Answering Those Who Would Cut Jesus off from the Jewish Faith

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

“Concerning this salvation…”  In the last paragraph, Peter laid out the triumphant gifts of God, given through His mercy for the salvation of His people.  He spoke of the Jesus he knew, now gone up to heaven, but returning in triumph once again.  His argument is that the difficulties that the Diaspora Jews have endured by faith in Jesus will be well worth the reward of faithfulness in the time to come.

But now Peter is moving forward in his letter, unfolding the next logical step in his discussions of salvation.  What he has presented as ‘salvation’ is not a new teaching, according to Peter.  Rather, it can be tied back into the faith that the Jews come out of, the faith of what Christians label ‘the Old Testament’.  We will develop that in the coming days.

One very interesting thing about reading the epistles, the personal letters of faith, mostly by Paul, but also by Peter, James, John, and Jude, is to consider who each is replying to.  What do I mean?  This is a personal piece of correspondence.  It is a personal letter.  It is written for a purpose, to exhort and lift the spirits of the Jews in the regions that are mentioned at the beginning.  This presupposes that their spirits need lifting, that something is going on that is threatening to undermine their faith.

First, Peter goes through again the gifts of God for the people of God embodied in Jesus, grace, love, and salvation, among others.  So it is fair to assume opponents of the faith were questioning that Jesus was indeed sent by God.  But a second challenge here seems to be that Peter is not connected to the Jewish faith, but is, in fact, bringing something new, something different, changing what the Jews have from God.  If they can cut the roots of Peter’s teachings from the Jewish faith, these unnamed opponents could force this faith in Jesus to wither and die.

But Peter is going to deal with that.