Seeds for 04/18/2024 - 1 Peter 1:21
Scripture:
Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
Observation:
Jesus is the ultimate self-revelation of God’s character and purposes and His saving action in the world. He is the climax of the story of Israel’s covenants with their God over a long period of time. This is important to remember, because the Jews believed in God based on the covenants, the Exodus, Moses, the Law, the raising up of kings—most notably David, and prophets—most notably Elijah. This was the way God provided through which they might believe in Him.
But with the coming of Jesus, all that the former leaders and covenants pointed to or revealed in part, Jesus revealed in full. For the earliest believers who were Jewish, Jesus was their long-awaited Messiah, and therefore the One through whom to believe in their God.
For those who were Gentiles, Jesus was their beginning point into the whole story of the Hebrew God—therefore, the One through whom they came to believe in God.
For both Jew and Gentile, then, Jesus became the door through which all enter into the household of God. Like the other writers of the New Testament, Peter wants us to know that Jesus is not simply part of the story—He’s the center of the story.
The claim is that God “raised Him from the dead and glorified Him.” Jesus is not just an important figure. Irreducibly, He is the person and the resurrection is the event on which the entire enterprise called Christian faith rises and falls.
But because the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a true fact of history, Jesus is the ground of our faith and the source of our hope. If we want to know God truly, we meet in Jesus the One who makes Him truly known.
Application:
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, you are the center of our faith and the reason for our hope. Keep me planted deeply in you. 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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