Heya there friends! I hope that everything with you all is going swimmingly! Everything here has been super swell lately, with the only change being that it has been raining quite a bit lately. If you remember in my last blog I talked about how I was working through 1 Peter and how I broke it down on a wall. Well I thought a good way of inviting you all into my life would be to write out all that I did for that, so here I go (I’ll also type the verse bellow so you don’t have to look it up)!
“To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Capadocia, Asia and Bithynia, 2 who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: grace and peace be yours in abundance.” – 1 Peter 1:1/2
So for how this works, I broke each verse into little bits for ease of breaking it all down. Like what I did with the whole verse, I’ll make each verse centered and bolded! As a heads up, I’m semi-copying from my notes in my journal, so the writing style may be a little different from here on out.
“To God’s elect . . .” – 1 Peter 1:1a
Legitimately this three word section carries so much weight, it still blows my mind a couple of weeks later. To fully understand why, you need to know the definition of the word elect, as defined by the Oxford dictionary. Elect: 1. Carefully selected 2. Chosen for salvation through divine mercy 3. Chosen for marriage at some future point (to get why this matters check out Revelations 19:7). To rephrase the original verse, “To God’s selected people,” “To God’s chosen people,” “To God’s future bride.” If you couldn’t? tell, this was the verse rewritten with the three different definitions of elect, and they are so absolutely wonderful! That one word carries so much weight and authority, especially when it is placed after God with the grammatical way of him claiming ownership. Not only are we elect, we are GOD’S elect!
“Strangers in the world . . .” – 1 Peter 1:1b
Another simple short section, until you take it and run with it. To go about getting the fullness of this verse, I went at it by asking myself the question, “Why are we strangers?” For this I came up with three different answers: 1. We are dead to the flesh 2. We have received a real, radical love that has radically impacted us 3. We have been made holy, set apart, different! To back up these answers, I used 1 John 5:4/5, “For everyone born of God overcomes the world . . . Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” To sum it all up, by Christ we have become radically different. By his divine love and sacrifice, we have overcome all the things that bind us to the world. We have become set apart, we have become different.
“Scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Capadocia, Asia and Bythinia . . .” – 1 Peter 1:1c
I view this as a testament to the church at the time, young, powerful, and alive! It’s at work and spreading, scattered throughout the world. Another beautiful thing about this statement is that there is no division, it is to all the churches. The importance of this is that all these churches are God’s elect, all are strangers in the world. Peter isn’t just calling out one specific sect of the church, he is speaking to the body as a whole. They’re all pursuing after the Father, and Peter recognizes that. It’s such a beautiful thing! He’s speaking such unity over the church, and I feel like that is something that can be easily missed.
“Who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father . . .” – 1 Peter 1:2a
We have all been chosen since the beginning of creation, chosen by the Creator of everything! The literal Creator of matter has chosen you and me, let us rejoice! What a powerful statement, and it is something that is easily forgotten. We are God’s chosen people, and on an average day I forget that. It is definitely something that I shouldn’t! On top of all this goodness, this is an inclusive statement. It includes all of the church, not just the person reading the verse. That’s you, me, your weird uncle that only sings hymns, and all the countless numbers of believers around the world! We are all included in being chosen, and it truly is a beautiful and unique thing.
“Through the sanctifying work of the Spirit . . .” – 1 Peter 1:2b I am a saint. There is literally no better way to put it, and Peter just comes out and says it. Or as my writing on a wall says, “We are saint. We have been made so freakin holy!” You are so right, hyped-up on the Spirit Tuck, we are so freakin holy. Not only has the Spirit come and made us holy, it has made us holy by the act of coming and dwelling in us. We carry the Spirit wherever we walk, we carry God with us. With that comes all the authority that Christ had, and we should use it. Why else would we receive it forever? That’s like getting a box of cookies but never eating it, which at this point in my race sounds just absolutely ridiculous!
“For obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood . . .” – 1 Peter 1:2c
Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came and sprinkled his blood for you and I. What? That’s something that I feel has lost a lot of power in the modern day church, take a second and really say that sentence to yourself. God came and died for you and me, and if you don’t get the chills from that, you need a heart check. This isn’t some light statement that you can just drop in conversation, this changed the entire way the world operated, and it all happened for you and me. God died for us, and all he asks for is our obedience in return. A pretty fair price if you have to ask me.
“Grace and peace be yours in abundance.” – 1 Peter 1:2d
I don’t know about you, but I’m a pretty big fan of grace and peace. If Peter is offering it to me, I am definitely not going to refuse. It’s also not just a little bit of grace and peace, it’s grace and peace in abundance, in excess. I quite enjoy the idea of having overflowing baskets of grace and peace, but that may just be me. I’m pretty bad at this whole life things at time, so grace and peace are greatly appreciated. Peter changing the game since the double digits of time. It’s such a cool concept to me that my brother from 2000 years ago is blessing me in my walk with Christ, and it is so, so cool!
Well all, that is all that I have! If you made it down here I applaud you, and I hope that you got something out of this blog post. Working through these two verses was one of the most fun experiences of my life, it brought so much liberation into my life. It also gave me so much freedom in the way that I go about walking through Scripture, which I’ve learned can look like filling up a whole wall with my thoughts on the verse. Scripture runs as deep as you’re willing to take it, and I’ve learned that I enjoy going as far as my brain can run (and as far as God is willing to show me in the moment).
Blessings and love,
Tucker Stevens
