Seeds for 04/03/2024 - 1 Peter 1:3-4a
Scripture:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
Observation: Peter places three building blocks of faith at the very beginning of everything else he will have to say: the new birth, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the inheritance of believers.
The first thing that believers are born anew into is “a living hope“ that was inaccessible to them beforehand. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is what makes this possible.
It’s worth reasserting that “resurrection” meant bringing someone dead back to life again—but in a permanently transformed way, not simply reviving or resuscitating by CPR someone who will eventually die again.
The twentieth century novelist and poet John Updike put it this way to open his “Seven Stanzas at Easter”:
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
Because the resurrection is physical, not metaphorical, Peter asserts that they now have, very literally, a “living hope.” John Stott said, “We live and die; Christ died and lived!” Our living hope is that what happened to Jesus can happen for us.
The second thing we are born anew into is an imperishable inheritance. An inheritance is the privilege of an heir, a child. Coming to faith in Jesus and receiving the new birth elevates one from a sinner all the up to the status of a son of the King.
Two further points to note about the the notion of inheritance as a way to talk about the promise of our salvation.
First—yes, we are servants of God. But the point Peter is making here is that being a servant of God indicates our humility and call to trusting obedience. But our status is much greater—as a son.
Second, that all believers gain the status of an heir, typically a son, is a radical elevation for both men and women alike. In a society that attributed lower value to daughters (perhaps compare the lower worth/status of a daughter under Communist China’s one-child policy), to attribute to the women who came to faith in Jesus the status of a male heir was a radical elevation of their worth and a powerful statement about the value of every single person in God’s kingdom. Borrowing from Paul, this is an example of how “there is neither… male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” All have infinite worth in the promise of God and share in the eternal inheritance that is ours by faith in God’s mercy.
Application:
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, strengthen in me the foundational gifts of a living hope and an eternal inheritance that I have because of your mercy in Jesus. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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