Introduction

The Epistles of Peter are letters written in fire. The apostle who denied Christ three times, who was restored by the risen Lord on the shore of Galilee, writes to scattered believers enduring persecution — and tells them that their suffering is not meaningless but precious. "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:6–7 NKJV).

J. H. Jowett brings to these epistles the same pastoral warmth and practical wisdom that mark all his writing. He reads Peter not as a theologian dissecting a text but as a pastor sitting beside a struggling believer, opening the apostle's words verse by verse and showing how they speak to the daily realities of faith, suffering, hope, and growth. His commentary moves through the first epistle's great themes — the living hope, the fiery trial, the shepherd heart — then into the second epistle's warnings against false teaching and its final call to grow in grace.

Jowett's gift was making complex theology feel like common sense. He used vivid everyday images — dressing for the Arctic and the tropics at the same time, walking in two directions — to illuminate truths that lesser writers made abstract and remote. In his hands, Peter's ancient letters become urgent, personal, and immediately practical.

Footnotes

¹ John Henry Jowett (1864–1923) was one of the most beloved preachers of his generation, serving congregations in Birmingham, New York (Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church), and London (Westminster Chapel). His verse-by-verse devotional commentary on 1st and 2nd Peter was published in 1910 as part of the Devotional and Practical Commentary series edited by W. Robertson Nicoll. Jowett is already represented in the library by My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year.