1 Peter 1.1-12

I've been steadily plowing through my attempt at a bible-study-slash-devotional on 1 Peter. So far I've reached verse 1.13 and it's already at the equivalent of a 131-page college research paper. I can't imagine how long it'll be once it's finished. I plan on self-publishing it, and that allows me to tweak the text size, font, margins, etc., so it should be no longer than 300 pages. Still: that's a lot of writing. It's difficult, because I am consistently wrestling with which stuff to focus on, and which stuff to breeze over. When I did my exegesis on Romans back in 2008-2009, I painstakingly focused on every little detail. The result was that it looked more like an exegesis than a devotional (which was the point); but because the purpose of this little project is quite different, it's a different beast to wrestle entirely. I finally decided on a layout for the study: the introduction is set apart (including all the pertinent information: authorship, audience, date, rhetorical situation, etc.), and the actual text takes place in stages, according to an outline of the letter. Each section is then divided into smaller portions--be it texts or, more commonly, small passages--which are then examined in detail for a couple pages, written in what I hope to be layman's terms. After each section, I give a little synopsis. Having finished the first section (1.1-12: The Christian Hope), here's the short synopsis:

Having examined the first twelve verses of 1 Peter, it would be good to step back and see how they all fit together from a bird’s-eye point of view. In verses 1-2, Peter identifies both himself and those to whom he is writing: the Christians in Asia Minor. His letter, as we saw in the introduction, was written to encourage and strengthen the eastern Christians as western persecution threatens to spread like wildfire throughout the Roman Empire. Peter begins this letter of encouragement and strengthening by focusing the Christians’ perspectives: instead of focusing on this current life, and thus on life in this present evil age, Christians are to focus on the future age, the consummation of God’s kingdom. This, the Christian hope (including the resurrection of the dead, glorification, and the inheritance of a new heavens and new earth), is to energize and strengthen spiritual muscle; but if the Christians are wholly focused upon the current state-of-affairs, then they’ll miss out on all this.

Peter’s brief mentioning of several key eschatological themes serves as a reminder rather than an instruction to the Asia Minor Christians. Peter isn’t telling them anything they don’t know; rather, he’s reminding them of what they already know, and urging them to focus on that. The Christian hope, which is so often taken as a tidbit of Christian doctrine, or side-lined in lieu of more “important” matters (such as the order of salvation), is a defining characteristic of Christian belief, identity, and praxis. In terms of belief, Christians can be identified by the way that they understand not just the present but the future; Christian theism teaches that history is going somewhere, and the “where” is the total victory of God over evil and the renewal of all things, human beings included. In terms of identity, Christians should identify themselves as members of the future age living in the present age; it is in this sense that Christians are “exiles” and “strangers.” In terms of praxis (i.e. behavior), the future informs Christian behavior in the sense that Christians are to live in the present as if the future is already here: Christians are to put into practice kingdom-living in the present evil age even though God’s kingdom has not yet advanced to the point of encompassing and healing the entire created order. Peter’s decision to focus on eschatology isn’t done at random, nor is it clever; it makes perfect sense. While eschatology has become, at least in many circles, merely a matter of interesting study, it should be integral to our belief, identity, and behavior as it was (or, at least, as St. Peter believed it should be) for the Christians in Asia Minor.

Now, having given a panoramic view of the future, Peter demands that his readers/hearers not simply dismiss what he has written as mere doctrinal peculiarities. They are to put it at the forefront of their minds and shape their thinking and living around it.