Seeds for 04/04/2024 - 1 Peter 1:4b-5
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. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
Observation:
Talk of our promised inheritance as believers can be a wonderful source of comfort because it provides something we can know and trust about the future, which is otherwise so uncertain. The verses we are reading now at the beginning of Peter’s first letter are often included in Christian funerals and memorial services because of this very reason. Remembering the hope we have because of Jesus’ resurrection and that there is an inheritance of eternal life secure for us in God gives us something solid to hold onto when the vulnerabilities of death and grief encircle us.
There’s a bit of language that Peter uses in a different way from how many Christians are accustomed to speaking of salvation.
Peter speaks of “the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed.” What is he talking about?
When we repent and believe the Gospel, putting our faith in Jesus, we can say that we “are saved.” We may also describe ourselves as “being saved.” There’s both a present and a future quality to our salvation. We are saved in that God in Christ has pardoned us and defeated sin so that we have the present gift of forgiveness, reconciliation, and freedom in Christ. We are being saved in that Christ has defeated death and it cannot hold us. Christ has gone before us and what happened for Him will happen for us too.
We will experience the “resurrection of the body” as we say in the creeds in the life to come. Will this happen at the moment we die and pass from earthly life? Or will it happen at a future “judgment day” when all are raised and sorted out? There’s biblical passages that promote or hint at both in one way or another. The promise I find here is that as a believer, I have an inheritance that is “kept in heaven”—the realm of God’s reign—for me, the fullness of salvation that awaits.
Application:
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, thank you for saving me and for granting me an inheritance through your Son Jesus. Keep me grounded in the certainty of your promise. 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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