Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Grace in Focus. Welcome to a new year and a new series. Today, Bob Wilkin and David Renfro begin a new commentary-style series on the Book of 1 Peter. We’ll just get to the introduction today, but once again, glad to have you along for this radio and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. We also do short videos on YouTube and our channel, YouTube, Grace Evangelical Society. Be sure and catch those. Our website, faithalone.org. Once again reminding you of our annual national conference coming this year, May 18th through the 21. Early bird registration is in play, and first timers need to register, but you don’t have to pay the registration fee. All right, our website, faithalone.org/events. 

Now, let’s begin our series in 1 Peter with hosts Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: David, we’re going to be going through 1 Peter, and I know you were an Old Testament major, Dallas, and I know you love the Old Testament, but you’ve been preaching through 1 Peter recently. 

DAVID: It’s been a real struggle. I’ve enjoyed getting back into the New Testament, and these general epistles are wonderful. 

BOB: Amen. Now, why are they called general epistles? 

DAVID: They’re not addressed to a certain individual or a certain church, or a city like Paul did. They’re just to maybe a region like 1 Peter. He’ll have a people that he addresses, but not an individual. 

BOB: Okay, so like Paul’s epistles to churches are all specific churches, but we have a number of letters like 1 and 2 Peter that are not directed to a specific group of churches, our specific church or group as in the case of Galatians, but what would some of the other ones be? We have 1 and 2 Peter, James, Jude, the epistles of John, really, and Hebrews. And Revelation isn’t an epistle except for chapters 2 and 3, so Revelation is considered a whole different genre, it’s apocalyptic. 

But so the general epistles include these, and I thought we would, in this first, we’re going to do a little caravan through 1 Peter. But when we do, let’s begin with an introduction, and then we might get into a few of the introductory verses if we have time. So Peter is the author of 1 Peter. How old was Peter, and when was this written? 

DAVID: Well, Peter probably, what I’ve read in my research is Peter probably died around 67-68 AD. He had been in Rome for about a decade. And then during this time that Peter was there, this wonderful guy named Nero became Caesar. 

BOB: Wait a minute, I thought Nero was a bad guy, didn’t Nero burn Rome and stuff? DAVID: Oh, he did a lot of wonderful things. 

BOB: And killed a lot of people. 

DAVID: Including his own family. Yeah, I mean, reading the history of Nero is, don’t do it when you’re depressed. 

BOB: So he dies around 67-68 somewhere in there, and he would have probably been either late 50s or late 60s somewhere. it depends how old he was when he walked with Jesus. Assuming he was a little bit younger than the Lord, he was probably in his early 60s or something when he died. 

DAVID: That’s what I think, too. I think he was probably born, , maybe a few years after Jesus was, and therefore he would be in his early 60s, maybe mid 60s, when he died. And then, , when this great guy named Nero came, he started persecuting Christians all over the empire. 

BOB: In fact, that’s part of the background of 1 Peter, right? 

DAVID: I think that’s the reason 1 Peter was written. 

BOB: Because Peter suffered a lot, and Peter’s readers, these churches he was writing to, they were suffering a lot. 

DAVID: Apparently that fire, , when Rome burned, they were thinking Nero did it. So what I read was that to deflect all of that attention away from himself, he blamed Christians for the burning of Rome. And that means that all of these people all over the empire, all these Christians, were the targets of a lot of persecution, both violent and nonviolent, like being socially ostracized, that kind of thing. But Nero was more violent than that. So he would, in fact, after Rome burned, and he blamed the Christians, he brought a bunch of Christians to Rome and killed them out in public just to show, these are the people that burned Rome. You should hate them. And so, I mean, that hatred probably was pretty strong, and it spread through the whole empire. 

BOB: Now, the readers of 1 Peter, depending, our view is they were born again people, right? These are all born again people. He’s not writing to a mixed audience of some believers and some unbelievers. But if you read a lot of commentators, they’re going to take most of Paul’s epistles and the general epistles as referring to a mixed audience of professing believers, some of which are true professors and some are false professors. But that’s not our view. Our view is he’s writing to born again people, and he wants these people to be overcomers, to overcome the suffering they’re going through. 

DAVID: And not only that—put their suffering in perspective. Because if some people, in fact, even today, people will say, well, I’m a Christian, but now I’m suffering, God hates me for what I’ve done before I was a Christian, and so on. There’s a perspective there, and these believers that Peter’s writing to, they’re probably asking the same question, why are we going through this? You promised everlasting life through the evangelism and all that, and so now we’re suffering. 

BOB: Right. But everlasting life and suffering are not incompatible. In fact, as Peter’s going to say, they’re quite compatible. We can expect that we are going to have suffering in this life. Jesus said in this life, you have tribulation. 

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BOB: Now, could you give us the basic outline? After the greeting, where does the introduction end, where does the body of the letter begin? 

DAVID: The first two verses are the greeting, and there’s a lot of theology just in the greeting. And I think it’s important because based on what Peter’s readers are going through, they need to be encouraged. And that’s the first two verses. Then the next verse is starting in verse 3 through verse 12 is the preface to the book. And he’s talking about the nature of our salvation. And then starting in verse 13 of chapter 1 starts the body of the whole book, the focus of what Peter is talking about all the way to chapter 4 verse 19. And then there’s a section bringing together more situations where suffering may happen, not individually, but corporately that kind of thing. And then there’s a conclusion. 

BOB: So you mentioned the expression salvation and our salvation. It’s going to be interesting because in one nine he talks about the salvation of your souls. And that word soul is the Greek word psuche. We get words like psychology and psychiatry and things like that. 

DAVID: So everybody’s going to learn some Greek here. I love that. 

BOB: But this salvation is one that a lot of people get wrong. Because they think one nine is talking about salvation from eternal condemnation. And if you take that view, then you must persevere through suffering in order to make it into Christ’s kingdom, which is the way a lot of people interpret 1 Peter. 

DAVID: That’s right. A lot of people in the Christian world are kind of programmed to hear certain words and they can only mean one thing. The word salvation can only mean not going to hell or going to heaven. That’s just one word that is misunderstood a lot of times. 

BOB: Yes, I have a book, The 10 Most Misunderstood Words, and one of them is this word saved and salvation. 

DAVID: The other one is gospel.

BOB: Gospel, I’ve got that in there. And I’ve got several other words. But this book is a wonderful book. And we want to experience fullness of life now and fullness of life in the life to come. And that is what Peter’s talking about when he talks about the salvation of your soul. We’ll get into that when we get to 1:9. But I think we have enough time maybe to get through the first two verses. 

He says, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God.” Oops, we’ve got a translation here that is not a good translation. “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” 

That’s the end of it. But actually, the word elect in verse two, in the Greek, is in verse one with the pilgrims. They’re “elect pilgrims.” They were “chosen pilgrims.” 

DAVID: And I prefer that translation too, where it says, it should say “elect pilgrims,” because that’s the Greek wording. But somebody thought, well, we’ll talk about pilgrims. Oh, by the way, they’re elect according to the foreknowledge of God and so on. 

BOB: Yeah. And see, it isn’t elect to eternal life. This is elect to being pilgrims. They were chosen for the dispersion. And of course, God knew this was going to happen. So you can say according to God’s foreknowledge, but this idea of election to eternal life is not taught anywhere in the Bible. And it’s certainly not taught here, in 1 Peter 1. 

So they’re pilgrims, that means these people were spread throughout the Roman Empire. Does that mean that they were dispersed during the first century or these people who were dispersed before the first century or both? 

DAVID: I’ll give you my favorite answer to question—it depends. Some people disagree as to are these Gentile believers or Jews that have been dispersed through the Roman Empire or are these Gentile believers in these Roman provinces that are listed there in verse one? By the way, those provinces are in what now is Turkey, mostly northern, the north side of Turkey. So the answer to that is yes. I think it’s dealing with both Jewish and Gentile believers because I think the idea of a being a pilgrim goes back to what Paul says in Philippians 3:20, we are citizens of heaven. We’re on this earth for just a short time, but we are going to heaven and see, that gives perspective to suffering. As we get into it, hopefully it becomes clearer how does being a pilgrim here relate to suffering and we’ll deal with that as we go through the book. 

BOB: Good. Well, we need to wrap up, but this dispersion could be a reference to what occurred earlier under Agrippa where some Jews were dispersed, but it also could be looking at the Jewish War, which started in 66, and ultimately culminated in 70 and there were some dispersed there. And if this was written in 67 or 68, it would have been after the start of the Jewish War, but before the end of it. 

Well, thanks so much, David. We’ve got a lot to look forward to here and we’ll be walking through 1 Peter. In the meantime, what are we going to do? Keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: The preface of 1 Peter, a book especially about suffering and the salvation of your soul. Join us again and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.