Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Peter 1:8

"whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory:" — 1 Peter 1:8 (ASV)

Whom, having not seen.—This is said in contrast to the word “revelation” in the previous verse: “whom you love already, though He is not yet revealed, so that you have not yet seen Him.” There seems to be a kind of tender pity in the words, as spoken by one who himself had seen so abundantly (Acts 4:20, Acts 10:41, 2 Peter 1:16). In this and the following verse, we return again from the sorrow to the joy, and to the true cause of that joy, which is only to be found in the love of Jesus Christ.

There is another reading, though not as good either in sense or in authority: “whom, without knowing Him, you love.” Bengel remarks that this is intended as a paradox, since sight and knowledge are usually the parents of love.

You love.—This is the word of calm and divinely-given attachment—in fact, the usual word in the New Testament, the one Christ used in questioning the writer (John 20:15)—not the word of warm human friendship with which St. Peter then answered Him.

In whom.—This is to be construed not with “you rejoice,” but with “believing.” The participles give the grounds of the rejoicing: “because at present without seeing you believe in Him nonetheless, therefore you rejoice.” The word “rejoice” takes us back to 1 Peter 1:6: “you greatly rejoice, I repeat.”

Notice, again, the stress placed on faith: we have already had it mentioned three times. St. Peter, whose own faith gained him his name and prerogative, is, at least, as much the Apostle of faith as St. Paul is, though his conception of it, perhaps, differs slightly from St. Paul’s.

The definition given by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 11:1) might have been, perhaps was, drawn from a study of St. Peter’s writings. Our present verse gives us the leading thought of “faith” as it appears in both of these works addressed to Hebrews, namely, its being the opposite of sight—“the evidence of things not seen”—rather than as the opposite of works.

The main object of both these Epistles is to keep the Hebrews from slipping back from internal to external religion, that is, to strengthen faith . The Apostle is full of admiration for a faith that (unlike his own) was not based on sight (see John 20:29—an incident that may have been in the writer’s mind).

Unspeakable.—The beautiful Greek word (meaning “unable to find expression in words”) seems to have been coined by St. Peter.

Full of glory.—Literally, that has been glorified; that is, a joy that has reached its ideal pitch and feels no further sense of imperfection; a signification of the word found, for instance, in Romans 8:30.