What Does 1 Peter 1:22 Mean?

(22) **Purified your souls in obeying.**—Bengel well points us to 2Peter 1:5-7, where, in like manner, St. Peter delights to exhibit gradations of grace. “Obeying the truth” here will correspond to “knowledge” there, with its immediate consequences of “self-mastery,” “endurance,” and “reverence;” after which we pass on to “love of the brethren,” and thence, as to a higher grace, to “love” or “charity.” On this last point see Note on 1Thessalonians 4:9. Perhaps the literal “in the obedience of the truth” (*i.e., *the Christian gospel) does not exactly coincide with “obeying the truth,” as implying rather “the obedience (to God) which the truth (*i.e., *the knowledge of the truth) demands.” Truth has a claim, not only to be accepted intellectually, as truth, but to alter moral conduct in accordance (comp. John 17:17): a doctrine which lies at the bottom of the Socratic maxim, “Virtue is knowledge.” That Socratic maxim, however, does not sufficiently take into account the inertness of the will to act on principle; and no doubt it was under some such instinct that some copyist first added as a gloss the words (not found in the original text) “through the Spirit.” The first effect of such knowledge of the truth, under the Spirit’s influence, is to *“*purify” the soul of selfish aims, and to give it that “altruism” (as they call it now), or desire for the benefit of the community rather than self, which is here described as “love of the brethren.” (See Notes on 1Thessalonians 3:13; 1Thessalonians 4:6.) **Unfeigned love of the brethren.**—The epithet “unfeigned,” in itself, would suggest that St. Peter was uneasy about the depth of their brotherly kindness. And the brotherly kindness is here, as usual, attachment to other members of the Church, special point being added to the word here because of the notion of regeneration running through the whole passage. (See 1Peter 1:14.) Is it not possible that some coolness had arisen between the Jewish and Gentile members of the Church, and that St. Peter finds it necessary to remind the former that they are truly brethren, sons of one Father, and that they ought not only unaffectedly to have done with all jealousy of the Gentile members, but to be far beyond that, loving one another “from the heart (the word ‘pure’ is not part of the original text, and interrupts the run of the sentence) strenuously?”