1 Peter 5:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The elders which are among you I exhort This was a name of office belonging to those who were appointed to feed and oversee the flock of Christ. They are indifferently called bishops, pastors, or rulers. The apostle addresses them here particularly, because the knowledge and good behaviour of the people depend, in a great measure, upon the kind of instruction which they receive from their teachers, and upon the care which their teachers take of them: who am also an elder Or rather, a fellow- elder, as συμπρεσβυτερος signifies. So Peter, the first, and one of the chief, though not the head, of the apostles, appositely and modestly styles himself. Commentators justly observe, that if Peter had been the prince of the apostles, as the Papists affirm, he would in this place, and in the inscription of his two epistles, certainly have assumed to himself that high prerogative. And a witness of the sufferings of Christ Having seen him suffer, and now suffering with him. “One of the purposes for which Christ chose twelve of his disciples to be with him always was, that, having heard his discourses, and seen his miracles and sufferings, they might be able to testify these things to the world as what they themselves heard and saw. Wherefore μαρτυς, a witness, in this passage, signifies not only one who was present at a transaction, but who testifies it to others.” These two circumstances of Peter's being a fellow-elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, are mentioned by him to give weight to his exhortation. And also a partaker That is, hoping to be a partaker; of the glory that shall be revealed When he shall appear the second time, in circumstances so different from those in which he appeared before; a glory which shall be bestowed on all faithful pastors, in different degrees; yea, and on all his genuine followers.