v2: Christians are foreknown by God
prior to eternity and they are elected by God to be conformed to be
like Him through the Holy Spirit, obeying God and being in His
kingdom by the sprinkling of Jesus shed blood on the cross. When you
get saved, God puts His spirit in you and begins growing you up into
what and who you should be.
V3: The world puts its hope in a lot of
things, but only Jesus Christ provides any kind of realistic hope for
mankind.
V4-9: Here and throughout this letter,
Peter harkens back to what Ecclesiastes says, that we have to take
the eternal view of life. We suffer here on earth, but as Paul says
in 2 Corinthians, the sufferings we're going through now can't
compare to living forever and ever in the new heaven and the new
earth.
V13: We need to gird the loins of our
minds with truth as Paul instructs in Ephesians truth. Fixing the
truth of the eternal kingdom and future with Jesus Christ we have
ahead of us is how we're going to get through the sufferings we're
enduring now. This girding our loins with truth is also what will
keep us from yielding to the temptation to fall away, to just give up
like the seed that fell on stoney ground.
v9: We are a royal priesthood, not only
in the sense that we serve the King, but also in that we are sons of
the King.
V13-16: Notice in verse 14 that the
purpose for all levels of government is the punishment of evildoers.
Civil government is given to man by God for this purpose. However,
today civil government does the opposite: it rewards evildoers, such
as homosexuals, abortionists, those women who wish to murder their
babies in utero because the baby would be inconvenient to carry to
term at this term. The civil governments of New York and Virginia are
even now going so far as to reward those who murder a baby after it
has come out of the womb and been delivered at full term. Governments
are also rewarding evildoers who are rioting in the name of racial
injustice and who are taking their bitterness at being sinned agianst
on whoever is around.
I obey laws because they accord with
good works of God, not because man's government says I have to.
V18-20: This passage is used today to
tell people that they shouldn't fight for their rights in the
workplace and that they should put up with ill treatment by their
employer. This passage is not teaching this, though we still should
not repay evil for evil. This was written in a time and culture where
the vast majority of the people had no right of self-determination.
V23: When your the king of the
universe, you don't have to answer the wild accusations of men who
aren't going to listen to your defence anyway. Children of the king
don't have to do this, either.
v1-7: This passage has been twisted to
produce all kinds of whacky stuff.
This passage was written in the time of
ancient Rome, when a husband's only obligations were to pass on his
genes, visit his wife and children, and provide for them materially.
Peter is introducing the radical idea that, in the ways of Christ's
kingdom, husbands are supposed to live together in love and respect.
Neither the husband nor the wife can any longer just go off ado there
own thing most of the time, including sexually.
Verses 3 and 4 are not literally
teaching that women can't sytyle their hair, wear jewelery or dress
nicely. Rather, Peter is telling women their outward appearance
shouldn't be more important than their inner beauty. It's kind of
like how James isn't actually saying we need to literally say “Lord
willing” before we mention anything to do with what we'd like to do
in the future, tomorrow or when we grow old or otherwise. James is
simply saying that we need to recognize that any plans we make are
subject to God's will because we aren't our own anymore and it's
supposed to be let His will and not ours be done.
There's also a lot of confusion in the
Peter's referring to women as “the weaker vessel.” I don't
believe he is referring to weakness in any sense we think of that
word today. Rather, I think Peter is saying women are more precious,
as compare a wooden bucket to a Ming vase.
V15: While Christians should be
equipped to answer the questions unbelievers have on a variety of
subjects, this verse isn't teaching we need to have an answer for
every single question and argument a non-Christian could throw at us.
Rather, we need to have an answer for how we are managing to get
through what we are going through, namely through our relationship
with Jesus Christ.
V21: Baptism is necessary for
salvation. It isn't the ritualistic performance of the act that saves
us but the fact that, when we repent, we die to ourselves, to our own
will, so that we can obey God's will. We are then buried through
baptism and come up out of the water new creatures, reborn into Jesus
Christ as newborn babes.
v3-5: You get the impression the
believers Peter was writing too had been among the lowest of the low.
V9: This is a verse Canadians need to
work on obeying better.
v3: Matthew 20 25
v13: Babylon here means Jerusalem since
there is no proof Peter was crucified upside down in Rome.
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