1 Peter 1:3: ‘God has caused you to be born anew’: the nature, basis, and goal of the new birth

Closely related to the themes of election (chapter 2) and atonement (chapter 3) is the concept of rebirth or regeneration (this chapter). While chapters 2 and 3 dealt with those aspects of salvation that occurred outside of us and apart from us (God’s eternal election of believers to salvation and his consequent decision to provide atonement for them in the historic death and resurrection of Jesus), this chapter contains an analysis of those passages that treat the application of that salvation to us under the metaphor of the ‘new birth’ or ‘regeneration’ (1:3, 23). Regeneration, as we will see below, effects in time what God has ordained from all eternity; it denotes the decisive transformation by which believers have come to be a part of God’s elect, holy, and set apart people. Peter once again highlights the initiative of God in the believers’ salvation by reminding them that it was God ‘who, according to his great mercy has caused us to be born anew’ (1:3).

Context

This opening ascription of praise to God (εὐλογητὸς ὁ θεὸς) is located in the first subunit (vv. 3–5) of the first main division of the letter (vv. 3–12). In the majority of the Pauline letters the epistolary opening is traditionally followed either by a thanksgiving (with εὐχαριστέω) or a blessing formula (with εὐλογητός). Theologically, this opening blessing of God for his act of rebirthing believers (oJ … ἀναγεννήσας ἡμς) continues the theme of the opening salutation (vv. 1–2) which highlights God’s sovereign and saving initiative in the lives of the elect. The blessing is then connected to what follows by the twofold repetition of the preposition εἰς (telic ‘for’) indicating the goal of this divine rebirthing: εἰς ἐλπίδα ζσαν (v. 3d, ‘for a living hope’) and εἰς κληρονομίαν (v. 4a, ‘for an inheritance’). Finally, mention of the believers’ ‘rebirthing’ here also anticipates v. 23 where the same verb (ἀναγεννάω; only here and in v. 3 in the NT) is used to describe the believers’ rebirth ‘through the living and enduring word of God’.