It
was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been
announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit
sent from heaven-things into which angels long to look! (1 Peter 1:12)
The prophets of the Old Testament knew they were serving
future generations, not just themselves.
So Peter leads in. But there is a
focus on what they are revealing. Not everything
spoken then has the same relevance today.
That makes sense. Prophecy from
the Old Testament was God’s revelation to the people at that time. Not all would have relevance to us today.
It is “in regard to the things that have now been announced
to you” that the prophets had some sense of future service. That makes sense. Isaiah’s passages on the Suffering Servant,
from which we see the final hours of Jesus predicted, that was for a future,
for the restoration of Israel.
The things that have been announced, this is the content of
the previous eleven verses, the promise and fulfillment of salvation, the plan
of God to give us Jesus, the renewed way of faith and practice that Peter is
preaching, connected to but growing forward from the faith practices of the
Jews into what become the practices of Christianity.
This letter continually reminds me that the earliest
development of the faith was not into the world of the Gentiles, but that it
was a fulfillment and development of the Jewish faith, presented by Jewish
apostles to the Jewish communities that extended across the Roman Empire. Built into that Jewish faith-renewal are
promises made to Abraham that through him “the whole world will be blessed”.
We are blessed, as Gentiles, through the Jewish faith of our
Savior. The things Peter announces to
them have, in turn, been announced to us.
May we never forget our foundation.
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