1Peter 

The First Letter of Peter

 

​WHEN SUFFERING TESTS YOUR FAITH

​​

The Gospels show you who Jesus is. Acts shows you what His Spirit started doing. Romans shows you how a person is made right with God. 1 Corinthians shows you how to live together as the church. 2 Corinthians shows you how to keep walking when it gets hard. Galatians shows you that you are free. Ephesians shows you who you are now. Philippians shows you how joy can be real even when life is not. Colossians shows you that Jesus is enough. 1 Thessalonians shows you how to live with hope between Jesus' first coming and His return. 2 Thessalonians shows you how to stay steady when you are not sure where you are in the story. 1 Timothy shows you what the church is meant to guard, and how it is meant to live. 2 Timothy shows you how to finish well. Titus shows you what happens to people when the gospel is actually doing its work in them. Philemon shows you what the gospel looks like when it walks into one specific relationship. Hebrews shows you that Jesus is better than everything you might be tempted to go back to. James shows you what faith actually looks like when it gets out of bed in the morning.

 

1 Peter shows you how to live with hope, dignity, and faith when the world around you treats your belief as strange, threatening, or worthy of contempt.

 

It is one of the most pastoral letters in the New Testament. Peter writes as a man who has been there. He had walked with Jesus for three years. He had failed Him publicly. He had been forgiven and restored. He had pastored the church for thirty years. By the time he writes this letter, he is an old man, probably in Rome, with persecution rising and his own martyrdom likely not far away. He writes to younger believers scattered across difficult places, facing pressure he understood from the inside.

 

The question many believers carry quietly, especially as their faith begins to cost them something, is one this letter answers more directly than any other in the Bible. How do I live with hope, dignity, and genuine faith when the world around me treats my belief as strange, threatening, or worthy of contempt?

 

Peter's answer takes five chapters. The short version is this. You can live well under pressure because of who you are in Christ. The world does not get to define you. He has defined you. Your inheritance is being kept for you in heaven. Your Saviour suffered first, and He walks with you through whatever is coming. The pressure is real but it is also temporary. Hold on. Live with dignity. Give an answer for your hope with gentleness. Cast your anxiety on Him. He cares.

 

This guide will not replace your Bible. It is here to walk alongside you while you read it. Open 1 Peter soon, and let what is said here send you back to the source.

 

Who Wrote It

 

Peter. The fisherman who became one of Jesus' three closest friends.

 

His story runs through all four Gospels. He was called from his nets by the Sea of Galilee. He walked on water and sank. He confessed Jesus as the Christ. He denied Jesus three times by a charcoal fire on the night Jesus was arrested. He wept bitterly when he heard the rooster crow. He was restored by Jesus in three questions on a beach in John 21, the same number of questions as his denials. He preached the great sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2 when three thousand people came to faith. He became one of the foundational leaders of the early church.

 

By the time he writes 1 Peter, probably around AD 62 to 64, he is in Rome, which he probably calls 'Babylon,' as a symbolic reference to Rome. The persecution under Nero is rising. Within a few years he will be executed for his faith. Early church tradition says he was crucified upside down, at his own request, because he did not consider himself worthy to die the same way as his Lord.

 

This is the man writing to you. A man who has known both failure and forgiveness. A man who has been afraid and was made brave. A man who is now approaching his own death and wants to encourage younger believers to walk faithfully through what they are about to face.

 

Who It Was Written For

 

Peter addresses the letter to believers "scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (1 Peter 1:1). Five Roman provinces in what is today northern Turkey.

 

These were ordinary believers. Some Jewish, some Gentile. They lived in cities and villages spread across a wide region. They were facing pressure. They were being slandered. They were being treated as strange. Some had lost relationships when they came to faith. Some had lost work. Some were being investigated by local authorities. Persecution had begun and was rising.

 

Peter writes to lift their eyes. To remind them who they are. To tell them how to live well in a world that does not understand them. To help them see that what they are walking through is not the end of the story.

 

If you have come to Jesus and your neighbours, your family, your friends, your colleagues now look at you a little differently, this letter is for you. The pressure may not be physical for you. It may be social. It may be the slow drift of people you loved away from you. It may be being mocked online. It may be being labelled as judgemental or naive or foolish for what you now believe. Peter's readers were facing the same thing, on a different scale. He writes to all of them. He writes to you.

 

The Tone of the Letter

1 Peter is one of the warmest letters in the New Testament. Peter does not lecture. He does not scold. He encourages. He reminds. He keeps lifting his readers' eyes from the pressure around them to the Saviour above them.

 

The tone is the tone of a person who has been through it and who wants the next generation to come through it well. There is no panic. There is no anger at the persecutors. There is steady, hopeful, dignified instruction. Live this way. Hope this way. Suffer this way. Jesus is with you.

 

A word that runs through the whole letter is hope. A living hope. A hope that does not fade. A hope kept in heaven for you. Peter wants his readers to know that whatever the present feels like, hope is not in question. It is already kept for you. It is already secure. You just have to keep walking toward it.

 

A Living Hope

The letter opens with one of the most beautiful blessings in the entire New Testament.

 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

1 Peter 1:3-5

 

Sit with these lines.

 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter starts with worship. He wants his readers to know that everything that follows rests on the goodness of the God he is praising.

 

Who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Take this in. He caused you to be born again. You did not produce your new life. He did. And the hope you have is a living hope. Not a hope based on positive thinking. A hope based on the fact that Jesus is alive.

 

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection is why hope is alive. Because He rose, your hope is not based on wishful thinking. It is based on what already happened in history.

 

To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away. Three words to hold onto. Imperishable. Undefiled. Will not fade away. The inheritance the world offers you fades. This one does not.

 

Reserved in heaven for you. Look at those last two words. For you. Your name is on it. It is already prepared. It is already kept.

 

Who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

 

Stay with this. You are protected. Not by your own strength. By the power of God. The story has an end, and the end is good. Because God is good.

 

This is where Peter starts his letter. Before he says anything about how to live, he tells you who you are and what is being kept for you. Your circumstances may be hard. Your hope is not in your circumstances. Your hope is in what He has done and what He is keeping for you.

 

Why Trials Are Not Wasted

In the next verses Peter writes that his readers are rejoicing greatly, even though now for a little while, if necessary, they have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of their faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:6-7).

 

Notice what Peter says. He does not pretend the trials are not happening. He calls them what they are. Distress. He says this distress is for a little while. From the perspective of eternity, even years of suffering are a little while. And he says the trials are testing something real. Your faith is being proved like gold is proved by fire. Gold goes into the fire impure. It comes out refined. The fire is not destroying your faith. The fire is showing what is real in it.

 

The pressure you are walking through is not random. It is not God being unkind. It is the testing of your faith, and the testing is producing something valuable.

 

Then Peter writes something for an audience that has never seen Jesus with their physical eyes. He says that though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:8-9).

 

Hold this for a moment. Peter is writing with his own eyes that had actually seen Jesus. He had walked with Him for three years. But he understood that most of his readers had not seen Jesus, and would never see Him in this life. And he tells them their love and joy are real anyway. It is the kind of love Jesus blessed in John 20:29, when He said to Thomas, "blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."

 

If you have ever wondered whether your love for Jesus is real because you have not physically seen Him, Peter is telling you it is real.

 

Who You Are Now

The middle of chapter 2 contains one of the most powerful identity passages in the entire New Testament.

 

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:9-10

 

Do not rush past this. This is your identity in Christ. Whatever the world says about you, this is what is true.

 

A chosen people. You were chosen. Not because of anything you did. Because of His own purpose.

 

A royal priesthood. You are royal. You have access to the King because you belong to His family. You are also a priest, which means you can come into the presence of God directly. There is no go-between you need. Jesus has made you both royalty and priest at once.

 

A holy nation. You belong to a nation that does not appear on any map. A people set apart for God. From every tribe and language and country, people who belong to Christ are part of the same nation now.

 

A people for God's own possession. Let this land. You belong to God. You are His possession. He is not embarrassed to claim you. He calls you His own.

 

So that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. This is what you are for. To announce what God is like to a world that does not know Him. By how you live. By what you say. By the hope on your face.

 

For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

 

Sit with that last line. Once you were not a people. Now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy. Now you have received mercy. The world may not see who you are. Heaven sees. He sees. He has named you. He has made you His.

 

If the world treats you as strange, return to these verses. You are strange because you belong to another kingdom. That is not a weakness. That is who you are.

 

A Note on the Household Passages

Before going further, a brief note about 1 Peter 2:18 through 3:7. Peter gives instructions to servants, wives, and husbands. He tells servants to submit to their masters, wives to be subject to their husbands, and husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way, granting them honour as a fellow heir of the grace of life.

 

These are practical instructions for a particular ancient culture, similar to the ones we have read in Ephesians, Colossians, 1 Timothy, and Titus. They have been read in different ways by faithful Christians for two thousand years, and they have also been seriously misused. They should be read carefully, alongside the rest of the New Testament's witness about how Christians live with each other, and through the lens of the gospel where every person bears God's image and believers are called to treat one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

This is not the place to settle every debate about these passages. Read them carefully in your own Bible. Bring questions to a wise believer you trust. Do not let any single passage in isolation overshadow the wider witness of Scripture about the dignity of every person in Christ.

 

Always Be Ready

One of the most important verses in the letter sits in chapter 3.

 

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who disparage your good behaviour in Christ will be put to shame.

1 Peter 3:15-16

 

Hear this carefully.

 

Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Before you do anything else, settle who is Lord. Christ. Not the surrounding culture. Not your fears. Not your need to win the argument. But Christ.

 

Always be ready. Think about what you believe. Know why you believe it. The questions are going to come.

 

To make a defence to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. When someone asks you why you have hope, be ready to tell them. Peter assumes the watching world will see your hope and want to know where it comes from. Be ready to tell them.

 

But with gentleness and reverence. Linger on those words. Gentleness. Reverence. Not aggression. Not combat. Not winning the argument. Gentleness toward the person asking. Reverence toward the God you are speaking about. Speak gently. Speak with reverence. The way you answer is also part of the answer.

 

Keep a good conscience, so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who disparage your good behaviour in Christ will be put to shame.

 

If you are being slandered, the best answer over time is not to argue back loudly. The best answer is a life of such consistent goodness that the slander does not stick. People who attack you for being a Christian will eventually have to face the fact that your life is not what they accused it of being. That is its own quiet vindication.

 

The world is going to ask you questions. Some hostile. Some genuine. Be ready. Speak gently. Speak reverently. Let your life back up your words.

 

Suffering Like Jesus

Throughout the letter, Peter keeps coming back to the example of Jesus. He suffered before us. He suffered for us. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He uttered no threats, but entrusted Himself to Him who judges righteously. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; by His wounds we were healed (1 Peter 2:21-24).

 

Notice those last words. By His wounds we were healed. The cross is at the centre of this letter. Peter saw it happen and he wants you to know. He was the one who had denied Jesus a few hours before. He knew, perhaps more than any other writer of the New Testament, what the cross had cost. And he wants his readers to know two things about it.

 

First, Jesus' suffering paid for our sin. He bore our sin in His body on the cross. Our healing is real because His wounds were real.

 

Second, Jesus' suffering is an example. When you suffer for following Him, you are walking in His footsteps. He did not revile in return. Neither should you. He entrusted Himself to the Father who judges fairly. You should do the same.

 

Cast Your Anxiety

The closing chapter contains some of the most pastoral verses in the New Testament for an anxious believer.

 

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.

1 Peter 5:6-7

 

Slow down here.

 

Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Stop trying to lift yourself. Let yourself be lower than Him. He will lift you at the right time.

 

Casting all your anxiety on Him. All of it. Not the manageable bits. All of it. Cast it. Throw it. Hand it over to Jesus.

 

Because He cares for you.

 

Four words to hold onto. He cares for you. He is not indifferent. He is not watching from a distance. He cares. About you specifically. About what you are walking through. Cast it all on Him. He loves you.

 

Then Peter ends the letter with a sentence that has comforted believers for two thousand years. The God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you, after you have suffered for a little while (1 Peter 5:10).

 

Let this settle. The God of all grace is going to do the work in you. He Himself. Perfect. Confirm. Strengthen. Establish. Four verbs for what God will do in the believer who has suffered for a little while. The suffering is real. The "a little while" is also real. And what comes out the other side is a believer who has been made stronger by the same God who is the source of all grace.

 

How to Read 1 Peter

It is five chapters. Read it in one sitting if you can.

 

If you are not sure where to begin, here is something gentle to try. Read chapter 1, slowly, paying attention to the living hope and the inheritance kept in heaven. Then sit with chapter 2 verses 9 and 10, the great identity passage. Then chapter 3 verses 15 and 16, the always-be-ready passage. Then chapter 5 verses 6 to 10, the closing pastoral encouragement. After that, go back and read the whole letter through from the beginning.

 

Keep coming back to 1 Peter 2:9-10 and 1 Peter 5:6-7 throughout your life. Both passages are worth memorising.

 

What 1 Peter Means for Your Life Now

If you are facing pressure for following Jesus, return to chapter 1. You have been born again to a living hope. Your inheritance is being kept for you. The trials are not random. They are testing what is real. They are producing something precious.

 

If you have ever wondered whether your love for Jesus is real because you have not physically met Him, return to chapter 1 verses 8 and 9. Peter himself tells you that love for Jesus that has not met Him is real. Faith is real. Jesus sees your faith and it is real to Him.

 

If the world is treating you as strange, return to chapter 2 verses 9 and 10. You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. The world does not get to define you. He has defined you. You are His.

 

If you are being asked hard questions about your faith, return to chapter 3 verses 15 and 16. Be ready. Speak gently. Speak with reverence. Let your life back up your words. The way you answer is part of the answer.

 

If you are anxious, return to chapter 5 verses 6 and 7. Cast your anxiety on Him. All of it. He cares for you.

 

If you are tired and not sure you can keep going, return to chapter 5 verse 10. The God of all grace will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you, after you have suffered for a little while. He will finish what He started in you.

 

You are a stranger in this world. That is not an accident. Your true home is elsewhere. Your hope is being kept for you.

 

Your Saviour walks with you through what is coming. Keep going.