Date
4-2022
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Master of Arts in Biblical Studies (MA)
Chair
Leo Percer
Keywords
Apostle Peter, First Peter, Covenant, Missional Strategy, Gentiles, General/Catholic Epistles
Disciplines
Christianity | Religion
Recommended Citation
Laing, Cole Victor, "Peter, the Apostle to the Gentiles? First Peter’s New Covenant Missional Strategy to Bless the Nations" (2022). Masters Theses. 849.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/849
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to further develop the message of First Peter within the context of the Apostle Peter’s life and witness. The majority of modern scholars suggest that First Peter is written to a predominantly Gentile audience. This begs the question as to why the apostle to the circumcised (Gal. 2:7) writes to a group of Gentile believers. The study aims to show that Peter, in fact, played a significant role in the earliest church’s mission to the Gentiles. Peter’s exhortation in his first epistle is to a group of believers who are suffering because of their faith in Christ. Peter establishes that through Christ they have an identity and citizenship as the elect people of God. They have become sojourners on earth because they no longer belong to the nations who live by their ignorance of the flesh, but they belong to the people of God who await an inheritance that is reserved in heaven. Peter develops a missional strategy based on the Noahic, Abrahamic, and Mosaic Covenants for the Gentile believers to not remove themselves from their society but to rather take advantage of the social codes as a means to be a blessing to the nations.
