I.) Of This Salvation — First Note, it is not the personal individual salvation of each individual here that is being spoken of. Rather the salvation that is here spoken of is the unfolding of Redemptive History throughout Scripture. The Salvation that Peter speaks of is an objective reality which takes people up into it.
Try to imagine this salvation like a gathering storm you see from a distance. On the Radio and television you have people who are keeping you informed of the nature of this storm and its intensity. They would be the equivalent of the prophets inquiring and searching carefully and who prophesy of the grace (rain & wind) to come to you. But the storm is objective. It is not merely that is something that is subjective to you — although to be sure when it finally hits it is also something you personally know and experience. It is outside of you and it is coming upon you.
Now in vs. 12 this coming storm … this unfolding of salvation that was so intensely reported upon was for those whom the end of the ages (I Cor. 10:11) has come upon. All the unfolding of Salvation that we find in Redemptive History was an unfolding whose culmination was for those who live in the New Covenant age and who have been embraced by Christ.
What Peter is saying here is somewhat similar to what the writer of Hebrews writes,
39And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.
The culmination of Salvation comes w/ Christ and for those whom will be drawn unto Christ in the new covenant age. Peter says that this Redemptive storm drenches us w/ grace (vs. 10) — God’s favor. We are that era of covenant people who live in the age who can fully know the abundant fulsomeness of God’s grace that is found in the Redemption that is Jesus Christ.
To change metaphors …. in the earlier ages of the covenant they dined on merely the appetizers of salvation but now w/ Christ we in the covenant have had the full feast of Redemption set before us.
II.) The Importance Of Revelation & Inspiration
The intimate relationship between Revelation & Redemption
Peter clearly intimates to us that there is a close relationship between the way God acts (Redemption) and the way God interprets his action (Revelation). God has acted in Redemptive History for His people but we only know the meaning of those redemptive actions through God’s revelation of Holy Scripture. The Salvation (Redemptive) events of History come to us only as reported in Revelation by the inspired Prophets who have inquired and searched carefully.
It is because we believe that Redemption and revelation are inextricably bound and it is because we know that when God spoke in times past and in various ways that speaking was always a Redemptive speaking that as Reformed people we have historically been suspicious of any supposed word from God that comes to us that isn’t intimately related to what we find in Scripture. Scripture is God’s revelation speech to us that speaks of God’s redemption. It is the only place where we can be certain that God speaks an a objective revelatory word that can be trusted in matters of Redemption.
Because this is true God’s Reformed and Reforming people have eschewed notions like the Quakers “inner light,” or the Pentecostal “word from God,” or the anabaptist’s (Zwickau Prophets) extra Scriptural word. We have always been slow to the siren call of dreams and visions. We believe all of this takes away from the prophetic work recorded in Scripture which Peter speaks of here.
III.) This Salvation That Has Come Upon Us Is Christ (vs. 11)
Phrase — “Spirit of Christ”
The Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of Christ” twice in the NT. It would seem that the Holy Spirit is designate as the “Spirit of Christ” because He is sent by the Ascended Christ along w/ the Father to apply the Redemption that was won by Christ on the Cross.
Phrase — “He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.”
Note the theme of first Humiliation and then Exaltation.
Note especially that the labors of the Prophets in the earlier covenant ages was to see Christ. As on the Road to Emmaus we learn again here that the Scriptures, before they are about anything, are about Christ and the salvation He brings w/ Him.
25 Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” 27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Little flock, if there is anything I would desire for your future in terms of where you will make church homes I would desire that you find churches that preach the centrality of Christ. If the prophets in the previous covenant age made Christ their business then it certainly is the case that we whom the end of the ages has come upon should be preoccupied with Christ being declared to us in Word & Sacrament.
Note close relationship between OT prophets & NT apostles. (vs. 12)
The same spirit that animated the Prophets animates the Apostles.
Note the close relationship between Word & Spirit
Grammar:
Original: The culmination of Salvation comes w/ Christ and for those WHOM will be drawn unto Christ in the new covenant age.
Edit: “For those WHO will be drawn unto Christ.” ‘Who’ is used as the subject, the thing completing the action, and ‘whom’ as the object, the thing receiving the action. Although this ‘who’ is in a prepositional phrase and typically that means it’s the object (for whom, to whom), it is a clause in the prepositional phrase and the subject of that clause, the one who ‘will be.’ In this prepositional phrase, the object is ‘those.’