Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Peter · About this commentary
Foreknown Before the Foundation
1 Peter 1:20-21
20 who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in this last age for your sake, · WEB
The widest time frame the letter can state ends in a personal pronoun addressed to villagers in Asia Minor.
Verse 20 sets two moments against each other. Foreknown before the foundation of the world; revealed at the end of the times. Between them lies everything, and the sentence crosses it in a single line.
Then it lands, and the landing is the point: for your sake. The clause could have ended in a purpose about God's glory or the ordering of history, and instead it ends on the readers — a scattered minority in five provinces who are being told, without qualification, that they are what the arrangement was for. Nothing in the letter treats their obscurity as a reason to scale the claim down.
Verse 21 traces where faith actually comes to rest. Through him they are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory. The mediation is not blurred; it is named and then followed through, so that faith and hope terminate on the Father rather than stopping at the mediator.
And the two verbs describing what happened to Christ repeat the order the prophets were shown: raised, then glorified 1 Peter 1:11. Readers who have been told to expect suffering before vindication are being given the sequence a third time, now in the history of the one they follow rather than in a prediction about themselves.
settled What this mark means