Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 1:21

"who through him are believers in God, that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God." — 1 Peter 1:21 (ASV)

Who through him believe in God.—The sentence is connected to the preceding verse just as in 1 Peter 1:5, Who are kept. The “who” might be translated as “and you;” and the clause adds a kind of proof of the preceding statement, drawn from the result of God’s manifestation of Christ to them. “This Christian doctrine is no innovation, nothing to lead you away from the God of our fathers. That same God had the scheme in His thoughts from the beginning, and it is in that same God that you have been led through this to believe.”

There is a better supported and more forceful reading, Who through Him are faithful towards God, which combines the ideas of believing, that is, putting the whole trust in God, and of loyal inward observance of Him. And if anyone asks whether it is possible to say that Hebrew men only came to believe in God through the revelation of Christ, we must answer by pointing to the whole scope of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and especially to Hebrews 3:12, where it is not faith in Christ, but faith in a living God, which they are warned not to abandon; and to Hebrews 6:1, where faith toward God is part of the word of the beginning of Christ.

That raised him up.—These clauses give the historical facts which had led them, “through Christ,” to a living faith in God. Though the thought is common with St. Paul (for example, Romans 1:2–4), St. Peter was familiar with it years before St. Paul’s conversion. See this in Acts 2:23-24; and Acts 2:33-36 of the same chapter will show what he means by gave Him glory—not to be confined to the Ascension, though that is the prominent thought; the glory was already partly given in the Resurrection. Compare John 17:1, where there is the same reciprocal glorification of the Father and the Son, as here.

That your faith . . . might . . .—An inexact rendering which obscures the connection. Literally it is, so that your faith and hope is in (or, toward) God; that is, “Your faith and hope does not stop short in Jesus.” Hammond seems to be quite right in paraphrasing, “Who by believing on Him (Jesus Christ) are far from departing from the God of Israel, but do, indeed, the more firmly believe and depend on Him as that omnipotent God who has raised Christ from the dead.” The co-equal Son is less than the Father (John 14:28); and we would terribly mistake the meaning of the gospel if we were content to rest in the love of Christ Himself without accepting His revelation of the Father.

This is the living hope of 1 Peter 1:3, brought about by Christ’s resurrection. Some of the German commentators translate, So that your faith may be also hope in God; which has nothing ungrammatical in it, but does not suit the context so well.