1 Peter 1:10-12: The Revealed Glory of the Gospel

1 Peter 1:10-12: The Revealed Glory of the Gospel

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through the book of 1 Peter, and today the next passage we come to is 1 Peter 1:10-12. It says,

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we know that in order to rightly understand both what this passage is teaching and how it connects to our lives, we need the Holy Spirit. So please, send your Spirit to minister to us through this passage today in a most powerful way. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.One of the most common obstacles people encounter as they try to read the Bible on their own is that they often have difficulty understanding it. That was certainly my own experience as a newer Christian. I specifically recall, about a year or so after I became a Christian, trying to read the book of Isaiah and having a really difficult time understanding what I was reading. Even though I was reading it in the English language and knew what most of the individual words meant, I nevertheless found it incredibly challenging to grasp the overall meaning of the passages I was encountering. I’d read a passage but then kind of scratch my head as I wondered what it meant. 

And maybe you’ve had that experience as well. You’ve tried to read the Bible because you keep hearing about how important it is to do that. But whenever you actually sit down and open the Bible and start reading it, you find many of the passages to be relatively confusing. 

Now, there are probably several factors that contribute to that, but from what I’ve seen, one of the most significant factors that makes the Bible seem confusing to a lot of people is that they struggle to see how everything fits together. In their minds, the various books of the Bible seem like a random hodgepodge of squares on a patchwork quilt. Yet, as we’ll see this morning, that’s actually not a good comparison at all. The books of the Bible are best compared not to the random squares of a patchwork quilt but rather to the tiles of a mosaic—because they all contribute to one majestic picture. They’re all a part of one grand story. And once you begin to grasp that overarching narrative that ties the Bible together, it becomes lot easier to understand the individual parts of it—because you understand how each part fits in with the whole. So, that’s where our study of this passage in 1 Peter is going to take us this morning. 

To remind you of the context here, Peter’s writing to Christians who are experiencing significant persecution for their faith and is seeking to encourage them. Now, how does he do that? Well, he reminds them of the glorious truths of their salvation. We can see that even in the first three words of verse 10: it’s “concerning this salvation” that Peter writes to his readers. In saying this, he’s referring to what he just wrote about salvation in the previous verses. 

By the way, the word “salvation” simply means God saving us from our sins through Jesus Christ. And as we talked about a few weeks ago, there are three senses in which we’re saved. God saves us, first of all, the penalty of our sins by forgiving us and declaring us righteous in his sight. He also saves us from the power of sin within our hearts by changing us from the inside out. And finally, God will one day even save us from the presence of sin as he welcomes us into the heavenly paradise he’s prepared for us. So, that’s what Peter’s referring to when he speaks of our salvation. He’s referring to salvation from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and eventually from the presence of sin. 

And the reason why Peter takes this particular approach to encouraging his readers in the midst of their suffering is because there’s nothing like being reminded of the wonders of our salvation to strengthen us in our weariness, encourage us in our troubles, and comfort us in our distress. Nothing else ministers to our souls the way the gospel does—the message of our salvation. It’s the remedy for every spiritual ailment and the cure for every spiritual sickness. So, that’s why Peter writes at the beginning of verse 10—and really throughout his letter—“concerning this salvation.” 

And look what he says about it. He says, in verses 10-11, 10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

So, in these verses, Peter takes us back to the Old Testament and talks about “the prophets who prophesied about the grace” that’s now ours. Strictly speaking, these “prophets” are the ones who wrote the Old Testament prophetic books that bear their names: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. God sent these prophets to his people—the people of Israel and Judah—in order to call his people to repentance and also to encourage his people by telling them about the wonderful things he’d do one day through the Messiah. To put it in Peter’s words in verse 10, these prophets “prophesied about the grace that was to be [ours].” It’s not that God’s grace didn’t exist in Old Testament times—it most certainly did. But his grace would only be manifested in its fullest sense through the Messiah who was still to come. 

And, according to Peter, it’s for this reason that these Old Testament prophets “searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” So, these prophets wrote things predicting various aspects of the Messiah’s ministry—“Christ” here is just another word for “Messiah”—and yet they didn’t fully understand what they were writing about. The Holy Spirit led them to write certain things about Christ, but they didn’t fully comprehend all that he’d do in his life and death and resurrection or what he’d accomplish through those things. So, they predicted Christ’s ministry but didn’t fully comprehend it. 

Kind of like a child might repeat something they’ve heard without fully understanding the meaning of the words they’re speaking. I’m sure we’ve all heard children say things before that were technically true and accurate but that made us wonder, “Do you fully understand what you’re saying?” And that’s similar to the prophecies of these Old Testament prophets about Christ. 

Specifically, Peter says in verse 11, they “predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” Christ’s “sufferings” are obviously those he experienced on the cross when he died for our sins. Christ suffered not only the physical agony of crucifixion but, even more than that, the agony of God the Father’s wrath being directed toward him. That’s why Christ died. He was suffering the wrath that our sins deserved so that we wouldn’t have to. He was serving as our substitute and suffering in our place. But that’s not the end of the story—because the gospel is the message not only of the “sufferings of Christ” but also of the “subsequent glories.” Those “glories” include the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, his ascension into heaven, and his present reign at the right hand of God the Father. 

By the way, this was undoubtedly a message of tremendous encouragement for Peter’s original readers—because, remember, they were suffering for their faith, right? So, this statement that Christ’s sufferings were followed by “subsequent glories” must have been a wonderful reminder for them that their sufferings would be followed by subsequent glories as well. Everything they were going through because of their devotion to Jesus would be richly rewarded with the glories of heaven. 

Peter then continues in verse 12 and says that, “It was revealed to [these prophets] that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” So, these prophets wrote certain things about Jesus, searched and inquired carefully about what those things meant, and were basically told that all of their searching and inquiry would only get them so far. No matter how much they searched and inquired, much of what they had written would remain shrouded in mystery until the time came for it to be revealed. That’s what Peter means in this verse when he says that God revealed to these prophets that their writings were intended not primarily for themselves but for future generations. The truths of the gospel that, Peter says, have now been announced to us through those who preached the gospel to us weren’t known in their fullness by the Old Testament prophets—even though the prophets yearned to understand them more clearly. 

To put it another way, Hebrews 11:13 says it like this: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar….” It kind of reminds me of Moses not being allowed to enter the Promised Land but only to behold the sight of the Promised Land from a distance. He saw how wonderful it was from a distance but never actually experienced it up close and personal. Of course, that doesn’t mean the prophets or others who followed God in the Old Testament weren’t saved; it simply means they never beheld the fullness of God’s grace the way we’re able to behold it today. 

So, returning to our main passage, we see that the glorious truths of the gospel that were once concealed from others have now been revealed to us. That’s the main idea of this passage. The glorious truths of the gospel that were once concealed from others have now been revealed to us. 

In phrasing it this way, I’m drawing for the words of Augustine. Describing the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, Augustine once wrote that. “The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.” Again, “The new is in the old concealed; the old is in the new revealed.” In other words, there’s no contradiction between the Old and New Testaments. You know, some people have this idea that the Old Testament speaks about a God of wrath, while the New Testament speaks about a God of love. But, just to put it bluntly, that’s garbage. In reality, the Old and New Testaments are in perfect harmony with each other. Not only that, they’re actually two parts of the same story. 

And the same truths that are at least partially concealed in the Old Testament are revealed in the New Testament. That means the New Testament doesn’t reveal fundamentally “new” truths to us; it just gives us a clearer understanding of the same truths that were taught in the Old Testament. 

That also means that the Old Testament is filled with many of the truths that comprise the gospel message. As Jesus himself said in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures [that is, the Old Testament Scriptures] because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” We also read in Luke 24:27 about Jesus walking with some disciples, and it says that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself”—and again, that’s the Old Testament Scriptures. 

So, the Old Testament’s filled with truths about Jesus that were revealed before Jesus even came. I love the way Martin Luther said it back in the 1500’s. He called the Old Testament “the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies.” Jesus himself is wrapped up in the pages of these Old Testament Scriptures. 

You know, it seems as though many Christians today view the Old Testament as sort of irrelevant. Even though they usually don’t say it out loud, they seem to view the Old Testament sort of like they’d view a newspaper from 50 years ago. It might be true for that time period and kind of interesting but not very relevant for our lives today. Yet, as we’ve seen, the Bible teaches something much different. Even back in our main passage, Peter clearly teaches that, even though the Old Testament writers didn’t have all the details about the gospel, they still wrote about the gospel. That means their writings are still quite relevant for us today. Now, we might have to be careful in how we apply some of the things we find in the Old Testament so as to take into account covenantal differences, but we should never think that the Old Testament is irrelevant. So, if you want to learn more about Jesus, read the Old Testament. 

And that brings us to a larger truth that we find taught implicitly in these verses in 1 Peter—a truth related to what the Bible even is in the first place. You know, if you were to go out and ask people, “What is the Bible, most fundamentally?”, I’m sure you’d get a variety of responses. 

A lot of people think the Bible’s primarily a collection of rules and commands that we’re supposed to obey. Others think the Bible’s primarily a collection of random stories about various characters who give us moral examples that we’re supposed to follow—if they’re good—or avoid—if they’re bad. And both of those responses are partially true, but neither one represents what the Bible is most fundamentally. 

At its most fundamental level, the Bible is a story—a single story that encompasses everything in the history of the universe, from the very beginning to the very end. And it’s quite helpful to understand that story if we’re going to understand the various passages we encounter in the Bible because, well, it’s kind of like a movie. Imagine that you started watching a movie halfway through. Is that movie going to make very much sense to you? Probably not. You’re not going to have any idea what’s going on or what struggle the characters are facing or what problems need to be solved. You’re just kind of lost. And that’s how a lot of people feel when they read the Bible. But if we understand the overarching story of the Bible, it makes reading the Bible and understanding the things we read a lot easier.

So, here it is in extremely abbreviated form—the storyline of the entire Bible in less than five minutes. The story begins with Creation, recorded in Genesis 1-2. God created this world and declared it to be “good.” And it was good—it was a perfect paradise. We also read about how God created humans in his image. We’re created to resemble God and for a relationship with God. 

Then, after Creation, we read about Corruption in Genesis 3-11. The first humans, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God. As a result of that rebellion, all of creation was immediately plunged into brokenness and dysfunction and sin. That’s the problem that everything else that’s described in the Bible after Genesis 11 is intended to solve. Creation has been corrupted, and that means we need a Savior. 

We then read about various Covenants God made with his people. That stretches from Genesis 12 all the way through the last book of the Old Testament—the book of Malachi. God made sacred agreements, called “covenants,” with Abraham, Moses, and David that all pointed toward a future Messiah who would come to fix God’s broken world. This Messiah is pictured and promised again and again. 

Then, finally, he comes. As we’ve said, another word for Messiah is “Christ.” And the biblical books of Matthew through John record his earthly ministry. This long-awaited Messiah or Christ is named Jesus and accomplishes the rescue we so desperately need. He does that through his sinless life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection. Then, before Jesus ascends into heaven, he commissions the Church to tell the world about him. The church consists of all those who put their trust in Jesus—not just Jews but Gentiles as well—and has the mission of making disciples of all nations. We find records of the church engaging in this mission as well as instructions for the mission in the biblical books of Acts through Jude. 

Then, finally, comes the Consummation, which we’re still waiting for today and which is recorded in the book of Revelation. Jesus will one day return not as a meek infant but rather as the conquering King to provide full and final rescue for his people. That involves punishing his enemies—those who have rejected him—and bringing about a perfect paradise known as the new creation—a new heavens and new earth. No longer will we have to suffer in this broken and corrupted world. Instead, Jesus will make all things new. And the beauty of the new creation will surpass even that of the original creation. 

So that’s the storyline of the Bible. Again, it’s one cohesive story. And, if you noticed, that story centers around Jesus. The whole thing has Jesus in view. Jesus is the interpretive key—or the Rosetta Stone, if you will—that we need in order to understand the full meaning and significance of every biblical passage. Every passage from Genesis to Revelation relates to Jesus in some way—and it’s not until we’ve considered that connection that we’re able to understand the full meaning and significance of each passage. And, by the way, this is a big part of what we mean around here when we speak of being “gospel-centered.” Every passage of the Bible at the very least whispers the name of Jesus. Even if his name isn’t explicitly stated in every passage, if you listen closely, it’s being whispered. 

And you’ll notice that’s an important part of the preaching at our church as well. At the end of the day, we believe that it’s not until we’ve preached Jesus in whatever passage of Scripture we’re studying that we’ve really preached that passage faithfully. That’s why you’ll hear Jesus preached and the gospel presented every single Sunday at this church. We haven’t been faithful to a biblical passage until we’ve seen its connection to Jesus. 

You know, let me just say that life application is good. We believe in life application so much, in fact, that you’ll notice at the bottom of the “Sermon Notes” page of your bulletin, there’s a place for you write out a life application. It’s labeled “How I need to grow and change.” So, life application is vital. 

Yet, as vital as it is to connect the Bible to our lives, keep in mind that the Bible doesn’t ultimately revolve around you. It revolves around Jesus. And that’s something we have to be very deliberate about remembering. It seems like our natural tendency is to be very “me-centered” in just about everything—including our Bible reading. It’s sort of comparable to the way people used to think, several centuries ago, that all of the planets revolved around the earth. They thought we’re at the center of everything. Yet, of course, we now know that the planets revolve not around the earth but around the sun. Similarly, if we’re not careful, we can approach the Bible as if the whole thing revolves around us, when, in fact, it revolves around Jesus. 

And, returning to our main passage, that’s the larger truth behind these verses. The Bible is a story about Jesus. The gospel truths about Jesus that we cherish so deeply aren’t just found in the New Testament. Those very same truths are found in the Old Testament as well. They may not be described in as much detail in the Old Testament, but make no mistake: they’re still present. 

And shifting gears now, the point about these gospel truths that Peter's seeking to get across in this passage is, more than anything, how glorious they are. That’s why Peter emphasizes how diligently the Old Testament prophets sought a deeper understanding of these things. The fact that those inspired writers would search out those truths so diligently is an indicator of how valuable and precious they are. 

And to top it all off, Peter writes at the end of verse 12 that these are “things into which angels long to look.” Isn’t that an intriguing thought? If you know anything about angels in the Bible, then you know that they’re majestic creatures. They’re certainly far more powerful than we are. Yet Peter describes the truths of the gospel as “things into which angels long to look.” His point is that these are glorious truths indeed. 

Now, keep in mind that it’s not that angels don’t know anything about the gospel. The Bible tells us that angels not only know the gospel, they’ve been directly involved in many of the events of the gospel. They announced Jesus’s birth, ministered to Jesus during his time of testing in the desert, stood by his tomb when he resurrected from the dead, were present when he ascended into the sky, and are even now ministering in various ways to Christians. So, angels are very much aware of the events and even the truths of the gospel. 

So, what does Peter mean in verse 12 when he says that the truths of the gospel are “things into which angels long to look”? Well, he’s alluding to the fact that, even though angels have an intellectual understanding of the gospel, they’ve never experienced the wonders of the gospel for themselves. They’ve never experienced God’s grace. And of course, that’s because they’ve never sinned. Unlike us, angels don’t have a heart that’s inclined toward sin and have never committed any sinful acts. And that’s a wonderful state to be in, but it does mean that there are certain things they’ll never experience. 

For example, they’ll never experience what it’s like to be forgiven of sin or saved from the terrors of hell. They’ll never experience what it’s like to be redeemed from the power of sin. They’ll never know how it feels to be so loved by God that he’d send his own Son to die on their behalf, thereby bearing the punishment their sins deserved. Angels will never know what it’s like to be clothed with the very righteousness of Jesus. They’ll never experience the joy of being born again—or, as the Bible says, having a heart of stone that’s replaced with a heart of flesh. They’ll never experience the privilege of being adopted into God’s family, as his own sons and daughters. They’ll never know the delight of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit or becoming, as Peter says elsewhere, a “partaker of the divine nature.” And angels will never be enthroned next to God like Christians will in order to reign with God over the entire universe. 

Brothers and sisters, these are the wonders of the gospel. These are the glorious blessings that come to us through Jesus Christ. And even though angels know about these blessings, they’ll never experience these blessings for themselves. In a sense, they’ll always be on the outside looking in, gazing with utter fascination at the greatness of our salvation and wondering what it’s like to experience God’s grace the way we have. 

And thinking about that should make us appreciate our salvation even more. You know, a lot of people think that the deepest part of the Bible is its teaching about various future events such as end times chronology and things like that. And so, they devote themselves with the greatest enthusiasm to studying things like Gog and Magog and who the two witnesses of Revelation 11 might be and what the pinky toe of the beast might represent and various other details related to end times prophecy. And I’m not saying that’s not important. But I am saying that that’s not what we should regard as the most fascinating subject for theological study. 

Instead, we should be utterly fascinated and enthralled by the gospel. The deepest truths and the most profound mysteries of the Bible aren’t the various elements of end times prophecy but rather the great gospel truths of our salvation. Because, think about it: the day’s coming when those of us who are Christians will be in heaven and will understand the events and chronology of the end times perfectly. We won’t have any doubt about what all the symbols and figures in Revelation are pointing to. And yet, even in heaven, we’ll never fully comprehend the immensity of God’s grace that we see in the gospel. We’ll never be able to completely wrap our minds around the depth of his love or the greatness of his sacrifice or the wonders of his mercy even toward sinners like us. Dear friends, these are the most profound mysteries in the Bible. So, if there’s anything that should captivate our hearts and arrest our attention, it’s the gospel. 

And that’s Peter’s point in these verses. He’s encouraging these suffering Christians by reminding them of how glorious the gospel is. The Old Testament prophets yearned to gain a deeper understanding of it, but they couldn’t. Angels long to experience it, but they can’t. Yet those of us who are Christians have received and experienced for ourselves these glorious gospel blessings. 

So, my prayer for our church is that we’d be captivated by the gospel. You know, it’s no accident that this church is named “Redeeming Grace.” It’s because we believe that God’s redeeming grace that he imparts to us through Jesus is what should captivate our hearts, fascinate our minds, inspire our worship, and motivate our obedience. So, let me encourage you to pursue a deeper understanding of the gospel with everything you’ve got. You know, we’ve read that the Old Testament prophets “searched and inquired carefully” in an effort to understand the gospel in a deeper way. Yet, of course, God made it clear to them that they’d only get so far in that pursuit. Kind of like a moving truck that has a device on it limiting how fast it can go. That’s what it was like for those Old Testament prophets.

However, that’s not the case for us. We don’t have that moving truck with a speed governor. Instead, we’ve got the Lamborghini, and we’re on the autobahn. We have fullness of New Testament revelation, the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, and we’ve experienced for ourselves the glorious blessings of the gospel. So, should we not “search and inquire” even more “carefully” and with even greater energy than those Old Testament prophets? Should we not devote our lives to seeking a deeper understanding of the blessings and treasures that are ours in Christ? Should not the grand ambition of our lives be to behold more of God’s glory in the chief place where he’s put that glory on display?