1 Peter 5:10

And the God of all grace, who called you unto his eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.

In Christ ... Peter's usage of this mighty phrase, both here and at the end of the epistle, indicates his respect and appreciation of the doctrine, no less than that of Paul, despite the fact that he did not emphasize it as Paul did.

After ye have suffered a little while ... A while should here be understood for "the whole of life," and not as indicating the short duration of the persecutions. In the relative sense, even a long life is but "a little while."

Perfect ... This verb is the same that is used of "preparing" the earthly body for the incarnation of Christ in Hebrews 10:5;[30] and is therefore strongly suggestive of other passages in the New Testament where total and absolute perfection is the obvious meaning, as in Matthew 5:48. However, there is another scriptural meaning of it. It is the "word for mending nets (Mark 1:19) or setting a broken bone"[31] and this is the meaning that many commentators prefer. This writer cannot resist the conviction, however, that "the absolute perfection of Christians in Christ" is what this speaks of. The very proximity of the phrase "in Christ" seems to suggest this. For discussion of the whole theology of perfection, see in my Commentary on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, pp. 130-133. Taking the word in the other sense also yields some very beautiful thoughts, as in Barclay, who understood it to mean "restore," as Moffatt translated it. He wrote as an illustration of the thought:

Sir Edward Elgar once listened to a young girl singing a solo from one of his own works. She had a voice of exceptional purity and clarity ... When she had finished, he said, "She will be really great when something happens to break her heart."[32]

Something was about to happen which would indeed break the hearts of many Christians, recalling the words spoken by the blessed Christ who "learned obedience by the things which he suffered, having been made perfect" (Hebrews 5:8,9). Many of the precious saints would be "made perfect" in the same sense, through the awful things they were about to suffer.

Establish ... This word means "to fix, to make fast, to set,"[33] as when concrete sets.

Strengthen ... means "to make strong,"[34] and suggests the strengthening that comes to steel, or iron, when it is heated with fire and suddenly cooled, thus "tempering" it and giving it much greater hardness and strength. The onset of the fires of persecution would harden and strengthen the faith of many.

[30] W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940), vol. 3p. 175.

[31] Archibald M. Hunter, op. cit., p. 157.

[32] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 273.

[33] W. E. Vine, op. cit., vol. 2p. 41.

[34] Ibid., vol. 4p. 81.