1 Peter 1:25

Verse 22 begins from something God has already done. “Seeing ye have purified your souls” looks back on a cleansing that has taken place, and Peter builds his command on it. The verb is hagnízō, to make clean or to sanctify, a word used for ceremonial cleansing and for moral purity alike. Here the soul, the whole inner person with its mind and will, has been made clean and fit for God’s presence and for a holy life.

Peter writes to “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1), believers in the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, in modern-day Turkey. They likely faced slander, social exclusion and the first stirrings of persecution, and Peter later speaks to them of a “fiery trial” (1 Peter 4:12). In such a place, sincere love among believers held them together, kept them encouraged, and showed the Gentiles around them what Christ had done. A family bond gave them belonging in a world marked by self-interest and suspicious of small groups like theirs.

The verse also gathers up the chapter so far. Peter has praised God for the lively hope of the new birth (1 Peter 1:3) and for the salvation “ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). He has called his readers to be holy because God is holy (1 Peter 1:15–16), and reminded them that they were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18–19). Hope, holiness, the blood of Christ and the power of God’s word run through the whole of 1 Peter 1. In verse 22 that inner work turns outward into love, and verse 23 gives the reason for it: those who are to love one another have all been born again of the same seed. Peter’s teaching on how believers are to live continues into 1 Peter 2.

“Being born again” is one word in Greek, anagennáō, to beget or bear again. Peter has used it once already, when he blessed God who “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope” (1 Peter 1:3), and those two verses are its only places in the New Testament. Here the form is passive, so the new birth is something received from God. It is his work of remaking a person from within, bringing them from spiritual death to life and giving them a new beginning and a new parentage.

Jesus told Nicodemus that a man must be born again, born of the Spirit, to enter the kingdom of God (John 3:3–8). John says that those who received Christ were born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13). James writes, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth” (James 1:18), and John speaks of God’s seed remaining in the one who is born of him (1 John 3:9).

Verses 24 and 25 quote the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 40:6–8), and Peter brings his words in to show why the new birth needs a seed that lasts. “Flesh” is sárx, here humanity as a whole in its mortal frailty before God, as in Isaiah’s “all flesh is grass”. “Glory” is dóxa, human honour and splendour: beauty, power, standing, achievement, all that people admire and take pride in. Where Isaiah says “all the goodliness thereof” (Isaiah 40:6), Peter writes “all the glory of man.” The verb “withereth,” xēraínō, means to dry up or become parched, and it is used of plants.

The picture comes from the land of Israel, where grass and wildflowers spring up quickly after the rains, flourish for a short time, and then wither under the summer heat and drought. The Old Testament uses it often: “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth” (Psalm 103:15–16). Psalm 90 compares our lives to grass that flourishes in the morning and is cut down and withers by evening (Psalm 90:5–6), and James says the rich man will pass away “as the flower of the grass” (James 1:10–11).

The flower is the grass at its finest, and it falls too, so the verse takes in the best that human life can show along with life itself. For Peter’s readers under trial this was a comfort as well as a warning. Their hardships were temporary, and so were the honour and power of those who opposed them. It humbles all of us as well, because our strength, our achievements and our very lives belong to the grass.

“But” turns from the grass to the word. Peter’s word for “word” here is rhēma, that which is said or spoken, a word or saying. In verse 23 he used lógos, and in quoting Isaiah he takes up rhēma, and both name the same word of God. “Endureth” is ménō, to stay, abide, continue or remain. “For ever” translates eis ton aiona, built on aiṓn, an age and by extension perpetuity, and with the preposition it means for ever, to an age without end. Peter quotes the Septuagint, the Greek translation of Isaiah 40:8, and writes “the word of the Lord” where the KJV of Isaiah reads “the word of our God”.

The rest of Scripture says the same. “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89). Jesus said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). Through Isaiah God says that his word goes out like the rain and the snow and accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:10–11). God is faithful to his word for ever, so what he has said can be trusted through every change and loss.

The gospel’s whole subject is Jesus Christ, and Scripture calls him the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), and “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). All things were created by him and for him, and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:16–17). He took on the flesh that withers like grass, yet his glory remains, for he is “the brightness of his glory” (Hebrews 1:3). His resurrection from the dead (1 Peter 1:3) overcame decay and death and secured for us the inheritance that is incorruptible (1 Peter 1:4).

Our new birth joins us to his death and resurrection, so that we “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). The life born of incorruptible seed is eternal life, which is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3). Christ is “the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:9), and God gave his Son so that whoever believes in him should have everlasting life (John 3:16). He is the truth that believers obey (John 14:6), and his laying down of his life is the pattern for the love verse 22 commands: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The Spirit he sent produces that love in his people, and their love for one another shows the world the life he gives.

These four verses hold together what God has done and what we are called to do. We are to love our brothers and sisters in Christ sincerely and with all our strength, in practical care that keeps going through disagreement and difficulty. We can, because God has cleansed us through his truth and his Spirit and given us a new birth from his own word. Since that word endures for ever, the life it gave us is secure, whatever withers around us. So the Scriptures and the gospel deserve the first place in our days, as the word that gave us life and the word that keeps us, and the good news we pass on to others is the one message in the world that lasts.