Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: Wherein ye greatly rejoice - Some refer wherein, εν ᾡ, to the salvation mentioned above; others, to the last time, καιρῳ εσχατῳ, in 1 Peter 1:5; others think that it applies to the being kept by the power of God through faith; and others, that it refers to all the preceding advantages and privileges. It was in the present salvation of God that they rejoiced or gloried, though not without having an eye to the great recompense of reward.
Though now for a season - Ολιγον αρτι· A little while yet - during your pilgrimage here below, which is but a point when compared with eternity.
If need be - Ει δεον εστι· If it be necessary - if your situation and circumstances be such that you are exposed to trials and persecutions which you cannot avoid, unless God were to work a miracle for your deliverance, which would not be for your ultimate good, as he purposes to turn all your trials and difficulties to your advantage.
Sometimes there is a kind of necessity that the followers of God should be afflicted; when they have no trials they are apt to get careless, and when they have secular prosperity they are likely to become worldly-minded. "God," said a good man, "can neither trust me with health nor money; therefore I am both poor and afflicted." But the disciples of Christ may be very happy in their souls, though grievously afflicted in their bodies and in their estates. Those to whom St. Peter wrote rejoiced greatly, danced for joy, αγαλλιασθε, while they were grieved, λυπηθεντες, with various trials. The verb λυπεω signifies to grieve, to make sorrowful: perhaps heaviness is not the best rendering of the original word, as this can scarcely ever consist with rejoicing; but to be sorrowful on account of something external to ourselves, and yet exulting in God from a sense of his goodness to us, is quite compatible: so that we may say with St. Paul, always sorrowing, yet still rejoicing.