Peter wrote his first epistle to saved Jews scattered throughout the Roman provinces of ancient Turkey. That should hardly be a contentious statement, since he declares it plainly in his introduction: “To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.”
Elect = saved. Exiles = Jews. (Evidence forthcoming.) Of the Dispersion = Jews. Pontus, Galatia, etc. = Asia and Asia Minor, most of which is now Turkish.
The area to which Peter addressed his letter was small enough that the apostle could reasonably expect it to circulate through all the churches there, and big enough to reach and be a blessing to thousands of his fellow saved Jews. If he could have gotten the same material to exiled Jews elsewhere conveniently, no doubt he would have done so.
A surprising number of commentators disagree with me.
The Gentile Bandwagon
For example, David Guzik says, “Peter clearly wrote to Gentiles. He called them [elect exiles of the Dispersion] because he saw the Christians of his day as sprinkled throughout the world as the Jewish people were in the Dispersion after the fall of Jerusalem when the Babylonians conquered Judah.”
Sure. Or else he called them elect exiles of the Dispersion because they were elect exiles of the Dispersion: Jews who had accepted Christ abroad. If the historians are correct that Peter wrote this letter around AD65, we now know that its relevance quickly became even greater within a few years, as the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and millions more Jews were scattered. Jews at home and abroad were a major component of the early church, and they had special needs and issues we Gentiles do not.
The reasons some Christians read “Jews” as “Gentiles” are not immediately evident, but make greater sense when we discover that at least some who do it come to the letter from a supersessionist perspective. They are Replacement Theologians, so they replace Jews. Guzik is not the only one on the Gentile bandwagon. MacLaren says, “The question arises whether the letter corresponds to its apparent address, or whether the language which is employed in it does not almost oblige us to see here a reference, not to the Jew, but to the whole body of Christian people.” Barnes writes, “It seems probable that he means here Christians as such, without reference to their origin.” (Er, why use an image guaranteed to draw attention to their origin then?) The writers of The Pulpit Commentary assert, “We cannot but think that, by ‘the sojourners of the dispersion,’ he means, not merely the Jewish Christians of Asia Minor, but all Christian people dispersed among the heathen.” (Um, hello: the Gentiles were not “dispersed”. They were won to Christ at home by dispersed Jews.)
Whenever I find figurative interpretations of a text that makes more sense read literally, I feel like systematic theology is probably driving the train.
Exiles, Sojourners, Aliens and Strangers
Let’s talk first about that word “exiles”. We Gentile Christians appropriate that idea, grouping it with words like “sojourners”, “aliens” and “strangers”, from passages like 1 Peter, applying it metaphorically to ourselves, probably because being in Christ is kind of isolating. Maybe we feel a little bit like Abraham, who lived in a land not his own and looked for a city whose builder and maker is God. That’s not a bad thing.
It’s also not how the NT uses “exiles”. The term “exiles” [parepidēmos] is a Greek word with specifically Jewish baggage, imported from the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew, where it refers to Israel and Judah cast out of their land. Interestingly, the writers of the NT use it only in books I believe were primarily intended for Jews: Hebrews and 1 Peter. Israelites became exiles in every instance because God was punishing them for idolatry and rejection of his Son. He kicked them out of their home. They were scattered and exiled because he scattered them. It’s not really that complimentary a term if you consider its origin. Being an exile was not so great. Being an elect exile was much better, but it was still a reminder of national disobedience.
The only time similar terminology is used about Gentile believers is in Ephesians 2, where Paul approaches alienation from the other side. We Gentiles were strangers and aliens … from Christ. Now he has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, making us fellow citizens of the household of God and a dwelling place for God by his Spirit. We were aliens. Now we’re not. The Jews were not aliens. Now they are.
Jewish exile was punishment. Ours “exile”, if such we have, is very much voluntary, and very different from theirs. We go outside to Christ by choice, not by divine decree.
The Meaning of ‘Dispersed’
That word “Dispersion” [diaspora] is the same word we find in the address of the letter from James, except he adds “to the twelve tribes scattered [diaspora] abroad”, which is about as Jew-specific as you can get. It’s also used in the gospel of John. Puzzled, the Jews asked about the Lord, “Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?” They meant the Jews living abroad, of which there were probably millions even then thanks to the Babylonian captivity. The Old Testament Hebrew equivalent is gālūṯ, which means “exile”, used of both the OT captivities. Brought over into Greek, it became “scattering” or “dispersion”, which better reflected the mostly-voluntary nature of the Jewish Dispersion early in the first century.
That’s the background to the word Peter uses in his introduction, and it has a well-understood literal meaning and historical context that is distinctly Jewish.
Beneficiaries and Trustees
Other commentators acknowledge the obvious, Ellicott most bluntly. Peter was writing to saved Jews. The writers who disagree uniformly point out that the instructions in Peter’s letter so evidently apply to Gentile Christians as well that we are forced to read his introduction as a euphemism or metaphor rather than simply accepting the plain sense of the language he employed.
Well, no. As I have pointed out numerous times, we can derive great benefit from reading other people’s mail when it is shared with us, but it remains theirs first and foremost, just as one can be the beneficiary of a covenant or agreement without being party to it. I see this in my workplace every day. Nobody with a legal background confuses a beneficiary with a trustee. In NT terms, both Jews and Gentiles are beneficiaries of the New Covenant, but the nation of Israel was the trustee. It took a Jew (Christ) to execute a fundamentally Jewish covenant. No Gentile could have done it. By grace, you and I get great benefits from that. But it was not our covenant.
Likewise, this is not our mail. Peter was writing to the trustees.
Addressing a Letter
An address on a letter is what it is. To take somebody else’s letter home with us as if Peter had addressed to us personally is a form of theological theft. At very least it’s a bit self-absorbed, like the person who attends someone else’s wedding, then spends the entire evening talking about nothing but his own nuptials and the glorious reception his wife’s parents paid for. Had Peter intended to address all members of the Church without regard to national origin, he could easily have said so plainly.
Paul did that over and over again: “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints”, “To the church of God that is in Corinth”, “To the churches of Galatia” and so on. No ambiguity there, nor is there any in Peter’s second epistle. In fact, we can even compare the address of 2 Peter to 1 Peter: “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” That most certainly includes you and me. The advantage is that we don’t have to wrestle our way into that epistle. Peter invites us.
Christians should be sufficiently generous of spirit and grateful for the abundance of NT material directed to us that we do not begrudge God’s earthly people their occasional moment in the sun: Hebrews, James, 1 Peter.
The Jews and History
There is us and there is them. What’s different is the history. We Gentiles don’t have Jewish baggage. That is both good and bad.
On the one hand, we didn’t kill our Messiah. That’s not a nasty dig at Jews, it’s just an acknowledgement of fact. You don’t find the apostles or writers of scripture making a single accusation against the Gentiles as a whole for the crucifixion of Christ in their gospel preaching, though Gentiles were certainly involved in administrating it. You find plenty of accusations when they addressed Jewish audiences. Yes, we Gentiles had no end of sins for which our Savior atoned at the cross, just as the Jews did. But we don’t share the most regrettable moment of their history. That’s the good.
On the other hand, as Paul puts it, “To them [Jews] belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.” Throughout history, Israel was blessed and privileged in ways we Gentiles simply were not. They had advantages we didn’t. As Paul writes to the Gentiles in Ephesus, “You were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Historically, that’s the bad. We Gentiles were once outsiders looking in.
The difference in history and background between Jews and Gentiles is important, and it explains much of the subject matter and emphasis in Peter’s first epistle.
Evidence for a Literal Dispersion
If we are paying attention, we can find subtle and not-so-subtle indications all the way through his letter that Peter was writing specifically to scattered Jews:
1/ Among the Gentiles
For example, there is his instruction in 2:12 to “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” What sense does it make for Peter to tell Gentiles to keep their conduct among the Gentiles honorable? But it makes perfect sense if addressed to Jews. Hebrew exiles did not always have the greatest reputation, and I suspect not all behaved as honorably and consistently as Daniel and his three friends, or Nehemiah. They didn’t at home. Why would they in exile? Their fellow exiles from other nations nursed a level of animosity toward them that was almost uncanny, even toward the godly ones. Lion’s dens. Attempted genocides. Fear. The attitude persists today.
Christian Jews in exile, Peter wrote, were not to give onlookers legitimate reasons for their racial hatred. Gentiles already had plenty of cheap excuses to hate Jews. He expands on this in chapter 4. “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler.” The accusations of thievery, evildoing and meddling are highly relevant when we look at the latter history of exiled Jews, who as a group have acquired a reputation for getting heavily involved in the economies and governments of countries in which they lived, not always for the benefit of the locals. Peter says that Christians among them were not to leave themselves open to such charges. Stay out of trouble.
2/ What the Gentiles Want to Do
Again in 4:3, he writes, “For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” Again, this instruction has special relevance to Jewish Christians, with their nation’s sad history of idolatry and the passions and excesses associated with it. When we see Peter’s words as being primarily directed to his fellow Hebrews, they served as a reminder to depart from the practices of their forefathers, which had been a terrible testimony to the world. The Jews of the pre-exilic period persistently took their behavioral cues from the Gentiles rather than from the Law, as they ought.
Here, the apostle encourages Christian Jews to stand out and to be distinctive in their testimony to the Gentiles: “They are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you.” With good reason. Their ancestors were always joining the Gentiles in floods of debauchery. Remember the Baal of Peor? These newly Christian-ized Jews would be a shock to the system. They would turn the Jewish stereotype on its head.
3/ The Living Stone and Holy People
Nobody would or should deny that Peter’s instructions in chapter 2 are useful and relevant to Gentile Christians. But if we consider how they would ring in the ears of Christian Jews in the first century, they become all the more poignant. After all, “He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.” “His own” is not you and me as Gentiles. That’s Israel. We don’t come into it until the next verse: “But to all who did receive him …”
In chapter 2, the “spiritual house” and “spiritual sacrifices” of verse 4 are, I believe, a deliberate contrast with the literal household and physical sacrifices of the Mosaic Law. These OT symbols and pictures were not our legacy. We had no part in them. In this context, Christ is the “stone that the builders rejected”. Christian relatives of those rejecting “builders” are therefore to do the precise opposite: to “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”. They are to delight and enthuse in the one despised and rejected by the Jewish religious establishment. They are to be the few that fly in the face of the Jewish many.
Saying and Not Saying
There’s more, including references to the OT prophets and the “forefathers” that formed part of the Jewish historical background and made Peter’s instructions especially relevant to Christian Jews in exile. Taken together, these things strongly suggest that the original intended audience for 1 Peter was 100% ethnically Jewish, but had taken a position in relation to Jesus Christ that starkly contrasted with that of the leaders of their nation. They needed some instruction and a word of encouragement in exile, and this letter is it.
Of course that is not to say we Gentile Christians cannot benefit tremendously from this instruction to fellow believers from among God’s earthly people, or that we will not find most of what Peter writes quite familiar territory. If we compare Peter’s instructions to his fellow Jews with Paul’s instructions to largely Gentile churches, we find innumerable similarities. That makes total sense. After all, regenerate Jews and Gentiles of the Church Age are one body with one calling, one Lord, one hope and one glorious future.
My point is that we “wild olive shoots” were grafted into an
existing tree, with a nourishing root that is Christ. Some of the original
branches were broken off to accommodate us, but not all. In enjoying the
benefits of that nourishing root, let’s not minimize the contribution of the
first century Jews in exile who got it right, or seek to
We have our own place in God’s plans and purposes. That should be more than sufficient.
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