1Pe 1:1-2 | KingComments | STEP | After the many letters of Paul and the one letter of James you now have a letter of another writer before you. The writer is the apostle Peter. Of all the disciples who traveled through Israel with the Lord Jesus, he is the one about whom the most is written in the four Gospels. He has also received from the Lord the special task to strengthen and encourage his brothers. These are in the first place his Jewish fellow believers. Peter receives the apostleship to the circumcised, i.e. the Jews ( ). By the writing of his two letters Peter fulfills the order of the Lord: “Strengthen your brothers” ( ). To be able to fulfill this ministry he had to be educated and shaped. For that purpose God also used satan. Satan demanded permission from God to sift the disciples like wheat ( ). He got God’s permission to do that, whereby as with all temptations, God determines the limits. In that way satan had been an instrument in God’s hand to carry out His plans with Peter. The painful experience Peter had to undergo – he denied his Lord – was used by the Lord to make him fit for the ministry He had for him. The Lord made sure by His prayer that Peter’s faith may not fail ( ). The evidence of this are his letters. Peter has learnt a lot from his fall and restoration. He knows from own experience that satan is a terrible enemy and he knows God’s restoring hand that leads out of the depth. His failure reminds him of how great the grace and faithfulness of God are. That is also the way he concludes his letter. As a kind of conclusion he says to his readers “that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it” ( ). His whole letter testifies to that grace. What God wants to teach you with the grace He shows, is that you may subject yourself to His will. That was the case with Peter. After Peter’s restoration in the midst of the other disciples, he receives from the Lord his threefold task ( ). The lambs and sheep the Lord entrusts to him He emphatically calls: “ My lambs” and “ My sheep”. It refers to the lambs and the sheep of the fold of Israel. The Lord knew about what His sheep would have to fear from the unbelieving Israelites. That’s why He entrusted them to Peter, who had gone astray like a lost sheep himself, but has returned ( ). Peter calls the sheep that the Lord entrusts to him “those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout …” ( ). Scattering is a judgment of God because of the unfaithfulness of His people. At the same time the grace of God had taken care of them, for the promises of the Old Testament were made to them. They returned, not to the land, but to “the Shepherd and Guardian” of their souls ( ). Peter can help and guide his brothers, who came from a people that just as he had denied the Lord ( ) and who now live outside of Israel. Just like the other apostles Peter also has a special subject that characterizes his letters. Paul often presents the believers as members of the church, which means as members of the body of Christ. John sees the believers as members of the family of God. Peter can be called the apostle of the kingdom of God. ‘The kingdom of God’ is the great subject of both of his letters, although the expression itself does not appear in them. That is, he views and addresses the believers as subjects in the kingdom of God. Paul also has spoken about the kingdom of God, but Peter is the one who received the keys of the kingdom of heaven ( ). (Just for the sake of clarity: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are the same, but with a different accent.) He used the keys in the book of Acts in order to open the door of the kingdom successively for the Jews (Acts 2), the Samaritans (Acts 8) and the Gentiles (Acts 10). In that way Peter has not been made the head of the church or the gate keeper of heaven. The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is a kingdom on earth. But what is that kingdom? When you think of a kingdom you think of a king and subjects. The kingdom of God is the kingdom that is ruled by God . He rules over everything that is His; that is the universe with everything that belongs to it. You cannot see that yet, but it is the purpose of God to soon put everything under the feet of the Son of Man. What you do see is that the Lord Jesus has already been crowned as King ( ). In the Old Testament the kingdom of God is something to come, for it is related to the coming of the King, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus ( ). The Lord Jesus is the Heir of all things. But when He came to earth He was rejected. Therefore the kingdom in its announced form, in which the Messiah will publicly reign, has been delayed for an indefinite time. Nevertheless the kingdom exists, but in a special form. This form is unexpected and is not announced by the prophets. The particular thing about it is that the kingdom is not public, but hidden. Therefore, the Lord Jesus speaks about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven ( ). It is a hidden realm because the King of that realm is hidden. The subjects, those who confess the Lord Jesus as Lord, are not hidden, but He, to Whom they subject themselves, is. The world doesn’t see the living Lord of Whom the Christians are subjects, for the world has rejected and crucified Him. The world is not subjected yet. The world is still hostile and now turns against the believers as it once did against the Lord Jesus. Peter is focusing the eyes of the readers on the glorified Lord and on the future, when He will appear to reward the ones who are His – and to judge His enemies, but he will write about that in his second letter. Another theme is the suffering of the believer because of his identification with the rejected Lord. Suffering is presented in such a way that you can conclude that it is a suffering in imitation of Christ. Thereby you can discern different kinds that you encounter in this letter: 1. Suffering as a test of faith ( ); 2. suffering for the sake of conscience ( ); 3. suffering for the sake of righteousness ( ); 4. suffering for the sake of Christ and for His Name’s sake ( ); 5. suffering from the side of satan ( ). As the prophets already announced, suffering is an intermediate step toward glory. Just as the Lord Jesus came to glory through suffering, so do you. Therefore you are pointed to the inheritance that lies before you. The glory in this letter is not the Father’s house, but that you will be sharing Christ’s glory in the kingdom. As you suffer with the Rejected One now, you will soon reign with the glorified Christ after His return. To understand the letter well, you should always consider that it is addressed to Jewish Christians. They know the Old Testament, they are looking forward to the kingdom and the glory of the Messiah and His government; they know about the judgment on the enemies. Now they believe in a Messiah Who they cannot see, while the wicked ones of the people have not been judged. On the contrary, both the wicked Jews and the Gentiles cause the Jewish Christians to suffer. Everything is so much different than what they have believed from their childhood. They are mocked with why their Messiah does not give salvation. Then their faith may begin to falter. You are not in the same position, but there are many similarities between your position and that of them. It can also be hard for you to continue to trust in an invisible Lord. That trust in the invisible Lord can also result in different forms of suffering. It applies also to you that through this letter Peter focuses your heart on Him Whom you have come to love, though you do not see Him now. . “Peter” presents himself as the sender of the letter to his readers. He calls himself by the name that the Lord has given to him ( ). Then he makes it clear that he writes as “an apostle of Jesus Christ”. In that way his letter has authority. It doesn’t mean that he addresses them from an exalted position, but to ensure his readers that this writing has great significance. An apostle is a representative who speaks or writes on behalf of another person. Therefore he does not write this letter out of courtesy, but it is a letter that he writes on behalf of Jesus Christ. In this letter he passes on the love of the Lord Jesus to His own. The recipients are addressed as “aliens, scattered”. The readers, the believing Jews, are pilgrims in the areas to which they have been scattered by the persecution that had erupted because of Stephen ( ). ‘Aliens’ or ‘pilgrims’ find themselves in tough circumstances, far from their native country. The fact that they were ‘scattered’ implies that they were under the judgment of God. If they had remained faithful to what God had told them, they would have enjoyed God’s blessings in His land. That is out of the question now. Instead, they find themselves outside the promised land in strange countries. You may say that these believers are pilgrims or strangers in two ways. They are to the Gentiles in the midst of whom they find themselves, while they are also that to their unbelieving compatriots through their faith in the Messiah. Peter mentions the areas where the believing Jews were scattered. Those are the five provinces of the Roman empire that are in Asia Minor, in present Turkey. It is the area where Paul has worked often, as you can read in the book of Acts. Although it cannot be said with certainty, it is much likely that many have come to faith through his service. Related to their scattering is that they must endure suffering. Another reason why Peter writes his letter, is to encourage them in that suffering. He nowhere appeals to resist against that suffering or to rebel against it. Also today the children of God are scattered everywhere and endure suffering. If you consistently follow the Lord Jesus you do not count in the world. You cannot find anywhere an appeal to unite yourself with other Christians to overthrow governments or even exert any political influence. Neither did the Lord Jesus do that. In their relation to the world the believers are strangers who are scattered here and there; in their relation to God things are totally different. Listen to what Peter has to say about their relationship to God. That are great blessings for the believers. The world has no part in that, the world doesn’t even know anything about it. Also the unbelieving Jews have no part in that. He is talking about “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” ( ). He also talks about “sanctification of [the] Spirit, unto [the] obedience and sprinkling of [the] blood of Jesus Christ” (Darby Translation). Here you see the triune God: God the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. The triune God is the Source of all these great blessings and He works that its objects indeed partake of that too. Let us briefly examine these blessings one by one. First that of being chosen. Being chosen sounds familiar to the pilgrims in the dispersion. They know that they, regarding their national origin, belong to God’s chosen people. Only, that being chosen regards being chosen to be God’s people on earth ( ). Because the people had rejected the Lord Jesus, Israel has lost that place. When Israel will repent in the future, it will be God’s people. But at this time there is another being chosen, a higher, a heavenly one for the believers. The being chosen of a believer is destined for heaven and not for earth. Therefore the being chosen that Peter is talking about, stands opposite to the being chosen of God’s earthly people. . This being chosen happened “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. The Father has, according to His perfect foreknowledge of all things, chosen certain people to be His property ( ). With God foreknowledge implies more than only knowing all things in advance. Nothing will ever happen that He did not know in advance. However, His foreknowledge is not passive, but it makes Him act in a certain way, like here concerning His choice. For you, who may know to be chosen, that is an enormous encouragement, for it gives you the absolute guarantee that your being chosen has been established to eternity. To Peter it is also, with respect to the readers of his letter, a definite matter (cf. ). God says: ‘You belong to Me.’ Who can reverse that? Who is greater and mightier than God? Therefore being chosen doesn’t depend on your efforts, but on the counsel of God the Father, Who executes what He plans to do ( ). Peter will deal later in this chapter with the responsibilities that are also related to that. If you look at being chosen you see the same concerning the following aspect that Peter calls the “sanctification of the Spirit”. ‘To sanctify’ means ‘to set apart’. God’s earthly people Israel was set apart from the nations that surrounded them, by all kinds of outward statutes. Thereby the law functioned as a dividing wall ( ). Peter talks about ‘sanctification of the Spirit’. The heavenly people where these believers (and we) belong to, have been set apart for God by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has worked the new life in them, separated them from the world and from Israel and connected them to their Messiah Who is in heaven. The same goes for the next aspect, that of “obedience”. As Jews they were indebted to obey the law, with the promise of life. To them as believers another obedience has replaced that, namely the “obedience … of Jesus Christ” (Darby Translation). No one was able to fulfill the old standard of obedience, the law. But now they are able to fulfill the new standard by the new life they possess. That new life is the Lord Jesus. In that way they are able to obey as the Lord Jesus has done. After all you read about the obedience of Jesus Christ. It is not about obeying the law. To the believer the standard of obedience is not the law, but Christ. Look at Him, how He always obeyed His Father in love and you will surely learn to be obedient like that. That obedience goes much further than obeying the law. As a final aspect – an aspect that, like obedience, is related to Jesus Christ – Peter points to the “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”. Here you find the blood of Christ as the foundation to obey. The blood gives the perfect assurance that before God everything is well. This aspect also forms a great contrast to what God has given to His people in the past. In the Old Testament indeed blood is mentioned as the basis for atonement, but that blood is related to animals. However, that blood cannot take away sins and cannot give anyone a perfect conscience before God. Only the blood of Christ can ( ). The blood of Christ places you in perfect purity in the presence of God. Through the blood of Christ you have peace with God ( ; ; ). You may be sure of that position to be yours. Next to that Peter adds a wish. He wishes that “grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure” or that “grace and peace may be multiplied” to the believers. By that he means that you will expect more and more from God’s grace and you will trust less and less in your own power. God’s grace will always be there to help you to do anything you have to do. If that awareness is present and also increases, you will surely experience the peace that Peter then wishes the believers. God wants you to grow, that today you rejoice more in Him than yesterday, in spite of or maybe owing to the hardships that you experience. When your faith is put to the test you get the chance to multiply in knowing the grace that God gives to you and in the peace that God Himself has. Now read 1 Peter 1:1-2 again. Reflection: In what blessings, according to these verses, may you rejoice?

‏ 1 Peter 1:1-2

Introduction

After the many letters of Paul and the one letter of James you now have a letter of another writer before you. The writer is the apostle Peter. Of all the disciples who traveled through Israel with the Lord Jesus, he is the one about whom the most is written in the four Gospels. He has also received from the Lord the special task to strengthen and encourage his brothers. These are in the first place his Jewish fellow believers. Peter receives the apostleship to the circumcised, i.e. the Jews (Gal 2:7). By the writing of his two letters Peter fulfills the order of the Lord: “Strengthen your brothers” (Lk 22:32b).

To be able to fulfill this ministry he had to be educated and shaped. For that purpose God also used satan. Satan demanded permission from God to sift the disciples like wheat (Lk 22:31). He got God’s permission to do that, whereby as with all temptations, God determines the limits. In that way satan had been an instrument in God’s hand to carry out His plans with Peter. The painful experience Peter had to undergo – he denied his Lord – was used by the Lord to make him fit for the ministry He had for him. The Lord made sure by His prayer that Peter’s faith may not fail (Lk 22:32a). The evidence of this are his letters.

Peter has learnt a lot from his fall and restoration. He knows from own experience that satan is a terrible enemy and he knows God’s restoring hand that leads out of the depth. His failure reminds him of how great the grace and faithfulness of God are. That is also the way he concludes his letter. As a kind of conclusion he says to his readers “that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it” (1Pet 5:12). His whole letter testifies to that grace. What God wants to teach you with the grace He shows, is that you may subject yourself to His will. That was the case with Peter.

After Peter’s restoration in the midst of the other disciples, he receives from the Lord his threefold task (Jn 21:15-17). The lambs and sheep the Lord entrusts to him He emphatically calls: “My lambs” and “My sheep”. It refers to the lambs and the sheep of the fold of Israel. The Lord knew about what His sheep would have to fear from the unbelieving Israelites. That’s why He entrusted them to Peter, who had gone astray like a lost sheep himself, but has returned (Psa 119:176).

Peter calls the sheep that the Lord entrusts to him “those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout …” (1Pet 1:1). Scattering is a judgment of God because of the unfaithfulness of His people. At the same time the grace of God had taken care of them, for the promises of the Old Testament were made to them. They returned, not to the land, but to “the Shepherd and Guardian” of their souls (1Pet 2:25). Peter can help and guide his brothers, who came from a people that just as he had denied the Lord (Acts 3:13) and who now live outside of Israel.

Just like the other apostles Peter also has a special subject that characterizes his letters. Paul often presents the believers as members of the church, which means as members of the body of Christ. John sees the believers as members of the family of God. Peter can be called the apostle of the kingdom of God. ‘The kingdom of God’ is the great subject of both of his letters, although the expression itself does not appear in them. That is, he views and addresses the believers as subjects in the kingdom of God.

Paul also has spoken about the kingdom of God, but Peter is the one who received the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 16:16-19). (Just for the sake of clarity: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are the same, but with a different accent.) He used the keys in the book of Acts in order to open the door of the kingdom successively for the Jews (Acts 2), the Samaritans (Acts 8) and the Gentiles (Acts 10).

In that way Peter has not been made the head of the church or the gate keeper of heaven. The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is a kingdom on earth. But what is that kingdom? When you think of a kingdom you think of a king and subjects. The kingdom of God is the kingdom that is ruled by God. He rules over everything that is His; that is the universe with everything that belongs to it.

You cannot see that yet, but it is the purpose of God to soon put everything under the feet of the Son of Man. What you do see is that the Lord Jesus has already been crowned as King (Heb 2:8-9). In the Old Testament the kingdom of God is something to come, for it is related to the coming of the King, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus (Dan 7:13-14). The Lord Jesus is the Heir of all things. But when He came to earth He was rejected. Therefore the kingdom in its announced form, in which the Messiah will publicly reign, has been delayed for an indefinite time.

Nevertheless the kingdom exists, but in a special form. This form is unexpected and is not announced by the prophets. The particular thing about it is that the kingdom is not public, but hidden. Therefore, the Lord Jesus speaks about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 13:11). It is a hidden realm because the King of that realm is hidden. The subjects, those who confess the Lord Jesus as Lord, are not hidden, but He, to Whom they subject themselves, is.

The world doesn’t see the living Lord of Whom the Christians are subjects, for the world has rejected and crucified Him. The world is not subjected yet. The world is still hostile and now turns against the believers as it once did against the Lord Jesus. Peter is focusing the eyes of the readers on the glorified Lord and on the future, when He will appear to reward the ones who are His – and to judge His enemies, but he will write about that in his second letter.

Another theme is the suffering of the believer because of his identification with the rejected Lord. Suffering is presented in such a way that you can conclude that it is a suffering in imitation of Christ. Thereby you can discern different kinds that you encounter in this letter:

1. Suffering as a test of faith (1Pet 1:6-7);

2. suffering for the sake of conscience (1Pet 2:19);

3. suffering for the sake of righteousness (1Pet 3:14);

4. suffering for the sake of Christ and for His Name’s sake (1Pet 4:13-14);

5. suffering from the side of satan (1Pet 5:8-9).

As the prophets already announced, suffering is an intermediate step toward glory. Just as the Lord Jesus came to glory through suffering, so do you. Therefore you are pointed to the inheritance that lies before you. The glory in this letter is not the Father’s house, but that you will be sharing Christ’s glory in the kingdom. As you suffer with the Rejected One now, you will soon reign with the glorified Christ after His return.

To understand the letter well, you should always consider that it is addressed to Jewish Christians. They know the Old Testament, they are looking forward to the kingdom and the glory of the Messiah and His government; they know about the judgment on the enemies. Now they believe in a Messiah Who they cannot see, while the wicked ones of the people have not been judged. On the contrary, both the wicked Jews and the Gentiles cause the Jewish Christians to suffer. Everything is so much different than what they have believed from their childhood. They are mocked with why their Messiah does not give salvation. Then their faith may begin to falter.

You are not in the same position, but there are many similarities between your position and that of them. It can also be hard for you to continue to trust in an invisible Lord. That trust in the invisible Lord can also result in different forms of suffering. It applies also to you that through this letter Peter focuses your heart on Him Whom you have come to love, though you do not see Him now.

Blessing

1Pet 1:1. “Peter” presents himself as the sender of the letter to his readers. He calls himself by the name that the Lord has given to him (Jn 1:42). Then he makes it clear that he writes as “an apostle of Jesus Christ”. In that way his letter has authority. It doesn’t mean that he addresses them from an exalted position, but to ensure his readers that this writing has great significance. An apostle is a representative who speaks or writes on behalf of another person. Therefore he does not write this letter out of courtesy, but it is a letter that he writes on behalf of Jesus Christ. In this letter he passes on the love of the Lord Jesus to His own.

The recipients are addressed as “aliens, scattered”. The readers, the believing Jews, are pilgrims in the areas to which they have been scattered by the persecution that had erupted because of Stephen (Acts 8:1 ; 4 ; Acts 11:19). ‘Aliens’ or ‘pilgrims’ find themselves in tough circumstances, far from their native country. The fact that they were ‘scattered’ implies that they were under the judgment of God. If they had remained faithful to what God had told them, they would have enjoyed God’s blessings in His land. That is out of the question now. Instead, they find themselves outside the promised land in strange countries.

You may say that these believers are pilgrims or strangers in two ways. They are to the Gentiles in the midst of whom they find themselves, while they are also that to their unbelieving compatriots through their faith in the Messiah.

Peter mentions the areas where the believing Jews were scattered. Those are the five provinces of the Roman empire that are in Asia Minor, in present Turkey. It is the area where Paul has worked often, as you can read in the book of Acts. Although it cannot be said with certainty, it is much likely that many have come to faith through his service.

Related to their scattering is that they must endure suffering. Another reason why Peter writes his letter, is to encourage them in that suffering. He nowhere appeals to resist against that suffering or to rebel against it.

Also today the children of God are scattered everywhere and endure suffering. If you consistently follow the Lord Jesus you do not count in the world. You cannot find anywhere an appeal to unite yourself with other Christians to overthrow governments or even exert any political influence. Neither did the Lord Jesus do that.

In their relation to the world the believers are strangers who are scattered here and there; in their relation to God things are totally different. Listen to what Peter has to say about their relationship to God. That are great blessings for the believers. The world has no part in that, the world doesn’t even know anything about it. Also the unbelieving Jews have no part in that. He is talking about “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1Pet 1:2). He also talks about “sanctification of [the] Spirit, unto [the] obedience and sprinkling of [the] blood of Jesus Christ” (Darby Translation).

Here you see the triune God: God the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. The triune God is the Source of all these great blessings and He works that its objects indeed partake of that too.

Let us briefly examine these blessings one by one. First that of being chosen. Being chosen sounds familiar to the pilgrims in the dispersion. They know that they, regarding their national origin, belong to God’s chosen people. Only, that being chosen regards being chosen to be God’s people on earth (Deu 7:6). Because the people had rejected the Lord Jesus, Israel has lost that place. When Israel will repent in the future, it will be God’s people.

But at this time there is another being chosen, a higher, a heavenly one for the believers. The being chosen of a believer is destined for heaven and not for earth. Therefore the being chosen that Peter is talking about, stands opposite to the being chosen of God’s earthly people.

1Pet 1:2. This being chosen happened “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. The Father has, according to His perfect foreknowledge of all things, chosen certain people to be His property (Eph 1:4). With God foreknowledge implies more than only knowing all things in advance. Nothing will ever happen that He did not know in advance. However, His foreknowledge is not passive, but it makes Him act in a certain way, like here concerning His choice.

For you, who may know to be chosen, that is an enormous encouragement, for it gives you the absolute guarantee that your being chosen has been established to eternity. To Peter it is also, with respect to the readers of his letter, a definite matter (cf. 2Thes 2:13). God says: ‘You belong to Me.’ Who can reverse that? Who is greater and mightier than God? Therefore being chosen doesn’t depend on your efforts, but on the counsel of God the Father, Who executes what He plans to do (Rom 8:28-30). Peter will deal later in this chapter with the responsibilities that are also related to that.

If you look at being chosen you see the same concerning the following aspect that Peter calls the “sanctification of the Spirit”. ‘To sanctify’ means ‘to set apart’. God’s earthly people Israel was set apart from the nations that surrounded them, by all kinds of outward statutes. Thereby the law functioned as a dividing wall (Eph 2:14). Peter talks about ‘sanctification of the Spirit’. The heavenly people where these believers (and we) belong to, have been set apart for God by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has worked the new life in them, separated them from the world and from Israel and connected them to their Messiah Who is in heaven.

The same goes for the next aspect, that of “obedience”. As Jews they were indebted to obey the law, with the promise of life. To them as believers another obedience has replaced that, namely the “obedience … of Jesus Christ” (Darby Translation). No one was able to fulfill the old standard of obedience, the law. But now they are able to fulfill the new standard by the new life they possess.

That new life is the Lord Jesus. In that way they are able to obey as the Lord Jesus has done. After all you read about the obedience of Jesus Christ. It is not about obeying the law. To the believer the standard of obedience is not the law, but Christ. Look at Him, how He always obeyed His Father in love and you will surely learn to be obedient like that. That obedience goes much further than obeying the law.

As a final aspect – an aspect that, like obedience, is related to Jesus Christ – Peter points to the “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”. Here you find the blood of Christ as the foundation to obey. The blood gives the perfect assurance that before God everything is well.

This aspect also forms a great contrast to what God has given to His people in the past. In the Old Testament indeed blood is mentioned as the basis for atonement, but that blood is related to animals. However, that blood cannot take away sins and cannot give anyone a perfect conscience before God. Only the blood of Christ can (Heb 10:4-14). The blood of Christ places you in perfect purity in the presence of God. Through the blood of Christ you have peace with God (Eph 2:13; Col 1:20; Rom 5:1). You may be sure of that position to be yours.

Next to that Peter adds a wish. He wishes that “grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure” or that “grace and peace may be multiplied” to the believers. By that he means that you will expect more and more from God’s grace and you will trust less and less in your own power. God’s grace will always be there to help you to do anything you have to do. If that awareness is present and also increases, you will surely experience the peace that Peter then wishes the believers.

God wants you to grow, that today you rejoice more in Him than yesterday, in spite of or maybe owing to the hardships that you experience. When your faith is put to the test you get the chance to multiply in knowing the grace that God gives to you and in the peace that God Himself has.

Now read 1 Peter 1:1-2 again.

Reflection: In what blessings, according to these verses, may you rejoice?