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1 Peter 4:11 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)
11 If anyone speaks, let it be as one who speaks sayings[31] of God; if anyone ministers, let him do so as depending on the strength that God supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. The glory and the might are his forever and ever. Amen.
Whoever speaks includes not just teaching or preaching, but many kinds of gifts involving speech-activity: evangelism, teaching, prophesying, and perhaps singing or sharing words of praise and testimony in the assembled congregation. In all these cases the Christian must do it as one who utters oracles of God. Oracles (logia) means ‘sayings’, but especially sayings spoken from God to man (used in Acts 7:38; Rom. 3:2 of Old Testament Scripture). Yet this cannot mean ‘as claiming that the words he speaks are God’s own words’, because that would only be true of Scripture, not of every word spoken during a church meeting. It means rather ‘with the seriousness of purpose which one would use if one were speaking God’s words.’
Whoever renders service is again a very broad category, which includes any kind of helping or encouraging ministry for the benefit of others in the church (or, by extension of the idea, any Christian service or ministry to others outside the church). The source of such service is (literally, ‘out of’) the strength which God supplies; service performed by merely human energy and for one’s own status in the eyes of others can soon become a wearying activity (see Gal. 6:9; 2 Thess. 3:13) and increase one’s pride rather than one’s faith. While service is directed to helping fellow believers (and others) and to building up the church, its ultimate purpose is that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 10:31). The translation ‘God may be praised’ (NIV) gives a connotation that is too exclusively verbal: glorified applies not only to words but also to attitudes and actions which honor God.
Finally, Peter closes this section with his own doxology. To Jesus Christ whom he knew in the flesh as a man, Peter writes words of praise appropriate only to one who is also fully God: To him belong glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. The word translated dominion can also mean ‘power’; if that is the sense here it cannot mean that Peter wants Christ (who is all powerful) to have in himself more power, but rather that he wants the powers of the creation, and especially the powers of man, to be given more fully into Christ’s service (cf. Rev. 4:11; 5:12; 7:12). But that sense is in any case very similar to dominion.[1]
[1] Wayne A. Grudem, 1 Peter: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 17, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 183–184.
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