1 Peter 1:8

Whom having not seen, ye love . Some ancient manuscripts read οὐκ εἰδότες , "although ye know him not:" but the reading ἰδόντες is best supported, and gives the better sense. The Christians of Asia Minor had not seen the gracious face of the Lord, as St. Peter had. But though they had never known him after the flesh, they knew him by the inner knowledge of spiritual communion, and, having learned to love him, had attained the blessing promised to those who had not seen, but yet had believed. St. Peter may possibly be thinking of his well-remembered interview with the risen Lord ( John 21:15-17 ). He has here the word ἀγαπᾶν , expressive of reverential love, which Christ had used in his first two questions; not the word of warm human affection ( φιλεῖν ) which he himself had employed in his three answers. In whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. The words, "in whom" ( εἰς ὅν , literally, "on whom now not looking, but believing"), are to be taken with the participles "seeing" and "believing," not with "ye rejoice." St. Peter insists on the necessity and blessedness of faith as earnestly as St. Paul does, though with him the antithesis is rather between faith and sight than between faith and works. As a tact, St. Peter's readers had never seen the Lord; now, though not seeing him with the outward eye, they realized his presence by faith, and in that presence they rejoiced. The verb is that used in 1 Peter 1:6 —they rejoiced greatly, they exulted, and that though they saw him not. Human love needs the seen presence of the beloved one to complete the fullness of its joy ( 2 John 1:12 ); but their joy was even amid afflictions unspeakable—like all our deepest and holiest feelings, not to be expressed in words; and it was glorified by the unseen presence of Christ. His chosen behold even now, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and, beholding, are changed into the same image from glory to glory. Joy in the Lord is a foretaste of the joy of heaven, and is irradiated by glimpses of the glory that shall be revealed. Others, as Huther and Alford, again give to the verb ἀγαλλιᾶσθε , "ye rejoice," a quasi-future sense. The word for "unspeakable" ( ἀνεκλαλητός ) is found only here.