Our most recent family picture was taken the day of my Mom’s wedding in 2021. It is a beautiful picture! My husband and son are so handsome in their new suits and ties. My two girls look stunning in their shiny gold bridesmaids’ dresses. And I found a classy black jumpsuit that helped hide many of the tell-tale signs of middle age! We’re all smiling our very best million-dollar smiles. The five of us look really good!
What you don’t see is that my torso is wrapped in clear packing tape because I had serious wardrobe malfunctions that morning. And my daughter’s shoes were way too big, so we strapped them to her feet also with packing tape. You can’t tell in the picture, but our family was falling apart!
We often don’t know the real story behind a picture. If we could somehow take a picture of the world, behind the glamour of the tall skyscrapers and beautiful celebrities, would be a world in pain. Poverty, human trafficking, corruption, starvation, racism, sexism, abuse of all kinds. Our air is polluted, our beaches are polluted, all of creation is groaning. This world is an unsteady place and the story behind that picture would seem hopeless.
But it’s not hopeless for the Christian! The Apostle Peter talks about our hope in his first letter written to Christians scattered throughout the 5 Roman provinces of Asia Minor, today Northern Turkey.
Peter was one of the early leaders of the Church. He wrote this letter around AD 64, during the Roman Emperor Nero’s persecution of the church.
Not only did this letter apply to the believers in AD 64, it applies to us in AD 2023 but not because Peter was a man ahead of his time. This letter applies because all Scripture is God-breathed. God Himself inspired these words that Peter wrote 2,000 years ago. We should pay attention to these God-breathed words. We live in an unsteady world. It was the same in Peter’s day. But God gives us this letter of hope to encourage us to live steady lives in an unsteady world.
Author Neal Plantinga writes, “The whole range of human miseries, from restlessness and estrangement through shame and guilt to the agonies of daytime television—all of them tell us that things in human life are not as they ought to be.”
The reason for this is sin—sin has stolen our peace and destroyed the perfection of everything God has created. Sin makes life look hopeless.
The Holman Bible Dictionary defines hope as: “The confidence that what God has done for us in the past guarantees our participation in what God will do in the future.”
1 Peter 1:3-9:
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. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (NIV)
A Resurrection Hope
One of the first things we see in this Scripture is that our Living Hope is a resurrection hope. Verse 3 says God has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus’s resurrection gives us Living Hope.
We are born as sinners, separated from God. This new birth that Peter talks about comes through the Holy Spirit and brings us into relationship with God. Our new birth came at a great cost to Jesus. He paid the penalty that should have been ours.
But we know Jesus did not remain in the grave! He was resurrected from the dead on the third day. 1 Corinthians says that more than 500 people actually saw Jesus after He was resurrected.
Do you know what the resurrection proves? Jesus has all the power—even over death. No enemy, no matter how strong or terrifying—not even death—can defeat Jesus.
But what in the world does Jesus’s resurrection from the dead have to do with our living hope?
It says it in verse 3, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Jesus has gifted to us the same kind of resurrection body that He Himself has. And like Jesus’s resurrection body, death can’t touch it!
So our living hope is as certain as Jesus’s resurrection. The apostle Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15. He calls Jesus the firstfruits of those who are resurrected from the dead. This is a farming term that means the first and best portion of a crop. Jesus is the first and best to be resurrected from the dead, but God promises those who belong to Christ will be resurrected also!
This is huge! If we belong to Christ, we have the certain hope of an eternal, resurrection body. This will happen at Christ’s second coming, and it’s certain! These decaying and graying bodies of ours will one day be perfect, sinless, immortal bodies.
Here are a couple funny stories… In AD 361, Emperor Sima Pi became the new ruler of China, and He was obsessed with immortality. In AD 364, just 3 years into his reign, His magicians developed the “pill of immortality,” and the emperor did not hesitate to swallow it.
Emperor Pi became so ill, he had to leave his position as ruler. Ironically, he died one year later at the age of 24. His obsession with living eternally ended up killing him in his early 20s.
Or how about a man named Shojin, a Japanese Buddhist, who wanted to enter the state of eternal meditation. As he grew older, Shojin decided it was time to mummify himself alive. Over a period of 1,000 days, Shojin spent his time meditating and eating roots and tree bark. After this, he drank a special poisonous tea that facilitated the mummification of his body while he was still alive.
Once the ritual was completed in 1081, Shojin buried himself alive to complete his entrance into eternal meditation. However, his body was found in a state of decomposition some time later. Apparently, Shojin did not achieve the state of eternal meditation.
Resurrection does not exist apart from Christ! We can swallow magic pills or mummify ourselves alive, but we will never achieve immortality by our own efforts. Our Living Hope is a resurrection hope.
An Inheritance Hope
Next, Peter tells us the Living Hope for Christians is an inheritance hope.
1 Peter 1:3-4 says, “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…”
This requires a different perspective because we cannot currently see this inheritance! The diamonds and jewels, houses, and cars, all of that stuff we accumulate, is not our eternal inheritance.
My husband, Jody, and I went to Mexico for our honeymoon in 1993. Our first day in Cancun, we went snorkeling with a tour group. We’re having a great time swimming all around watching the fish, and then suddenly Jody grabs me and, in a panic, asks if I’ve seen his wedding ring. We had been married all of 3 days, and he already lost his wedding ring! We swam all over the place looking for that gold ring and never found it.
Some earthly treasures are destroyed by fire, some rust, some break, and some are swallowed by the fishes. The things of this life that we consider treasures, like silver and gold, just don’t last.
But God promises an indestructible inheritance. Read these first few verses of Revelation 21, which describe this inheritance:
21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away. (NIV)
Can you imagine a world with no death or pain? We have a living hope, and this hope promises an eternal inheritance. But an inheritance is something we must wait for. As believers our inheritance can never perish, spoil, or fade. It’s not dwindling every time the stock market plunges. The State of Texas cannot take my inheritance. Because look at where it’s kept—in heaven! Nobody can mess with my inheritance in heaven!
We need to value the eternal things—faith, hope, love, God’s Word, joy. It’s fine to have silver and gold, but our inheritance is in heaven. Jesus values that which lasts forever, and we should too.
A Guarded Hope
The last point I want to show from this passage is found in 1 Peter 1:4-5, “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.”
God’s power shields or guards His people through faith for this final salvation. Not only does God guard our eternal inheritance, He also guards us. Now, we read in verse 6 that we will suffer grief in various trials, and we know that many Christians throughout history have been and are being martyred for their faith.
In fact, Peter, the author of our letter, was martyred just a couple years after he wrote this letter. Tradition has it he was crucified upside down in Rome. So obviously, verse 5 does not mean that we are guarded from suffering in this life. Suffering is inevitable for the Christian.
Instead, God guards through the salvation we receive. The tense of the original Greek verb for being guarded means an ongoing guarding. We are constantly guarded. For those who belong to Christ, our salvation is secure both now and in the future.
When I was 9 years old, I accepted God’s forgiveness of my sins and His gift of salvation. But my salvation did not end there. It is ongoing. Each day, I live out my salvation by growing to become more like Christ. This is called sanctification, and it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification happens through reading my Bible, prayer, worship, being in community with other Christians, serving others, and more!
This hasn’t been a straight and steady sanctification path. Many times in my spiritual life, it’s two steps forward and one step back. Many days my faith has been weak or seemingly non-existent. But still, God is conforming me to the likeness of Christ. Until ultimately, I will receive my finished salvation at the return of Christ. This is called glorification, and this is the hope of every believer.
Our Living Hope is a guarded hope because God is guarding us every step of the way.
The author Phillip Keller describes the guarding care of a shepherd. This is a picture of God’s care for us. “From early dawn until late at night this utterly selfless Shepherd is alert to the welfare of His flock. For the diligent sheepman rises early and goes out first thing every morning without fail to look over his flock… With a practiced, searching, sympathetic eye he examines the sheep to see that they are fit and content and able to be on their feet. In an instant he can tell if they have been molested during the night—whether any are ill or if there are some which require special attention.
Nor even at night is he oblivious to their needs. He sleeps as it were ‘with one eye and both ears open,’ ready at the least sign of trouble to leap up and protect his own.” God is the Good Shepherd, guarding us.
We have a living hope. We have this hope because of Christ’s resurrection. This living hope involves an eternal inheritance. And our living hope means God is constantly guarding us until we one day experience our ultimate salvation.
What does this mean for us? It means we do not have to give in to the hopelessness that much of the world experiences. Our world is horribly broken by sin. We rightfully mourn sin and death. This is not the way it should be.
We should comfort those who mourn. But we should not mourn as those who have no hope because we have a living hope. This broken life is not the end for us. Jesus is preparing an eternal home with no death, sadness, or pain. Jesus is our Living Hope!