1 Peter 1:20

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.

{12} Who verily was foreordained before the {k} foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, (12) The taking away of an objection: what was done to the world, before Christ was sent into the world? was there no holiness before, and was there no Church? The apostle answers, that Christ was ordained and appointed to redeem and deliver mankind, before mankind was: much less was there any Church without him before his coming in the flesh: yet we are happiest about the rest, to whom Christ was exhibited indeed, in this that he having suffered and overcome death for us, does now most effectually work in us by the power of his Spirit, to create in us faith, hope, and charity. (k) From everlasting.

Foreordained (προεγνωσμένου) Lit., and better, foreknown, as Rev. Manifested (φανερωθέντος) Observe the difference in tense. Foreknown is the perfect participle, has been known from all eternity down to the present "in reference to the place held and continuing to be held by Christ in the divine mind" (Salmond). Manifested is the aorist participle, pointing to a definite act at a given time. In these last times ( ἐπ' ἐσχάτου τῶν χρόνων) Lit., as Rev., at the end of the times.

Who verily was fore-ordained; by God’s decree appointed to the work of redemption, and to be that Lamb that should take away the sins of the world, Ephesians 1:9 . Before the foundation of the world; from eternity; there being nothing before the world began but what was eternal, John 17:24 . But was manifested; not only by his incarnation, 1 Timothy 3:16 , but by the preaching of the gospel. See these Scriptures: Galatians 4:4 Ephesians 1:10 Hebrews 1:2 9:26 . In these last times; last, in comparison of the times of the Old Testament; the same as the fulness of time, Galatians 4:4 . For you; that you, with other believers, might partake of salvation by him. The fruit of Christ’s redemption reacheth all ages, but much more abundantly the times after his coming in the flesh. The sum of the argument is, Christ was ordained from eternity, promised to the fathers, but manifested to you: your privilege therefore being greater than theirs, Matthew 13:17 Hebrews 11:39,40 , you should be the more holy.

1 Peter 1:20 . As the paschal lamb was taken on the tenth day of the month ( Exodus 13:3 ) so Christ was foreknown before the creation and existed before His manifestation. The preexistence of Moses is stated in similar terms in Assumption of Moses , i. 12–14, “God created the world on behalf of His people. But He was not pleased to manifest this purpose of creation from the foundation of the world in order that the Gentiles might thereby be convicted.… Accordingly He designed and devised me and He prepared me before the foundation of the world that I should be the mediator of His Covenant.” So of the Messiah, Enoch (xlviii. 3, 6) says: “His name was called before the Lord of spirits before the sun and the signs of the zodiac were created.… He was chosen and hidden with God before the world was created. At the end of time God will reveal him to the world.” Alexandrian Judaism took over from Greek philosophy (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the doctrine of the preexistence of all souls. So in the Secrets of Enoch (xxiii. 5) it is said “Every soul was created eternally before the foundation of the world”. The author of Wisdom was a goodly child and obtained a good soul or rather being good came into a body undefiled (Sap. 8:19 f.); and Philo found Scriptural warrant in the first of the two accounts of Creation ( Genesis 1:26 f.). Outside Alexandria, apart from the Essenes (Joseph, B. J., ii. 154–157) the general doctrine does not appear to have been accepted.

But the belief in the preexistence of the Name of the Messiah if not the Messiah Himself was not unknown in Palestine and was latent in many of the current ideals. The doctrine of Trypho was probably part of the general reaction from the position reached by the Jewish thinkers (A.D.) and appropriated by the Christians. There are many hints in the O.T. which Christians exploited without violence and the development of angelology offered great assistance. Current conceptions of Angels and Wisdom as well as of the Messiah all led up to this belief. Apart from the express declarations of Jesus recorded by St. John, it is clear that St. Peter held to the real and not merely ideal pre-existence of Christ, not deriving it from St. Paul or St. John and Heb. It is no mere corollary of God’s omniscience that the spirit of Christ was in the prophets.— προεγνωσμένου , cf. κατὰ πρόγνωσιν , 1 Peter 1:2 ; only here of Messiah, perhaps as a greater Jeremiah ( cf. Jeremiah 1:5 )—but see the description of Moses cited above.— πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου . The phrase does not occur in LXX but Matthew 13:35 = Psalm 78:2 renders מני קדם by ἀπὸ καταβολῆς (LXX ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς ) Philo has καταβολὴ γενέσεως ) and αἱ καταβολαὶ σπερμάτων and uses ἐκ κ . = afresh. In 2Ma 2:29 , καταβολή is used of the foundation of a house; cf. κατασκευάζειν in Heb.— φανερωθέντος , of the past manifestation of Christ.

20. God's eternal foreordination of Christ's redeeming sacrifice, and completion of it in these last times for us, are an additional obligation on us to our maintaining a holy walk, considering how great things have been thus done for us. Peter's language in the history corresponds with this here: an undesigned coincidence and mark of genuineness. Redemption was no afterthought, or remedy of an unforeseen evil, devised at the time of its arising. God's foreordaining of the Redeemer refutes the slander that, on the Christian theory, there is a period of four thousand years of nothing but an incensed God. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4). manifest—in His incarnation in the fulness of the time. He existed from eternity before He was manifested. in these last times—1Co 10:11, "the ends of the world." This last dispensation, made up of "times" marked by great changes, but still retaining a general unity, stretches from Christ's ascension to His coming to judgment.

20 . who verily was foreordained ] Literally, foreknown , but the foreknowledge of God implies the foreordaining. Here also we note the coincidence with St Peter’s language in Acts 2:23 ; Acts 3:18 . The Greek for “these last times” is literally the end of the times . The Apostle’s language was determined probably in part by the prophecy of Joel which he cites in Acts 2:17 , in part by his belief that with the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, the last period of God’s dealings with mankind, the duration of which it was not given to him to measure, had actually begun. In the thought that the foreknowledge of God was “before the foundation of the world,” we have the very phrase which St Peter had heard from our Lord’s lips in Matthew 25:34 , Luke 11:50 , John 17:24 , and which he may have read with the same force as in this passage in Ephesians 1:4 .

Verse 20. - Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world ; rather, as in the Revised Version, who was foreknown indeed ; literally, who hath been fore known . But the foreknowledge of God implies the exercise of his will, therefore the "foreordained" of the Authorized Version, though not here an exact translation, is true in doctrine. St. Peter had asserted the same great truth in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost ( Acts 2:23 ; comp. also Acts 3:18 and Acts 4:28). He had heard the words, "before the foundation of the world," again and again from the lips of Christ; he may possibly have read them in the Epistle to the Ephesians ( Ephesians 1:4 ). The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ were not the result of a change of purpose to meet unforeseen circumstances; they were foreseen and foreordained in the eternal counsels of God. Those counsels are wholly above the range of our understanding; we cannot see through the veil of mystery which surrounds them; we cannot fathom the awful necessities which they imply. But was manifest in these last times for you; rather, as in the Revised Version, with the best manuscripts, was manifested at the end of the times for your sake . The aorist ( φανερωθέντος ) marks the Incarnation as an event which took place in time; the purpose of God was eternal, before all time.