What Does 1 Peter 1:5 Mean?

(5) **Who are kept**.—This explains the word “you:” “those, I mean, who are under the guardianship of God’s power.” Bengel says, “As the inheritance hath been preserved, so are the heirs guarded; neither shall it fail them, nor they it.” **Through faith.**—The Apostle is fearful lest the last words should give a false assurance. God can guard none of us, in spite of His “power,” unless there be a corresponding exertion upon our part—which is here called “faith”—combining the notions of staunch fidelity and of trustfulness in spite of appearances. It is through such trustful fidelity that we are guarded. **Unto salvation**.—These words “unto” arise like point beyond point in the endless vista. “Begotten *unto* an inheritance, which hath bee reserved unto you, who are kept safe unto a deliverance.” This Salvation, spoken of again in 1Peter 1:9, must not be taken in the bald sense of salvation from damnation. Indeed, the thought of the perdition of the lost does not enter at all into the passage. The salvation, or deliverance, is primarily a deliverance from all the trials and persecutions, struggles and temptations of this life—an emergence into the state of peace and rest, as we can see from the verses that follow. **Ready to be revealed in the last time.**—How such an assurance helps to form the very “faith” through which the treasure is secured! That perfect state of peace, that heavenly inheritance, is not something to be prepared hereafter, but *there it is.* If only our eyes were opened, we should already see it. It is all ready, only waiting for the great moment. The tense of the word “revealed” implies the suddenness of the unveiling. It will be but the work of an instant to put aside the curtain and show the inheritance which has been kept hidden so long behind it. This, however, will not take place till the *exact* period (so the word for “time” suggests; comp. 2Thessalonians 2:6), and that period will be the last of the world’s history. For such teaching the Hebrews would be well prepared by the Old Testament—for instance, comp. Daniel 12:9; Daniel 12:13—and it was the earliest kind teaching culled for converts out of the “oracles of God” (Hebrews 5:12; Hebrews 6:2).