1 Peter 1:18

1:17-25 Holy confidence in God as a Father, and awful fear of him as a Judge, agree together; and to regard God always as a Judge, makes him dear to us as a Father. If believers do evil, God will visit them with corrections. Then, let Christians not doubt God's faithfulness to his promises, nor give way to enslaving dread of his wrath, but let them reverence his holiness. The fearless professor is defenceless, and Satan takes him captive at his will; the desponding professor has no heart to avail himself of his advantages, and is easily brought to surrender. The price paid for man's redemption was the precious blood of Christ. Not only openly wicked, but unprofitable conversation is highly dangerous, though it may plead custom. It is folly to resolve, I will live and die in such a way, because my forefathers did so. God had purposes of special favour toward his people, long before he made manifest such grace unto them. But the clearness of light, the supports of faith, the power of ordinances, are all much greater since Christ came upon earth, than they were before. The comfort is, that being by faith made one with Christ, his present glory is an assurance that where he is we shall be also, Joh 14:3. The soul must be purified, before it can give up its own desires and indulgences.

And the word of God planted in the heart by the Holy Ghost, is a means of spiritual life, stirring up to our duty, working a total change in the dispositions and affections of the soul, till it brings to eternal life. In contrast with the excellence of the renewed spiritual man, as born again, observe the vanity of the natural man. In his life, and in his fall, he is like grass, the flower of grass, which soon withers and dies away. We should hear, and thus receive and love, the holy, living word, and rather hazard all than lose it; and we must banish all other things from the place due to it. We should lodge it in our hearts as our only treasures here, and the certain pledge of the treasure of glory laid up for believers in heaven.

(11) Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; (11) An exhortation, in which he sets forth the excellency and greatness of the benefit of God the Father in sanctifying us by the death of his own Son. And he partly sets the purifyings of the law against the thing itself, that is, against the blood of Christ, and partly also men's traditions, which he condemns as utterly vain and superstitious, be they never so old and ancient.

1 Peter 1:18-21 . Forasmuch as ye know, &c. — That is, be holy in your whole behaviour, because ye know what an immense price your redemption cost; that you were not redeemed with corruptible things — Such as all visible and temporal things are; even silver and gold — Highly as they are prized, and eagerly as they are sought; from your vain conversation — Your foolish, sinful way of life, a way wholly unprofitable to yourselves, and dishonourable to God; received by traditions from your fathers — Which you had been engaged in by the instruction or example of your forefathers. The Jews derived from their fathers that implicit regard for the traditions of the elders, by which they made the law of God of none effect, with a variety of other corrupt principles and practices. In like manner the Gentiles derived their idolatry, and other abominable vices, from the teaching and example of their fathers; for, in general, as Whitby justly remarks, the strongest arguments for false religions, as well as for errors in the true, is that men have received them from their fathers. But with the precious blood of Christ — Blood of immense value, being the blood of the only-begotten Son of God, who had glory with the Father before the world was; as of a lamb without blemish and without spot — See on Leviticus 22:21-22 .

The sacrifice of himself, which Christ offered to God without spot, being here likened to the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, and of the lambs daily offered as sin-offerings for the whole nation, we are thereby taught that the shedding of Christ’s blood is a real atonement for the sins of the world. Hence John the Baptist called him the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. And to show the extent of the efficacy of his sacrifice, that it reaches backward to the fall of man, as well as forward to the end of time, he is said ( Revelation 13:8 ) to be the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Ye were redeemed (ἐλυτρώθητε) The verb occurs only in two other passages, Luke 24:21; Titus 2:14. It carries the idea of a ransom-price (λύτρον, from λύω, to loose). With silver or gold (ἀργυρίῳ ἢ χρυσίῳ) Lit., with silver or gold money; the words meaning, respectively, a small coin of silver or of gold. Conversation Rev., manner of life. See on 1 Peter 1:15. Received by tradition from your fathers (πατροπαραδότου) A clumsy translation; improved by Rev., handed down from your fathers. The word is peculiar to Peter.

1 Peter 1:18 . Οὐ φθαρτοῖς , not with corruptible things ) 1 Peter 1:23 .— ματαίας , vain ) A vain course of life, which leaves no fruit behind, when the time has passed away.— πατροπαραδότου , received from the fathers ) There is only one Father to be imitated, 1 Peter 1:17 . There is the same antithesis, Matthew 23:9 . In religion men too willingly and pertinaciously tread in the footsteps of their fathers, and the Jews in particular.

Forasmuch as ye know; considering that ye were, &c. That ye were not redeemed with corruptible things: see Titus 2:14 . This implies them to have been in a servile condition, and in bondage to their own errors, till they were converted to Christ. As silver and gold; the most precious things, of greatest esteem among men. From your vain, because unprofitable to, and insufficient for, righteousness and salvation, conversation, viz. in your Judaism, wherein you were so much addicted to uncommanded rites and ceremonies, as to have little respect for God’s law. Received by tradition; and so not only by their example and practice, but by their doctrine and precepts, Matthew 15:3 , &c.; Mark 7:7 , &c. See likewise Galatians 1:14 . From your fathers; either your ancestors, as Ezekiel 20:18 , or doctors and instructors, who are sometimes called fathers, 1 Corinthians 4:15 .

1 Peter 1:18 . Amplification of Isaiah 52:3 f., Δωρεὰν ἐπράθητε καὶ οὐ μετὰ ἀργυρίου λυτρωθήσεσθε ( cf. Isaiah 45:13 … εἰς Αἴγυπτον κατέβη ὁ λαός μου τὸ πρότερον παροικῆσαι ἐκεῖ . The deliverance from Babylon corresponds to the deliverance from Egypt. To these the Christians added a third and appropriated to it the descriptions of its predecessors.— οὐ φθαρτοῖς , κ . τ . λ . The preceding negative relief to positive statement is characteristic of St. Peter, who here found it in his original (Isa. l.c. ). φθαρτοῖς echoes ἀπολλυμένου and is probably an allusion to the Golden Calf of which it was said These be thy gods O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt ( Exodus 32:14 ). According to Sap. 14:8, it is the proper name for an idol: τὸ δὲ φθαρτὸν θεὸς ὠνομάσθη . So the dative represents the agent and not only the instrument of the deliverance.— ματαίας supports the view taken of φθ ., for the gods of the nations are vanity , μάταια הבל ( Jeremiah 10:3 , etc.).— πατροπαραδότου , ancestral, hereditary . The adjective indicates the source of the influence, which their old way of life— patrius mos, patriritus —still exercised over them. The ancient religion had a strength—not merely vis inertiae —which often baffled both Jewish and Christian missionaries: “to subvert a custom delivered to us from ancestors the heathen say is not reasonable” (Clem. Ac. Protr. x.).

This power of the dead hand is exemplified in the pains taken by the Stoics and New Pythagoreans to conserve the popular religion and its myths by allegorical interpretation. Among the Jews this natural conservatism was highly developed; St. Paul was a zealot for the ancestral laws . But the combination of patriarch and tradition does not prove that the persons addressed were Jewish Christians. The law, according to which the Jews regulated their life, was Divine, its mediator Moses; and there is a note of depreciation in the words not that it is derived from Moses only from the Fathers ( John 7:22 ). πατρο is contrasted with πατέρα (17) as παραδότου with the direct calling.

18. Another motive to reverential, vigilant fear (1Pe 1:17) of displeasing God, the consideration of the costly price of our redemption from sin. Observe, it is we who are bought by the blood of Christ, not heaven. The blood of Christ is not in Scripture said to buy heaven for us: heaven is the "inheritance" (1Pe 1:4) given to us as sons, by the promise of God. corruptible—Compare 1Pe 1:7, "gold that perisheth," 1Pe 1:23. silver and gold—Greek, "or." Compare Peter's own words, Ac 3:6: an undesigned coincidence. redeemed—Gold and silver being liable to corruption themselves, can free no one from spiritual and bodily death; they are therefore of too little value. Contrast 1Pe 1:19, Christ's "precious blood." The Israelites were ransomed with half a shekel each, which went towards purchasing the lamb for the daily sacrifice (Ex 30:12-16; compare Nu 3:44-51). But the Lamb who redeems the spiritual Israelites does so "without money or price." Devoted by sin to the justice of God, the Church of the first-born is redeemed from sin and the curse with Christ's precious blood (Mt 20:28; 1Ti 2:6; Tit 2:14; Re 5:9). In all these passages there is the idea of substitution, the giving of one for another by way of a ransom or equivalent. Man is "sold under sin" as a slave; shut up under condemnation and the curse.