1. 1 Peter 1:21 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

What is the meaning of Peter’s concluding words, “so that your faith and hope are in God”?

1 Peter 1:21 (ESV)

21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

The word translated as “so that” captures the concept of result. God foreknew Christ and in time manifested him “so that” Peter’s readers might focus their faith and hope in God alone as the cause of their blessed future. The word “faith” recalls the first part of 1 Peter 1:21 when Peter stated that his readers “are believers in God”; the word “hope” recalls the blessed confidence resulting from being born again (1 Peter 1:3). It is all rooted in and focused on God alone—the glorious “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” who is “blessed” forever (1 Peter 1:3). So Peter ends his line of thought where he begins: God!