Reformation
By the time of the Reformation, Luther comments, “This grief shall last but a little while; afterward ye shall be exceeding glad, for this salvation is already prepared for you” (Comm. on Peter and Jude, 1990: 42). He also emphasizes the role of suffering as necessary for the purification process:
The fire does not take away from the gold, but it makes it pure and bright, so that all dross is removed. So God has imposed the cross upon all Christians, that they might thereby be purified. (Comm.: ccel.org)
Calvin elaborates on the metaphor of gold as a refining process involving two phases:
Gold is, indeed, tried twice over by fire; first when it is separated from its dross, and then, when a judgment is to be formed of its purity. Both of these processes are suitably applied to faith … so that it becomes pure and clean before God. (Calvin, Comm., 1963: 235)
Other Interpretations
John Wesley, on the other hand, understands Peter’s notion of suffering as general distress experienced in daily life. In a sermon he gave on several occasions, “Heaviness Through Manifold Temptations” (Sermon 47, WesleyCenterOnline: ccel.org), he makes an important distinction between this kind of suffering (lupethentes, literally “distress” or “grief”) and “darkness” which is a result of sin. He interprets this grief as depression or “heaviness” of spirit which is experienced by believers but is not the same as the “darkness” of the sinful state. He points out here that Peter’s readers are obviously believers, not sinners, being “kept” through these trials (v.7), while they possess a “living faith” (v.9), have multiplied peace and grace (v.3), and are rejoicing in the glory of God (v.8). It is clear that believers are undergoing distress. In fact, Wesley feels that, except in some unusual cases, it is actually necessary for believers to endure trials for faith to increase and to confirm the hope of glory.
Later, existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) has a unique perspective. In relation to being “tried in the oven” (v.7), he explains that suffering results in strength; at first, we hold on to the hope that it may be avoided, but ultimately the real strength only comes when we realize that no help is coming:
there is nothing cruel about this seriousness, which deals gently with a man and never tempts him beyond his capacity to bear. He has seen what he is going to suffer, he has seen what this love will cost him, “But maybe,” says he, “better times will come, help will yet come, and all may yet be well.” So he does not let go the picture, but advances tranquilly into the suffering whereto he is led. For governance is love; in its indulgence towards this ardent youth it has not the heart to let him understand at once that here there awaits him a disappointment, that he is reckoning without his host. But this he could not yet endure to understand, and therefore (oh, infinite solicitude of love!) he is not able to understand it. He holds out, and by thus holding out he is strengthened, as one is strengthened by suffering.” (Training, 1978: 189)
Rejoice (vv.6–8)
Verses 6–8 comprise a small unit around the word “rejoice.” In the LXX, this is a technical term for the eschatological rejoicing of the redeemed in worship (cf. Goppelt, 1993: 90). In the New Testament, this word is used primarily to express the work of the Spirit, particularly at the end of time (see Luke 10:21; Acts 2:46, 16:34; Jude 24; Rev. 19:7). Peter himself uses the term in this way in 4:13. This is the joy associated with coming through the suffering of the purification process. Some of the early writers focus on this rather than on the suffering needed to produce it. For example, Hilary of Arles comments, “Not even a thousand ironclad tongues can sound out the sweetness of the heavenly blessings” (Intro. Comm. on 1 Peter, PLSupp 3: 85: ACC). Bede remarks:
To ask joy of this sort is not to plead only with your words for entry into the heavenly fatherland but also to strive with labor to receive it. (Homilies on the Gospels 2:12, HOG 2:111)
Luther conveys some of the nature of the joy promised:
An unspeakably glorious joy shall that be, – and there is scarcely so clear a passage on the subject of the future joy as the one in this place, – and still he finds himself unable to express it. (Luther, Comm.: ccel.org)
After the time of the Reformation, writers and pastors were also interested in the relation of suffering and joy. For example, Matthew Poole (1624–1679) reads 1 Peter 1:6–8 in terms of grief and joy, but explains that a person can experience both “heaviness” or grief at the same time as joy by realizing that the grief is in the present while rejoicing is coming in the future: “they might grieve as men but rejoice as saints … suffering might affect them but the faith of better things coming will relieve them” (1669: 900).
Thomas Vincent (1634–1678) was also an English Puritan minister and author. Having graduated from Oxford, he ministered in London during the plague and fire of 1665–1666, during which seven members of his own family perished. He used this passage (vv.6–8) in a practical way to comfort the sufferers of this terrible time in London. In fact, he published a beautiful devotional on 1 Peter 1:8, The True Christian’s Love for the Unseen Christ, in which he exhorts Christians to “promote the decaying love of Christ” in their hearts (1812: 6: ccel.org). Vincent sets Peter’s message of comfort within the framework of the love of Christ by emphasizing the comfort which comes only from the experience of Christ’s presence in the suffering, along with the hope of future glory, love, and joy. For example, he powerfully yet poetically expresses: “O the future glorious light which there and then will shine into every corner of my mind! … this, this only will make you willing to die, and this sense of Christ’s love will effectually sweeten your passage through the dark entry of death” (1812: 172: ccel.org).
About the same time, Thomas Watson (1620–1686), another English nonconformist, Puritan preacher and author also used Peter’s message of love and suffering. In his sermon “The Perfume of Love” on 1 Peter 1:22 he interweaves Peter’s message on love with both Paul (1 Cor. 13) and the Gospel of John to encourage and exhort Christians to “arm themselves with love” in order to confront suffering with a pure heart (The Thomas Watson Reading Room, Sermon: “The Perfume of Love”: preceptaustin.org).
Modern scholars debate whether the term should be read as an imperative (a command to the readers to rejoice) or an indicative (descriptive with a future meaning). The present indicative conveys “confident assertions about the present,” particularly prophecies, which can stand for the future (for the meaning of this grammatical construction, see Blass and Debrunner, 1961: sec. 323; for a current perspective, see Martin, 1992). This suggests that the joy will certainly take place after they have suffered for a little while. Hence, for Peter, suffering produces current joy, but more importantly, “inexpressible, glorious joy” in the future.
Some writers are particularly interested in an existential sense of joy. For example, Kierkegaard is intrigued by Peter’s concept of “inexpressible joy” in 1:7. As usual, he views it through the lens of paradox and existence:
he calls the joy unutterable – But suppose the inexpressible joy had its ground in the contradiction that an existing human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite situated in time, so that the joy of the eternal in him becomes inexpressible because he is an existing individual, becomes a highest breath of the spirit which is nevertheless incapable of finding embodiment, because the existing individual exists: then the explanation would be that it is unutterable, that it cannot be otherwise; no nonsense please. (Concluding Unscientific