Biblion Bible Commentary
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Tested Like Gold
1 Peter 1:6-7
6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved in various trials, · WEB
The trials are given a purpose, a time limit and a condition, and the comparison to gold is less flattering than it first sounds.
Three qualifications are attached to the grief in verse 6, and they arrive before any encouragement does. It is for a little while; it is if need be; and the rejoicing is in something else, in the salvation just described, rather than in the trouble itself. The letter never asks anyone to be glad about suffering. It asks them to be glad about something the suffering has not touched.
The if need be is worth not hurrying past. The clause allows that some grief is necessary and declines to say which, which leaves the reader unable to conclude either that every trial is deserved or that none is purposeful.
Verse 7 gives the image, and the comparison runs in an unexpected direction. Faith is not said to be like gold; it is said to be more precious than gold, and the argument turns on what gold does not survive. Gold perishes even while it is being proved. If men will put an imperishable metal through fire to establish that it is genuine, the testing of something that outlasts fire needs no separate defense.
What the testing produces is named too, and it is not a stronger believer. It is praise, glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ — the outcome belongs to that day rather than to this one.
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