1 Peter 1:21
Who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God.
Now because it is faith that gives the soul this particular title to Jesus Christ, the Apostle adds that, to declare who he meant by You; (says he) who by him do believe in God, etc.
Where we have: 1. The complete object of faith. 2. The ground, or warrant of it. The object, God in Christ. The ground or warrant, in that he raised him up from the dead and gave him glory.
A man may have (living out of Christ) indeed, he must, he cannot choose but have a conviction within him that there is a God, and further he may have, even out of Christ, some kind of belief of those things that are spoken concerning God, but to repose on God, as his God, and his salvation which is indeed to believe in him, this cannot be, but where Christ is the [reconstructed: medium] through which we look upon God; for so long as we look upon God through our own guiltiness, we can see nothing, but his wrath, and apprehend him as an armed enemy, and be so far off from resting on him, as our happiness, that the more we view it, it puts us upon the more speed to fly from him, and to cry out, Who can dwell with everlasting burnings, and abide with a consuming fire: But our Saviour taking sin out of the way, put himself between our sins, and God, and so makes a wonderful change of our apprehension of him. When you look through a red glass, the whole heavens seem bloody: But through pure uncolored glass, you receive the clear light, that is so refreshing and comfortable to behold: When sin unpardoned is between, and we look on God through that, we can perceive nothing but anger, and enmity in his countenance: But make Christ once the medium, our pure Redeemer, and through him as clear transparent glass, the beams of God's favorable countenance shine in upon the soul, the Father cannot look upon his well-beloved son, but graciously and pleasingly. God looks on us out of Christ, sees us rebels, and fit to be condemned, we look on God as being just and powerful to punish us — but when Christ is between, God looks on us in him, as justified, and we look on God in him as pacified, and see the smiles of his favorable countenance: Take Christ out, all is terrible; interpose him, all is full of peace. Therefore set him always between, and by him we shall believe in God.
The warrant and ground of believing in God by him is this that God raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, which evidences the full satisfaction of his death, and in all that work both in his humiliation, and exaltation standing in our room, we may repute it his as ours: if all is paid that could be exacted of him, and therefore he set free from death, then are we acquitted and have nothing to pay: If he was raised from the dead and exalted to glory then so shall we, he has taken possession of that glory for us and we may judge ourselves possessed in it, already, because he our head possesses it. And this the last words of the verse confirm to us, in meaning this to be the very purpose and end for which God having given him to death raised him up and gave him glory, it is for this end expressly that our faith and hope might be in God: The last end is that we may have life and glory through him; the nearer end, that in the meanwhile, till we attain them, we may have firm belief and hope of them, and rest on God as the giver of them, and so in part enjoy them before hand, and be upheld in our joy and conflicts by the comfort of them; and as Saint Stephen in his vision, faith does in a spiritual way look through all the visible heavens, and see Christ at the Father's right hand, and is comforted by that in the greatest troubles, though it were amidst a shower of stones, as he. The comfort is no less than this, that being by faith made one with Christ, his present glory wherein he sits at the Father's right hand is assurance to us, that where he is we shall be also.
