1 Peter 1:8

Peter is writing about something he did not experience, and he knows it.

He had known Jesus. He had eaten with him, argued with him, watched him sleep in a boat. Everything Peter believed he believed with a face attached. And here he is writing to people scattered across Asia Minor who had none of that, and he is telling them their situation is not inferior.

Whom not having known you love. He does not say it is a shame you missed him. He states it as a fact and moves straight to what follows from it.

And what follows is stronger than anything he claims for himself. You rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Unspeakable means it cannot be put into words — a strange thing to write to strangers, and stranger still coming from a man who had the words available and had watched the events.

There is an echo here of something Jesus said to Thomas: blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. Peter, who had seen, is confirming it from the other side.

What the verse quietly removes is the assumption that faith is second-best evidence. The people who never met him are described as loving him and as full of glory, in a letter written by an eyewitness who had also, once, denied knowing him at all.