In my previous blog, “A Salvation Worth Living For,” we asked the question from 1 Peter 2:12, “What is it that Peter expects his "elect” readers to do, that when evidenced by godless people, those godless people would “glorify God?” We asked that same question another way, “What specifically does Peter think an effective life of faith looks like? OR, What is the hallmark of a day to day, down to earth life of holiness?” We asked that question and then proposed that Peter’s

In past blogs we have discussed how important Peter’s introduction is to understanding the content of his entire first letter. To add a bit more to this discussion, we can further notice that in 1Peter 1:3-5, Peter says that the “elect,” the “exiles”… those who have been “born again” (1:23, 2:2) into “God’s family” (2:17, 5:9) have received an inheritance, referring to SALVATION. We see from those verses that Peter describes this SALVATION-inheritance in three different way

In my last blog, we noticed that the first chapter of 1Peter oozed with salvation-experience concepts. The question for us now is “Why does Peter saturate his first chapter with those concepts? What is he trying to communicate to his readers? What message is it that he definitely doesn’t want them to miss? And are we able to determine an answer to any of those questions? We might be able to propose that perhaps Peter’s audience is composed of fairly new believers and he

In previous blogs, we have suggested that the introduction to Peter’s first letter (1Peter 1:1-2), can possibly be interpreted as Peter’s attempt, on one hand, to introduce the content of his entire letter, but more specifically, on the other hand, to also introduce the content of his first chapter. In this blog, we will suggest that Peter’s concluding remarks in his first chapter also indicate the content of his letter in retrospect, especially the content of his first chapt

This is part 5 of a 5-part blog series. In the previous blogs, we've explored 1Peter 1:1-2, particularly the possibility of discovering what event or state of being happened or exists that was “according to the foreknowledge of God.” Our goal has been to discover the grammatical object of the verb “foreknow" and to answer the question “What or Who is it that God “foreknew?” in 1Peter 1:1-2. 1Peter 1:1-2 reads as follows… “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are el

This is part 4 of a 5-part blog series. In the previous blogs, we explored 1Peter 1:1-2, particularly the possibility of discovering what event or state of being happened or exists that was “according to the foreknowledge of God.” Our goal has been to discover the grammatical object of the verb “foreknow’ and to answer the question “What or Who is it that God “foreknew?” in 1Peter 1:1-2. 1Peter 1:1-2 reads as follows… “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect

This is part 3 of a 5-part blog series. In the previous blogs, we explored 1Peter 1:1-2, particularly the possibility of discovering what event or state of being happened or exists that was “according to the foreknowledge of God.” Our goal has been to discover the grammatical object of the verb “foreknow’ and to answer the question “What or Who is it that God “foreknew?” in 1Peter 1:1-2. 1Peter 1:1-2 reads as follows… "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are ele

This is part 2 of a 5-part blog series. In the previous blog, we explored 1Peter 1:1-2, particularly the possibility of discovering what event or state of being happened or exists that was “according to the foreknowledge of God.” Our goal has been to discover the grammatical object of the verb “foreknow’ and to answer the question “What or Who is it that God “foreknew?” in 1Peter 1:1-2. 1Peter 1:1-2 reads as follows… "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elec

If you’ve seen the hilarious comedy routine Who’s on First by Laurel and Hardy (Abbott & Costello), then you might agree that trying to understand the introduction to Peter’s first letter may make you feel like you’re one of the characters in that comedy skit. Reading Peter’s introduction is like pondering the Who?, What?, Why?, and I Don’t Know! of that comedy routine. And if there is frustration and confusion at our attempt to understand to whom Peter is writing or if we d

Is Peter persnickety? If by defining him as, "requiring a particularly precise or careful approach," or “requiring great precision” then, by all means, he is particularly persnickety. As we noticed in our last blog, Peter's Greek is the most excellent of all Greek New Testament writings. Yet, in Peter's persnicketiness, he mentions the difficulty of understanding some of the apostle Paul’s writings saying, “There are some things in them [Paul’s writings] that are hard to u

It is nearly universally agreed that the First Letter of Peter was written by someone who excelled at Greek grammar, and who most...