What Does 1 Peter 1:3 Mean?
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One, who according to his great faithful love has birthed us again into a living hope through the rising of Jesus the Anointed One from the dead,
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,THE KEY
The hope born in you is alive now because resurrection means life standing up again where death had put it down.
THE MEANING
The God and Father of Jesus Christ is the source of abundant compassion, and that compassion gives you new birth into a hope that is alive now. Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the ground of that hope. Death does not have the last word over what can begin in you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that what has passed through death can only be remembered, never renewed.
THE ROOT
ἀνάστασις
anastasis
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι
histēmi
To stand or cause to stand; anastasis joins this root with ana, “up” or “again,” to name a standing up.
“rising” in this verse is anastasis. English makes resurrection sound like an abstract event, but the Greek word carries the image of standing up again. The hope in this verse is living because the life that death could not hold has risen and now gives hope its footing.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: To raise up or stand up
ἀνίστημι
This verb shares the same standing-up movement, showing resurrection as life rising to its feet.
stasis: A standing or position
στάσις
This word preserves the root image of standing: the resurrection is a life restored to a standing place beyond death’s hold.
THE PATTERN
New life is received as compassion’s gift and takes shape through rising from death.
O LORD, you brought up my living soul from Sheol. You kept me alive from those who go down into the pit.After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, and we will live before his face.But now the Anointed One has been awakened from the dead, and has become the first portion of those who have lain down to sleep.THE THREAD
Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.John uses the same word, anastasis, translated “resurrection” here. Jesus names that rising as present life, opening the “living hope” in Peter’s verse as more than a future expectation.
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