LIVING HOPE

I Peter 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Peter is writing about thirty years after the death of Jesus Christ to believers who were scattered across the Roman Empire. They were, like we often ae, confused and discouraged. They had expected Christ to return quickly, but now decades later, the reality had begun to sink in that God’s soon is not our soon.

After his short greeting in verses one and two, Peter gets right to the heart of the message in verse three. He tells believers then and now that God is good because, in His great mercy He has given us new birth. The hopeless condition of our old lives is behind us. Even as we continue to live in this fallen world, we now have a glorious living hope that is solidly based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a living hope because he conquered death, hell and sin. He came back to life with a glorious, but very real and tangible body. Many, including Peter, saw the resurrected Christ Jesus. They walked with Him, talked with Him, and even ate with Him after His resurrection.

This gives us hope because, as Paul tells us in I Corinthians 15:20, He is the first fruits from the dead. My fate is the same as His. All the troubles and trials of this life, even death itself, shall not have the last word. I have a living hope. I too shall be resurrected with a body like His, forever to be with Him.