1 Peter

Purpose & theme

First Peter is a letter of hope and courage written to Christians facing suffering. Peter addresses believers scattered across the northern regions of Asia Minor who were experiencing hostility, slander, and persecution for their faith, and he writes to strengthen them, to help them make sense of their suffering, and to call them to holy and hopeful living in the midst of it. He calls them “elect exiles” and “sojourners” — a people who belong to God and to a heavenly homeland, and who are therefore strangers in a hostile world. The letter’s tone is warm and pastoral, that of a shepherd steadying his flock, and its great aim is to anchor suffering saints in the “living hope” secured for them through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1:3-4).

The theme that runs through the whole letter is the relationship between suffering and glory — the pattern of Christ Himself, “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1:11), now shared by His people. Peter teaches that present trials, though grievous, are temporary and refining, testing faith like fire tests gold, and that they are the pathway to praise and glory at Christ’s revealing. He sets before his readers the supreme example of Jesus, who “suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (2:21), and who “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (2:24), and he calls them to follow that pattern: to be holy, to do good even to those who mistreat them, to entrust themselves to their faithful Creator, and to stand firm. Along the way Peter reminds them of their glorious identity as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (2:9), and he weaves practical instructions for living as God’s people — in submission, in the home, in the church, and under the hand of God — with the constant encouragement that suffering for a little while will give way to eternal glory, for “the God of all grace... will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (5:10). First Peter is thus a manual of hope for the suffering church of every age.