New Testament · General Letters
Hope for exiles, a living hope, holy conduct, and suffering that refines like gold.
A letter to Christians scattered across what is now Turkey, written to people who are being socially excluded and slandered rather than formally persecuted, which is the more common experience. Peter's strategy is to reframe their marginality: they are exiles and sojourners, which is not a misfortune but a description, and their conduct among outsiders is the argument. The letter is saturated with Old Testament language applied without hesitation to a largely Gentile audience, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. It also contains the passage about Christ preaching to the spirits in prison, which is among the most puzzling in the New Testament and has produced several serious and quite different readings.
If you remember one thing
The letter takes the language once used of Israel and applies it to a scattered, harassed, mostly Gentile church.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.”
1 Peter 2:9
1 Peter 3:18-20
Christ preaching to the spirits in prison. Among the most puzzling passages in the New Testament, with several serious and quite different readings, and connected to the creed's line about descending.
1 Peter 2:18
Servants, submit even to harsh masters. Read in its setting it is counsel to the powerless rather than approval of the arrangement, and it has been misused as the latter.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
The one righteous man of his generation, who built a ship on dry ground on the strength of a warning about weather he had never seen. After the flood God set the rainbow as the sign of a covenant made with every living creature.
A Galilean fisherman who spoke first and thought later, walked on water and sank, confessed Jesus as the Christ, denied him three times, and was restored on a beach over breakfast. He preached the sermon at Pentecost and opened the door of the church to Gentiles at Cornelius' house.
A quiz for 1 Peter is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
