Commentary on First and Second Peter, Jude (Commentary on the New Testament Book #17)

By Robert H. Gundry

Delve Deeper into God's Word

In this verse-by-verse commentary, Robert Gundry offers a fresh, literal translation and a reliable exposition of Scripture for today's readers.

First Peter emphasizes proper Christian conduct in the face of anti-Christian hostility. Second Peter and Jude describe false teachers and their ungodliness, affirming the true knowledge of Christian belief to counter heresy.

Pastors, Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, and laypeople will welcome Gundry's nontechnical explanations and clarifications. And Bible students at all levels will appreciate his sparkling interpretations.

This selection is from Gundry's Commentary on the New Testament.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781441237743

Robert H. Gundry

Robert H. Gundry (PhD, Manchester) is a scholar-in-residence and professor emeritus of New Testament and Greek at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. Among his books are Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross; Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution, Soma in Biblical Theology, and Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian.

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Commentary on First and Second Peter, Jude

Robert H. Gundry

© 2010 by Robert H. Gundry

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2011

Previously appeared in Robert H. Gundry, Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2010).

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Commentary on the New Testament is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4412-3774-3

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

First Peter

ADDRESS AND GREETING

1 Peter 1:1–2

PRAISE FOR THE HEAVENLY INHERITANCE OF PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS

1 Peter 1:3–12

AN EXHORTATION TO PERSONAL HOLINESS

1 Peter 1:13–21

AN EXHORTATION TO MUTUAL LOVE

1 Peter 1:22–25

AN EXHORTATION TO PROGRESS IN SALVATION

1 Peter 2:1–10

AN EXHORTATION TO GOOD DEEDS

1 Peter 2:11–12

AN EXHORTATION TO SOCIAL PROPRIETY

1 Peter 2:13–17

AN EXHORTATION THAT CHRISTIAN SLAVES SUBORDINATE THEMSELVES TO THEIR MASTERS

1 Peter 2:18–25

AN EXHORTATION THAT CHRISTIAN WIVES SUBORDINATE THEMSELVES TO THEIR HUSBANDS

1 Peter 3:1–6

AN EXHORTATION TO CHRISTIAN HUSBANDS THAT THEY CONFER HONOR ON THEIR WIVES

1 Peter 3:7

AN EXHORTATION TO UNITY

1 Peter 3:8–12

AN EXHORTATION TO SUFFERING FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

1 Peter 3:13–4:6

LOVING SERVICE FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

1 Peter 4:7–11

AN EXHORTATION TO SUFFER JOYFULLY AS A CHRISTIAN

1 Peter 4:12–19

AN EXHORTATION TO HUMILITY IN THE CHURCH AND RESISTANCE TO PERSECUTION

1 Peter 5:1–11

CONCLUSION

1 Peter 5:12–14

Second Peter

ADDRESS AND GREETING

2 Peter 1:1–4

THE MORAL UNDERGIRDING OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF WITH CORRECT CONDUCT

2 Peter 1:5–11

THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF, SUPPORTED BY EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY AND FULFILLED PROPHECY

2 Peter 1:12–21

FALSE TEACHERS

2 Peter 2:1–22

THE SECOND COMING, FINAL DISSOLUTION, AND NEW CREATION

2 Peter 3:1–18a

A DOXOLOGY

2 Peter 3:18b

Jude

Back Cover

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to Shirley Decker-Lucke, Editorial Director at Hendrickson Publishers, for accepting this exposition of the New Testament for publication; to Mark House, Phil Frank, and others for their work there on the publication; and to the Baker Academic team for their work on this reprint. My brother Stan Gundry, whose contributions to Christian publishing are deservedly well-known, encouraged me to write the exposition. Connie Gundry Tappy copyedited the manuscript. Her copyediting included not only the correction of errors and the refinement of style, but also a host of interpretive improvements and scriptural cross-references arising out of her comprehensive knowledge of the Bible. To her, my daughter as well as my copyeditor, I affectionately dedicate this volume.

Robert H. Gundry

Westmont College

Santa Barbara, California

Introduction

Dear reader,

Here you have part of a commentary on the whole New Testament, published by Baker Academic both in hardback and as an ebook. The electronic version has been broken into segments for your convenience and affordability, though if you like what you find here you may want to consider the whole at a proportionately lower cost. Whether in whole or in part, the e-version puts my comments at your fingertips on your easily portable Kindle, iPad, smartphone, or similar device.

I’ve written this commentary especially for busy people like you—lay people with jobs and families that take up a lot of time, Bible study leaders, pastors, and all who take the New Testament seriously—that is, people who time-wise and perhaps money-wise can’t afford the luxury of numerous heavyweight, technical commentaries on the individual books making up the section of the Bible we call the New Testament. So technical questions are avoided almost entirely, and the commentary concentrates on what will prove useful for understanding the scriptural text as a basis for your personal life as a Christian, for discussion with others, and for teaching and preaching.

Group discussion, teaching, and preaching all involve speaking aloud, of course, and when the New Testament was written, even private reading was done aloud. Moreover, most authors dictated their material to a writing secretary, and books were ordinarily read aloud to an audience. In this commentary, then, I’ve avoided almost all abbreviations (which don’t come through as such in oral speech) and have freely used contractions that characterize speaking (we’ll, you’re, they’ve, and so on). To indicate emphasis in oral speech, italics also occur fairly often.

You’ll mostly have to make your own practical and devotional applications of the scriptural text. But such applications shouldn’t disregard or violate the meanings intended by the Scripture’s divinely inspired authors and should draw on the richness of those meanings. So I’ve interpreted them in detail. Bold print indicates the text being interpreted. Translations of the original Greek are my own. Because of the interpretations’ close attention to detail, my translations usually, though not always, gravitate to the literal and sometimes produce run-on sentences and other nonstandard, convoluted, and even highly unnatural English. Square brackets enclose intervening clarifications, however, plus words in English that don’t correspond to words in the Greek text but do need supplying to make good sense. (As a language, Greek has a much greater tendency than English does to omit words meant to be supplied mentally.) Seemingly odd word-choices in a translation get justified in the following comments. It needs to be said as well that the very awkwardness of a literal translation often highlights features of the scriptural text obscured, eclipsed, or even contradicted by loose translations and paraphrases.

Literal translation also produces some politically incorrect English. Though brothers often includes sisters, for example, sisters doesn’t include brothers. Similarly, masculine pronouns may include females as well as males, but not vice versa. These pronouns, brothers, and other masculine expressions that on occasion are gender-inclusive correspond to the original, however, and help give a linguistic feel for the male-dominated culture in which the New Testament originated and which its language reflects. Preachers, Bible study leaders, and others should make whatever adjustments they think necessary for contemporary audiences but should not garble the text’s intended meaning.

Out of respect for your abilities so far as English is concerned, I’ve not dumbed down the vocabulary used in translations and interpretations. Like the translations, interpretations are my own. Rather than reading straight through, many of you may consult the interpretation of an individual passage now and then. So I’ve had to engage in a certain amount of repetition. To offset the repetition and keep the material in bounds, I rarely discuss others’ interpretations. But I’ve not neglected to canvass them in my research.

On the theological front, the commentary is unabashedly evangelical, so that my prayers accompany this volume in support of all you who strive for faithfulness to the New Testament as the word of God.

Robert Gundry

First Peter

This letter’s addressees were suffering persecution. Emphasis falls therefore on proper Christian conduct in the face of anti-Christian hostility and on the gift of salvation that will reach completion in the future.

ADDRESS AND GREETING

1 Peter 1:1–2

1:1–2: Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to exiles of the Diaspora of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, [exiles] selected ²in accordance with the foreknowledge of God the Father by the Spirit’s consecration for obedience and [for] the sprinkling of Jesus Christ’s blood: May grace and peace be multiplied for you. In the Roman Empire of the first century authors customarily identified themselves at the start of their letters. Peter follows this custom, calls himself by the nickname that Jesus gave him, and uses its Greek form (Peter, which means a stone) because he’s writing in Greek. (Jesus, who spoke Aramaic most of the time, used the Aramaic form [Cephas], Aramaic being a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew.) An apostle of Jesus Christ means sent by Jesus Christ with authority to speak and act on his behalf. This self-designation lends authority—indeed, Jesus Christ’s own authority—to the letter. Jesus is a personal name. Strictly and originally, Christ was a title that meant Anointed One; but constant usage led to its being used as another personal name alongside Jesus (compare the way the title King, as in King George, could turn into a personal name, as in George King).

Diaspora means dispersion (literally, a seeding throughout, as when seed is scattered throughout a field). The Jews’ Diaspora consisting of those who lived as expatriates scattered in various regions outside their homeland of Israel (compare their forced exile in Babylonia during the Old Testament period). Peter portrays his Christian audience as similarly scattered, but not because they live as Jews outside the land of Israel. For their idolatry prior to conversion (4:3) marks them as Gentiles rather than Jews, whose Babylonian exile had by and large cured them of idolatry. It will turn out that Peter’s audience are suffering persecution, and that the persecution has taken the form mainly of their being mistreated through social ostracism, maliciously false accusations, and economic boycott by the non-Christians among whom they’re scattered. So Peter portrays the Christians as exiled from their homeland in heaven. They live on earth as noncitizens. Similar parallels with the Jews will pile up throughout this letter. Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia were Roman territories in Asia Minor (the Asian side of modern Turkey).

After indicating his audience’s exilic address, Peter describes them as selected, that is, as chosen out from the rest of the human race, like God’s chosen nation of Israel. The Christians’ selection comfortingly counterbalances the non-Christians’ rejection of them. In accordance with the foreknowledge of God doesn’t mean that he selected the Christians because he knew ahead of time they were going to believe the gospel—rather, that he selected them in accordance with his predetermined plan, just as in Acts 2:23 Peter puts God’s foreknowledge right after, and in parallel with, God’s ordained plan (compare Genesis 18:19, where the Lord says he has known Abraham in the sense of having chosen him; Jeremiah 1:5, where we read that before Jeremiah’s conception and birth the Lord knew, consecrated, and appointed him to be a prophet; and Amos 3:2, where the Lord says he has known—that is, chosen—only Israel from among all the earth’s families [see also 1 Peter 1:20]). Addition of the Father to God prepares for God, even the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ and for God’s father[ing] us anew in 1:3. Consecration by the Spirit means his setting Christians apart from non-Christians to be sacred to God, as non-Christians are not. This consecration is the means by which the Spirit carries out God the Father’s selection. The purpose and result of the consecration, and ultimately of the selection, are obedience to the call of the gospel and, in consequence of that obedience, the sprinkling of Jesus Christ’s blood, that is, the application of his blood so as to purchase the redemption of believers