‘Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently, having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and abides.'
The result of our entering into these great truths and of our being sanctified into the obedience of Christ, should be that we have ‘purified our souls in our obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of our brothers and sisters'. The purifying of our souls, resulting from our being conjoined with the obedience of Jesus Christ and from our having had sprinkled on us the purifying and redeeming blood of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:2; 1 Peter 1:19), and from our being begotten again by God (1 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:23), has brought about in us obedience to the truth, which has resulted in a true love of our brothers and sisters who are one with us in all that has happened. We are therefore to ensure that that love is fully revealed in our ‘loving one another fervently (with heart and soul)'.
Here we have emphasised what we saw earlier, that our salvation is not just for our own benefit as individuals, but as joining us together as one whole in Christ, just as the covenant ceremony and the covenant blood did for the multinational gathering at Sinai (compare Exodus 12:38). The God Who has called us out and has redeemed us, has now united us together in Him. And He has done it by ‘begetting us again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides for ever'. Essentially it is the water of the word of God as it moves our consciences and our hearts (Ephesians 5:26), not the water of baptism, that saves. God has spoken and has brought it about by sowing in our hearts the seed of His word (compare Mark 4:14; Mark 4:20), which is incorruptible and indestructible, like our future inheritance (1 Peter 1:4). And it is this that has resulted in our being purified in and by His obedience, with the consequence that His divine love is to be revealed through our hearts (Matthew 5:44-48), especially to our brothers and sisters in Christ. ‘By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another' (John 13:35).
‘The word (logos) of God which lives and abides.' What God has spoken bears within it the seed of eternal life, and produces such life in men's hearts for ever. Compare the ‘living hope' to which we have been begotten in 1 Peter 1:3.
Note on ‘Purifying Your Souls.'
It will be noticed by those who are using commentaries that while Peter has not mentioned baptism some commentaries constantly bring it in. However, we are wise not to bring in ideas here which are largely based on people's theories about liturgical use. Had Peter been speaking of baptism he would have said so. In fact when he does so in 1 Peter 3:21 it is not as something that removes defilement, but as the response of a good conscience towards God.
‘Purifying' comes from the word hagnizow, ‘to purify, sanctify'. It is never connected with water in the New Testament. (The word used in John 2:6 is a different one). It rather links up with the sanctifying work of the Spirit in 1 Peter 1:2. Nor does it refer to washing with water in the Old Testament. It refers to them setting themselves apart for a certain length of time. Any washing with water is merely preparatory to the major requirement.
The truth is that baptism does not tend to be linked with purifying in the New Testament. Apart from Ananias' words to Paul in Acts 22:16 about ‘washing', where the words probably have in mind Isaiah 1:16 and refer to the forgiveness in mind in Mark 1:4, baptism is never connected with cleansing and purifying. Rather baptism points to the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and renewal of life in Christ. John the Baptist had the same emphasis on renewal. He compared his baptism with the coming ‘drenching with the Holy Spirit', and spoke in terms of fruitful trees and harvesting wheat, indicating that his baptism was to be pictured in terms of the Old Testament references to the coming of the Holy Spirit in terms of rain (Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:1-5) along with the accompanying eschatological forgiveness (Mark 1:4).
Nor did water cleanse and purify in the Old Testament, except when mixed with the ashes of a heifer, which in 1 Peter 1:2 is replaced by the blood of Jesus Christ. In all cases the person who bathed in the Old Testament ritual did so in order to remove dirt and sweat from his body, in Peter's words ‘the defilement of the flesh' (1 Peter 3:21), preparatory for his approach to God. He was not ‘made clean' by the water. That required a period of waiting before God ‘until the evening'.
In the New Testament a kind of cleansing takes place through ‘the washing of water with the word' (Ephesians 5:26), but the reference to the word suggests rather the medium of washing is the preaching of the Gospel. Compare 1 Corinthians 1:17-18 where the preaching of the Gospel is specifically disconnected from baptism. Here in 1 Peter ‘purifying' is also by ‘obedience to the truth' and is associated with being begotten again of the word (1 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:23), and with the sanctifying work of the Spirit in applying to the believer the benefits of the obedience of Jesus Christ and of the sprinkling of His blood. In 1 John 1:7 also cleansing is by the blood of Jesus Christ. We can compare also Jesus' words, ‘sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth' (John 17:18). But nowhere is ‘making holy' linked with baptism. Thus to introduce baptism here is against New Testament precedent.
End of note.