RESURRECTION HOPE.
1 Peter 1:3.
What significance has what happened in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago got for us today? We feel the reverberations of current world events as reported by the media, but the impact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ reaches not only across the miles, but throughout the ages. If we are Christians today the message of the resurrection never ceases to furnish us with hope.
No wonder, then, that Peter - like Paul - bursts out in praise towards the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Ephesians 1:3). When God blesses us, we are the beneficiaries. When we bless God, we are returning praise.
Peter’s - and our - astonished joy is not only because of Jesus’ resurrection, but because by His resurrection we are “begotten again” into a new life (cf. John 3:3-8). There is no measuring the abundant mercy by which we are united to ‘the firstborn from the dead’ (Colossians 1:18). This was what it was all about: He died because He loves us, and wants us with Him.
The new birth is just the beginning. For now the heavens have received Jesus until ‘the restitution of all things’ (Acts 3:21). For us it is the beginning of a new life, a life of faith and loving service.
Our faith is anchored in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope rests in the certainty of His return (1 Peter 1:7). Our prospect, the prognosis (foreknowledge) of the Christian condition is that we shall be forever with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
Peter’s first letter is a letter of hope. This is not nebulous wishful-thinking, but a sure and certain hope, based in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is into this lively living hope that Christians are “begotten again”.
