Brother John Formsma recently posted the following article on Twitter. He has given me permission to do minor editing and reprint it here.
The views John presents fit well into inmillennialism.1 In addition, they agree with some scholars of the highest order. For example, see John Lightfoot on the “New Heavens and New Earth” and John Owen On “The New Heavens and Earth.”
These ideas may seem strange to modern readers, but I encourage you to give them a fair hearing.
Interpreting First Peter
By John Formsma
When interpreting First Peter, one could take two approaches: 1) either Peter was mistaken about his time statements, or 2) he meant to use them exactly as they sounded. (See 1 Pet 1:5, 20; 4:7, 17.) I’m not comfortable saying that an apostle’s inspired letter is incorrect. But have you considered how the time statements mesh with Peter’s overall message? And how do they agree with the prophets?
Once a person accepts the time statements as the Apostle wrote them, First Peter comes alive. Namely, it agrees with the prophets about the spiritual, heavenly Zion that would come into being in “the last days” of natural Israel. (Isaiah especially describes the heavenly, spiritual Zion that would replace corrupt Israel.)
Peter talks about a new people—a new covenant nation—and links that to the prophets (1 Pet 1:10-12). This concept was particularly relevant to Jewish believers (to whom Peter was writing), as Isaiah had prophesied hundreds of years earlier: “In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit” (Isa 27:6).
But before this could happen, Israel had to be transformed, made alive if you will.… God must bring a new nation into being (Isa 66:8–14). Recall John the Baptist saying that an axe was already at the root of corrupt Israel: Judaism had thoroughly corrupted the nation. That axe certainly did its work. And remember Jesus saying that the kingdom would be taken from that corrupt nation and given to a people producing its fruit (Matt 21:43). That certainly happened as well. All of this was happening in the era in which Peter wrote. It was a transition era. The Branch had indeed sprouted from the nearly dead stump of Israel (Isa 11), his people were incorporated into Christ the True Vine (John 15), and the Gentiles were brought into Christ (Rom 11; Eph 2). But it was “to the Jew first,” then to the Gentile.
Peter alludes to this new nation in various ways. One of the more obvious is the cornerstone imagery (1 Pet 2:6–7). If something is built onto a cornerstone, it’s new. But there is also the “sprinkling of blood” (1 Pet 1:2; cf. Exod 24:8; Heb 9:19—the old Israel also had a sprinkling of blood). He refers to those who had been dead but had been born again into the new Israel of God (1 Pet 1:3, 23; cp. the plural ‘you’ of John 3:7 and Ezek 37—none of which negates individual regeneration, but Peter seems to refer to a corporate regeneration).
He refers to those being built into a new and spiritual house. They were living stones in a new house to be a new and (actually) holy priesthood, with new spiritual sacrifices (1 Pet 2:5). And it makes sense that what was new would grow over time, just like the passage in Isaiah about Israel filling the entire world with fruit. Growth and filling take time.
Previously, they had not been a nation (1 Pet 2:10), and remember that Malachi had prophesied of the coming “day of the Lord” in which “neither root nor branch” would be left (Mal 4:1). But not all Israel had been rejected (see Paul in Romans). The Jewish believers Peter was writing to had been formed into the new nation, the faithful Israel of God.
Notice also Peter compares the natural Israel of his day to the spiritual new Israel of his letter. The rejected Stone (1 Pet 2:7) only makes sense within a first-century Jewish context. “They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do” (1 Pet 2:8) refers to the Jews who rejected their Messiah. It cannot refer to Gentiles in Peter’s or our day. It only had meaning at that time. Jesus used that very passage about the Stone being rejected. He meant the Jewish leaders, and they knew it: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived he was speaking about them” (Matt 21:44–45).
That corrupt nation would soon be finally cut down, but the new nation built upon the Cornerstone would blossom, grow, and fill the world with holy fruit. That new nation would also incorporate all the Gentile believers, but Peter doesn’t mention that fact as Paul does in Romans 11. Peter was not describing things that are future to us (although they include us and all the fullness of the glory yet future). They were things in his very near future. One cannot argue for a yet-future fulfillment of Peter without distorting the meaning of the words he used. And it takes away the force of Peter’s message: that this was precisely what the prophets foresaw. They foresaw Christ and his sufferings and the glories that would follow.
Footnotes
- For a full definition of this prophetic model, see Michael A. Rogers, Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days (Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing House, 2020), available here on Amazon. For a shorter summary, see A Summary Of Inmillennialism.
4 comments
Hi Mike! I would like to know how you interpret the crown of glory that Peter speaks of (1 Pet. 5:4), which I assume should refer to the same crown of righteousness of 2 Tim. 4:8. Do you see it as a unique reward for 1st century believers, or as a general reward for all Christians as they enter eternal glory?
I appreciate your response. God bless you.
Thank you for this thought-provoking question! As you probably know, adopting a prophetic framework like inmillennialism changes the way one views passages like this.
I’m persuaded that Peter was thinking of something in his near future. After all, he had just said, “the end of all things is at hand” (1 Pet 4:7)! But, to your question, what did he envision?
I hesitate to ask—I know my own tendency to procrastinate—but please let me think on this for a while. I’m having a flurry of thoughts and would like to sort through them, perhaps in the form of a future blog post.
If you don’t hear from me in the next few weeks, please don’t hesitate to remind me of my promise to respond!
Thanks,
Mike
I finally wrote my response to your questions about the crowns! Scope creep was a big problem, and I had to cut things down to size at the last minute to meet my self-imposed deadline. I hope the resulting article is helpful. You can see it at The Crown of Glory.
Please let me know what you think.
Mike
Dang, brother! That is really, really good!
It’s uncanny how much is revealed when one gets into the word like this. And it’s really more simple than we think.
For instance, I’ve been thinking about the phrase in 1 Peter that judgment must “begin at the house of God.” So the other day I did a search for the phrase “house of God,” and it unmistakably means the physical temple at Jerusalem. I mean, it’s not even close to anything else. So, one is left with either saying that’s what Peter meant, or one must come up with a different hermeneutic. In Peter’s context, one would need a hermeneutic that would shift the meaning of “house of God” over to the church. Unlike Paul, Peter didn’t really use “temple” to mean God’s people. And also, one would need to rationalize why the new-born church would be deserving of such judgment when Peter hadn’t even rebuked his audience for that.
Could say more, and I suppose there are legitimate ways to get around my objections above. I just think the simplest and most true to the context of Peter is to interpret the “house of God” as the temple at Jerusalem that was destroyed in AD70.
Love you, brother…and keep at it!