5:14a
Greet one another with a kiss of love: A similar command appears at the end of four of Paul’s letters. See Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, and 1 Thessalonians 5:6. In New Testament times, members of a family showed their love for one another by greeting each other with a kiss on the cheek or forehead. It was also the custom in the meetings of the early church for Christians to express their affection for their fellow believers by kissing each other on the cheek or forehead.
Today in cultures where kissing is practiced, it is often strongly associated with sexual love, so a literal translation might convey the wrong meaning. In other cultures the custom of kissing is not known. In either case it may be better to use the word for the usual greeting or a general word such “embrace.” For example:
Give each other a warm greeting (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
embrace each other as fellow believers
If you use the word kiss, you may need to make clear the kind of kiss that Peter had in mind and the reason for it:
kiss on the cheek to show your love for your fellow Christians.
5:14b
Peace to all of you who are in Christ: This is a blessing. Peter concluded his letter by giving his readers the blessing of peace. In some languages it may be necessary to make it explicit that God is the one who gives peace. For example:
⌊May God give peace⌋ to all of you who are in Christ.
Peace: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as Peace here refers to having a quiet heart and life and a good relationship with God and other people. See how you translated this word in 1:2e. In some languages you may need to translate it as a verb:
May you be calm/peaceful
© 2018 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.