Week 30 Study Page - 1st & 2nd Peter, Numbers 1-15

Week # 30 Study Page

1st Peter
2nd Peter
Numbers 1-15

About the Book(s)

1st Peter

Date of Authorship: Peter wrote this epistle while ministering to the church in Rome around 62-63 AD. Peter arrived there around 60-61 AD, and had been serving that Church - who he refers to in 1st Peter 5:13 as "she who is in Babylon."

Author: Peter is the author of this epistle, as the letter itself claims in 1:1. While some critical modern scholars object to genuine Petrine authorship, there is very good evidence of early acceptance of this epistle in the Church as it is referenced by a number of early Christian writings. Peter says that he is writing with the help of Silas (1 Peter 5:12 - or "Silvanus" depending on how your English Bible translation handles the Greek name). This Silas is the same man who was sent by the Jerusalem council (Acts 15) to deliver a letter to the Church in Antioch, and the same man who accompanied Paul on his second and (possibly) third missionary journeys. It appears that he (Silas) and John Mark remained in Rome after Paul was released from his first imprisonment there, and assisted Peter in his ministry.

Occasion: 1st Peter is written to a Church that is being persecuted. There is no official-state persecution occurring across the empire at the time that Peter is writing (even Nero's persecution a couple years later, was geographically limited and certainly did not stretch into the provinces of Asia Minor, where this letter is addressed). As we witnessed in Paul's missionary journeys across this region (Asia Minor - modern-day Turkey) Christians faced a general and consistent opposition from their pagan peers, especially when those pagans understood the implications of monotheism and the social order of the Church taught by the Christian faith.

Purpose: Peter's first epistle encourages suffering believers by reassuring them of their place in the new family of God, and that this status of theirs was God's plan from before the creation of the world. In pursuit of this endeavor, Peter makes frequent reference to the Old Testament, even though he is writing to a, primarily, gentile audience. Carson and Moo declare that "no other book in the New Testament, with the exception of Hebrews and Revelation, depends so heavily on the Old Testament (An Intro. to the New Testament, 640). Furthermore, Peter instructs these persecuted believers on how they are to go on living their faith while under this burden. This latter teaching effects both the way that they regard outside authorities and society, as well as how they treat each other in the Church.

2nd Peter

Date of Authorship: 2nd Peter makes reference to his first letter (3:1), which we date to 62-63 AD and is written in Peter's own anticipation of his death/execution (1:14). Because we can date Peter's crucifixion fairly confidently to the persecution of Nero in 65-66AD, we should date Peter's second epistle to 64-65 AD.

Author: I hold the traditional view: that Peter wrote 2nd Peter, as do Carson and Moo (ibid 663). However, more than any other book of the New Testament, the apostolic authorship of 2nd Peter is challenged, and rejected by most modern scholars. They point to oddities in the vocabulary of this book and a doctrine of the Church in this text that would fit well into the 2nd Century AD. Furthermore 2nd Peter has an unimpressive record of use and inclusion in early Christian writings (unlike 1st Peter). Despite all of this, the early Church still included this letter into the Canon (the list of books recognized as God's Word) and its position there was solidified by the end of the 3rd century AD. The fact that it was included is a clear indicator that they (the Church) believed it to be a genuine letter from the pen of the apostle Peter, and that is a good reason to trust the authenticity of this book.

Purpose: 2nd Peter is essentially a farewell letter from Peter, who expects to lose his life soon. In it, he confronts false teachers within the Church who are living a sinful lifestyle and spreading a skepticism about the return and judgment of Christ, and he stresses the importance of the believers remembering what they have been taught related to Christ and his second coming (3:1-2) .

Numbers

Date of Authorship: Numbers begins by telling us that it is recording words which God spoke to Moses on the first day of the second month of the second year after the exile. By comparing this to Exodus 40:17, it can be determined that the tabernacle has now been set up for one month and the people have been camped at Sinai for nearly a year.

Author: Moses is traditionally considered to be the author of the first five books of the Bible. This is a collection called The Pentateuch and Numbers is the fourth of those five books. There are lines in Numbers that are certainly written or "interpolated" by someone other (later) than Moses. Consider Numbers 12:3 for example.

Purpose: Numbers records the rebellion and punishment of the Israelite people after their departure from Mt. Sinai. Interspersed throughout this account is a continuation of laws for the Israelite society and worship much in the same style as Exodus 20-40 and Leviticus. Numbers gets its name from the census(es) taken in the beginning of the book. More on the purpose of Numbers next week.

As You Read Notes

Organization of 1st Peter

1st Peter has a very clear outline built around the address "dear friends" in 2:11 and 4:12.

1:3-2:10 focuses on the privileges and responsibilities of being God's people.
2:11 - 4:11 is a new section that begins with "dear friends" (literally beloved in Greek) which emphasizes the Christian life as both distinct from and attractive to the hostile world in which they live.
4:12-19 is a new section that begins with "dear friends" which contains a final final exhortation about the right response to suffering.

1st Peter 2:13-14 Government and the Christian Faith

In the middle section mentioned above, Peter is explaining to his audience how their lives are to be both distinct from and attractive to the hostile world around them. In pursuit of the latter goal, Peter instructs his readers to "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human authority" (2:13). As he continues, it becomes clear that Peter is explicitly instructing the Christians in Asia Minor to obey the government. Peter says that the officials who rule over them are "sent by [God] to punish those who do wrong and commend those who do right" (2:14).

This passage, as well as others like it in the New Testament (Romans 13, 1st Timothy 2, Titus 3) clearly establish that the authority which human-earthly governments possess is given to them by God for a specific purpose - the establishment and maintenance of justice. It is these texts which should shape our Biblical perspective on the right-functioning of government and our due submission to it. I believe that these texts about governmental authority are well accommodated by the establishment and free exercise clauses of the first amendment of the U.S. constitution. The Bible, here indicates that there is a separate (from the Church), God-ordained channel of authority for the earthly ordinance of justice, one we are obligated to obey. I believe that these texts form the foundation and primary piece of an argument for permissive christian participation in the military, policing, and government offices. Here, the institution of human government is established as a noble and God-ordained pursuit for mankind.

This Roman government which Peter is telling his readers to submit to, will arrest Peter and execute him no more than five years after Peter writes these instructions. Clearly the human office of government is not a perfect one, and there are a number of examples where governments fail to deliver the justice for which they are ordained by God. It is entirely possible that an earthly government may stray so far from the course of justice that it should be resisted and face insurrection, but the witness of the earliest Church was to bear the persecution of unjust earthly governments with unwavering faithfulness, bravery, courage, and solemnity as they suffered, without acting as separatists, or as anarchists, or with violence.

Peter's instruction here, is for the believers to behave in an orderly way that wins the favor of their society, not as anarchic disruptors who bring shame to the Gospel. His instruction related to the government is only the beginning of this lesson, as Peter further extends this teaching to slave-master and husband-wife relationships. When reading these positional/relational teachings, it should be remembered that Peter's larger purpose is to encourage the believers to act in a way that brings the honor and praise of their society, so that that "They may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (2:12).

1St Peter 3:19: The Imprisoned Spirits

There are a couple controversial passages in the middle section of 1st Peter:

1 Peter 3:19-20: After being made alive, [Jesus] went ant made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits - to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. (also 1st Peter 4:6)

1 Peter 4:6: For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to god in regard to the spirit.

There are two popular modern readings of this passage

That the pre-incarnate Christ proclaimed the gospel through Noah before the flood - a view held by Wayne Grudem and John Feinberg among others
(the most popular modern reading) That peter is using Old Testament imagery to proclaim Christ as the one who has won and declared his victory over evil powers. They read peter as essentially saying "even spiritual beings have been conquered by Christ". this view has been most fully and recently articulated by Paul Achtemeier and John Elliot.

However, until modern times, the Church held the nearly univocal position that these passages taught that Christ - in the days intervening his death and resurrection - proclaimed the Gospel to those who had died before his incarnation. This is especially true of the early Church fathers, a summary of their reading of this passage by H. D. M. Spence-Jones is provided below:

The early Greek Fathers appear to have held, with one consent, that St. Peter is here speaking of that descent into Hades of which he had spoken in his first great sermon (Acts 2:31). Justin Martyr, in his ‘Dialogue with Trypho’ (sect. 72), accuses the Jews of having erased from the prophecies of Jeremiah the following words: “The Lord God of Israel remembered his dead who slept in the land of the tomb, and descended to them to preach to them the good news of his salvation” Irenæus quotes the same passage, attributing it in one place to Isaiah, in another to Jeremiah, and adds that the Lord’s purpose was to deliver them and to save them (extrahere eos et salvare eos). Tertullian says that the Lord descended into the lower parts of the earth, to make the patriarchs partakers of himself (compotes sui; ‘De Anima,’ c. 55)... The earliest writers do not seem to have thought that any change in the condition of the dead was produced by Christ’s descent into Hades. The Lord announced the gospel to the dead; the departed saints rejoiced to hear the glad tidings, as now the angels rejoice over each repentant sinner. Origen, in his second homily on 1 Kings, taught that the Lord, descending into Hades, brought the souls of the holy dead, the patriarchs and prophets, out of Hades into Paradise; no souls could pass the flaming sword till he had led the way; but now, through his grace and power, the blessed dead who die in the Lord enter at once into the rest of Paradise—not yet heaven, but an intermediate place of rest, far better than that from which the saints of the old covenant were delivered. In this view Origen was followed by many of the later Fathers. Christ “went and preached,” he says,“unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient.” Hence Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and others were led to suppose that the Lord not only raised the holy dead to a higher state of blessedness, but preached also to the disobedient, and that some of these believed, and were by his grace delivered from “prison.”
H. D. M. Spence-Jones, ed., 1 Peter, The Pulpit Commentary ( New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company), 135–136.

I have a regular inclination to side with the understanding of the early Church fathers, especially in matters like this where there appears to have been a relative consensus about what Peter is telling us. Therefore, I believe that this passage is telling us that Jesus proclaimed the Gospel to the dead and ushered the saved into the glorious paradise which he has opened to the children of God through his death and resurrection. As a point of clarification, i do not think that Peter is telling us that Christ only preached to those who disobeyed in the days of Noah, but that Jesus preached to all of the dead from "long ago" and then Peter takes up the subject of Noah to introduce the imagery of the flood for his teaching on baptism which follows.

2nd Peter 3: The Day of the Lord

The select passages of the Bible where God teaches us the future destiny of the world and ourselves into eternity are precious to us, and 2nd Peter 3 is one of those precious texts. Peter discusses the day of the Lord as a matter of encouragement for the believers whom he is writing to. It is a remarkably fiery depiction of judgment day because the encouragement that Peter is offering is essentially "wait until Jesus comes back - these bad guys (false teachers) are going to get what they deserve" and also "since you know that this day is coming, don't be a bad guy."

It is apparent that the false teachers being confronted in this letter were expressing skepticism about the return of Christ and the occasion of judgment day. In his response, Peter addresses an issue that i certainly struggle with as i read the New Testament - 'what is taking so long?' New Testament believers thought the return of Christ was imminent, recall that some in Thessalonica were thinking that it may have already occurred and they had missed it (2nd Thessalonians 2:2). How much stronger should the feeling of impatience be for us 21st century believers awaiting Christ's return? Peter's responds by reminding us of how God experiences time, and by reassuring that God's patience is for the purpose of our salvation (1st Peter 3:9).

Here is a passage from Carson and Moo's An Introduction to the New Testament on 2nd Peter 3 that i found helpful:

Peter's main point seems to be clear: this world is destined to be "destroyed" by fire and to be replaced by a "new heaven and a new earth"... Only the book of Revelation in the New Testament speaks so directly about the cosmic effects of the day of the Lord. Just how Peter envisages the transfer from this world to the "new heavens and new earth" is not clear. Does he think that the new will replace the old? or that the old will be transformed into the new? The language of "destruction" in verses 10-12 might point to the former. But other Biblical texts seem to point toward a transformation (Matt. 19:28; Acts 3:21; Rom. 8:19-22). And the language of "destroy" in the Bible can refer simply to judgment without implying annihilation - as it almost certainly does in verse 7, where Peter refers to the "destruction of the ungodly." Peter's language does not allow us to resolve the issue certainly. Probably there is continuity as well as discontiuity in the shift from the present heavens and earth to the new heavens and earth.

Narrative of Numbers 1-15

God Speaks to Moses on the first day of the second month of the second year after the exile and instructs him to take a census.
19 days later, the cloud lifted from above the Tabernacle and the Israelites break camp for the first time in a year to leave Sinai and start traveling towards the promised land
Aaron and Miriam Oppose Moses at Hazeroth, in between Sinai and the Desert of Paran
When the Israelites arrive at Kadesh-Barnea (see Num. 33:8) in the Desert of Paran, the lord instructs Moses to send spies into the promised land.
After 40 days, the spies returned (10 were bad, 2 were good - you know the song), gave their report, and the community rebelled against God.
After God hands down their punishment, some of the Israelites change their minds and decide that they're actually ready to go into the promised land now. They go up to the Judean hills and are routed by the Amalekites and Canaanites.

Joel NielsenJuly 20, 2018Madison Church of Christ