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

What is the connection between “obedience” and “sprinkling”?

1 Peter 1:2 (ESV)

2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Though in the ESV the term sprinkling is separated from obedience by the phrase to Jesus Christ, in Greek obedience and sprinkling stand side-by-side so as to explain and modify each other. When the people of Israel agreed at Mount Sinai to obey the Lord, Moses immediately sprinkled them with blood as evidence that they needed to be serious about their pledge for obedience (Exodus 24:5–8). Peter’s readers, chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and renewed through the Holy Spirit, needed equally to be serious about their obedience to Jesus Christ, as if they had been literally sprinkled with Christ’s blood in the way Israel had been sprinkled at Mount Sinai.