own ill will a failure to “hope fully” in the grace of Christ (1:13) who by bearing our own sins in his body (2:24) has brought us home to God (3:18) — our faithful creator (4:19). We will admit that not legalistic moral effort but a change of heart is demanded. To that end we will “be sober unto prayer” (4:7), and girding up our minds (1:13) will direct our attention to the reality of the Lord’s kindness in the living word (2:2, 3; 1:23). Thus by the grace of God we may experience a renewal of hope so that in all sincerity and earnestness (1:22) we can speak and act toward our enemy from a hopeful, humble and loving heart that truly desires his blessedness.

Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen, But Stand on the Shoulders of the Prophets and Apostles

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Then I saw in my dream that the Interpreter  took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it always, casting much water upon it to quench it: yet did the fire burn higher and hotter. . .

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, 75ff.

Many people have considered Christian faith an easy thing, and not a few have given it a place among the virtues. They do this because they have not experienced it and have never tasted the great strength there is in faith. . . But he who has had even a faint taste of it can never write, speak, meditate, or hear enough concerning it.

Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, 277

The question of faith is not whether the faith itself is sincere, but whether the object of faith is worth such sincerity. Promise is not what constitutes my faith. It is promise and testimony. The New Testament is predominantly the ‘pay up’ of promise with a vision for its consummation. That is what the testimony is. The promises that God has made have been fulfilled. Blessed are those who have not yet seen but stand on the shoulders of the prophets and the apostles in hope.

Sure, we set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:13), but only because of the grace already poured out upon us through the prophets who prophesied and through the apostles who preached the good news to us by the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 1:12).

So What About How I Read the Bible- Part 1

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It is good for me to often revisit the question of “so what?”

If I settle on a hermeneutic that is literary-canonical instead of grammatical-historical, why does it really matter? Authorial intent instead of sensus plenior, who cares? Bla, bla, bla…

What difference does it make to the congregation that one day I hope to shepherd?

The Apostle Peter says there is significance. 1 Peter 1:10-12 is about hermeneutics. He tells us something amazing about the prophets, and then he tells us “therefore…”

Peter writes that the prophets knew that they were writing for us about the “sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” He tells us that they were writing for us about the gospel message we have heard. And then he says, “Therefore… set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:13). The OT authors intended what they wrote about Christ to be for you, so then (Aorist Active Imperative 2nd plural) “you set your hope fully” on Christ. You believe completely, unwaveringly. You exert a relentless faith in Jesus Christ and the grace that is yours in Him.

This is the pastoral application and its beautiful significance. This is the “so what?” described by the apostle…  How we view the Hebrew Bible is not arbitrary. The authorial understanding of 1:10-12 enkindles our faith in Jesus Christ and all that He is for us.