What Does 1 Peter 5:9 Mean?

(9) **Whom resist stedfast in the faith.**—The expression is somewhat more picturesque in the Greek than in the English. “Stand and face him,” instead of running away from posts of duty (1Peter 5:2), or lying still and letting things take their course (1Peter 5:8). And the words for “stedfast in the faith” seem to mean not only that each individual is to stand firm, but that they are to present all together a solid front to the lion. **Knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.**—The phraseology of the original is very strange. The *sameness* of the sufferings is brought out by an expression which literally runs “the same things in the way of sufferings;” the fraternal unity, by the use of the same abstract word which we had in 1Peter 2:17. The verb rendered “to accomplish” sometimes denotes execution or infliction. So the whole will run, *knowing that the very same things in the way of sufferings are being inflicted upon your brotherhood which is in the world. “*There is one thing,” says Archbishop Leighton, “that much troubles the patience and weakens the faith of some Christians; they are ready to think there is none, yea, there was never any beloved of God in such a condition as theirs. Therefore the Apostle St. Paul breaks this conceit (1Corinthians 10:13), ‘no temptation hath taken you but such as is common to man:’ and here is the same truth, ‘the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren.’ This is the truth, and, taken altogether, is a most comfortable truth; the whole brotherhood go in this way, and our eldest Brother went first.” The addition, “that are in the world,” points the suffering Christians indirectly to solace themselves with the thought of that portion of the brotherhood which has got beyond the infliction. It would be possible to translate, though somewhat far-fetched in point of thought, “knowing that the same sufferings (or, *the identity of the sufferings*) is completed by your brotherhood in the world”—*i.e., *finds a consummation in making closer the bonds of brotherhood between you.