Dick Woodward (1930-2014) was a minister who served in pastoral leadership for several decades. When a degenerative spinal condition confined him to a wheelchair and later restricted him to bed as a quadriplegic, Woodward shifted his primary focus from pastoral ministry to the development of a Bible study curriculum he entitled, “The Mini Bible College.”
In his New Testament Survey and New Testament Handbook for The Mini Bible College, Woodward offered some intriguing observations regarding the Apostle Peter. Woodward’s study of Peter’s life led him to conclude that we meet three distinct Peters over the course of the New Testament. The first is the Peter we meet in the Gospels. The second is the Peter we meet in the book of Acts. The third and final Peter is the one we meet here in Biblical letters of 1 and 2 Peter.
The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life identify the first Peter as someone who went through a series of spiritual highs and lows. However, the second Peter we meet in the book of Acts is someone who was spiritually stable. When we come to Peter’s Biblical epistles, we meet a third Peter who differs from the Peter of the Gospels and the Peter of Acts. He is different because he is older, wiser, and has had many years of experience.
The Peter we meet in the book of 1 Peter was probably not a scholarly person, but he did possess a lifetime’s worth of experience that helped make him a highly educated individual in the things of God. Unlike the highly theological books of Romans and Hebrews, this Peter did not write about the great doctrines of the faith in his two Biblical letters. Instead, he shared from his heart and his wealth of experience as guided by the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, we should view Peter’s letters as pastoral theology and approach them in the same manner we approach other Biblical letters such as James and 1, 2, and 3 John. (1) So as we end our introduction to the book of 1 Peter, we will close with an insight from a theologian who surveyed Peter’s life and offered the following observation…
“It is a tribute to God’s grace that the apostle who once dared to rebuke his Master over the prospect of the Messiah’s sufferings (Matt. 16:22, 23) and who flinched in fear when identification with Jesus became risky (Matt. 26:69–75) is in this epistle the Holy Spirit’s spokesman to declare the necessity both of Christ’s unique sacrificial suffering and of Christians’ suffering for His name. (2)
(1) Condensed and adapted from Mini Bible College Study Booklet #15 [pg.14] and Mini Bible College New Testament Handbook [pp 463-465] See https://mbc.icm.org/
(2) R. C. Sproul, ed., The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition) (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2015), 2239.