When people
in our country think about Christians, they might think of the phrase “family
values,” that familiar phrase from the world of politics. More or less, that
phrase basically means that we think the traditional family structure is very
important, and we want to see it protected and strengthened.
I think
that’s a pretty fair assessment of conservative Christians. We believe that the
family structure was laid out by God and that he would want to see this
structure strong and healthy. That belief of ours is one of the reasons why
it’s very odd for us to read words like this from Jesus: “Do not think that I
have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against
her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s
enemies will be those of his own household (Matthew 10:34-36).”
That sounds
like a strange way to support family values, doesn’t it? Now please understand
that Jesus spoke these words as part of a larger conversation in which he was
telling his disciples that they would face opposition from other people because
of their relationship with him. With these words about family members, I think
Jesus was not describing his desire, but rather what the actual result of his
ministry would sometimes be – even something as tightknit as a family could
become divided as individuals made their choice of whether to accept him or
reject him.
The
Christians to whom Peter wrote in the book of 1 Peter had almost certainly
experienced the kind of division within their families that Jesus spoke of in
Matthew 10. It is never a fun thing to find yourselves at odds with your family
members, but in that day and age, being cut off from your family had some even
more serious implications than what we might experience today.
And so, as
Peter begins the body of his letter in 1 Peter 1:3-5, he highlights for his
audience—and for us!—the fact that:
God has caused us to be born again into a new
family, with all of the blessings that family can bring.
As we get
into the body of Peter’s letter in verse three, we actually encounter one very
long sentence in Greek that stretches all the way to verse nine. We can’t
really reproduce that same sentence structure very well in English, so our
translations have to break it up into several sentences. But it’s helpful to
note that all of the grand theology and beautiful truths that were going to
encounter in these verses flow out of this first, foundational exclamation in
verse three: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
That
declaration is truly the long and short of the Christian life, all wrapped up
into one statement. Are you enjoying the bright sunshine of life today or are
you in its raging storms? Either way, the same declaration can be yours –
Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Are you traversing the
grand hills of life, it’s pleasant meadows, or its deepest valleys? No matter –
the cry of your heart can be the same. Blessed be the God and father of our
Lord Jesus Christ!
This
exclamation rings with the echo of Job’s declaration after that great man had
suffered such great loss all at once. He said, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has
taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).”
This
declaration is not some head-in-the-sand mentality, where we’re just ignoring
all of the ups and downs of life. Rather, it is based on everything that God
has accomplished for us in the past that has set us up for such a glorious
future. Let’s take a closer look now at these truths.
1. We’ve been born again into a new setting in life (v. 3)
Since these
Jewish believers had embraced Jesus Christ, they had likely lost any advantages
that they may have had from being born into their respective biological
families. So Peter reminds them of one of the blessings that we have from our
new birth in Christ [READ v. 3]. That past event of Jesus resurrection – which
is a certain as the fact that George Washington walked the earth – has placed
us into this wonderful new setting in life that Peter calls “a living hope.”
Here he is talking about the glorious expectations that we have for our future
destiny with Christ.
Now please
don’t think that hope is some kind of wimpy expectation. When I was a kid, for
some reason my friends and I thought that hoping for something was a rather
weak attitude. If I said something like, “I hope Susie talks to me on the
playground today,” we thought that was about the same as saying, “That’s never
going to happen!” Sure, I wanted it to happen, but I really didn’t expect it
to.
The idea of
hope in the Bible is precisely the opposite. Hope is a very confident
expectation of something that you don’t have your hands on quite yet. The
reason that biblical hope incorporates such a high degree of confidence is that
the things we are expecting to see in the future are based on the things that
were already accomplished in the past.
So even
though the present day reality for Peter’s audience was difficult, their new
birth through Christ gave them a confident expectation of glory to come. And
notice that Peter calls this hope a “living” hope. Now, what is one of the
characteristics of living things? They grow, right? Now is it not true that so
often when you observe an older saint who has been walking with the Lord for
many years, they exude hope, don’t they? Their confidence in the life to come
is so certain that it characterizes their whole lives! You probably don’t have
to think very long before you can think of someone who is a perfect example of
the way that Christian hope grows and multiplies. As we walk with the Lord,
hopefulness becomes the very air that we breathe.
2. We have a better inheritance in store for us (v. 4)
When these
ethnically Jewish people became Christians, they were likely cut out of the
will in their families. Any inheritance that they stood to receive was probably
taken from them, which may have left them rather uneasy about the future.
So Peter
reminds them here that as children of God, they stand to receive a much better
inheritance than their earthly family could have ever given to them. Verse four
is to be tied in with the thought of being born again, and so Peter states that
we have been born again “to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and
unfading, kept in heaven for you.”
At a
minimum, I suspect Peter is thinking about our home in heaven with God. As
God’s adopted children, we now have the right and the expectation to one day be
with him where he is. Parents and children are supposed to live together, and
that is the promise we have from God for our destiny after this stage of life.
Notice how
Peter makes a big point to stress the lasting and enduring nature of our
inheritance with God. He says it is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.”
Our heavenly inheritance is not subject to any of the factors that might
devalue our earthly inheritance.
I don’t
know what kind of inheritance you might stand to receive from your parents.
Perhaps they have already passed and so you already have your inheritance, or
perhaps they are still living and you stand to receive something from them when
they do pass away. Whatever that inheritance might consist of, it is subject to
decay, loss, theft, and just a general deterioration. If they pass on cash,
that money will likely lose some of its value to inflation. If they pass on
stock, it will be subject to the fluctuations of the market. If they give you a
home, it will have to be maintained or it will deteriorate. If they give you
land, it has to be managed and cared for somehow. And all of those things I
just mentioned are subject to complete loss. Through various circumstances, you
could wind up losing any of those things completely.
But our
heavenly inheritance is much different. It is not subject to decay or loss or
theft. And Peter says that this inheritance is kept in heaven for you. The word
picture is of something that has been tucked away for safekeeping, as you might
put something in a safe deposit box until you need to retrieve it later.
So even if
we should lose an earthly inheritance because of our faith in Christ, our new
reception into God’s family gives us a much better and much greater inheritance
to look forward to. And as Peter mentioned that this inheritance is “kept,” he
goes on in verse five to stress how we ourselves are guarded by God our father.
3. We have a new source of protection (v. 5)
In ancient
times, your family was your primary source of protection from all kinds of
hardships and calamities. Remember that Peter was living and writing in a day
in which there were no such things as insurance policies. So what would you do
if your house burn down or your crops failed or you were injured? You wouldn’t
sing the State Farm jingle and expect your insurance agent to magically show
up! You would turn to your family before anyone else to find help and
assistance.
Likewise,
how would you take care of yourself and your old age? To our knowledge, there
were no such things as retirement homes. There was no Medicare, no Social
Security, so once again, you would rely on your family to help. That’s one
reason why barrenness was viewed as such a sad condition in biblical times.
It’s a sad thing for couples today to deal with infertility, but that situation
doesn’t necessarily put us into jeopardy as far as our own well-being is
concerned. But at that time, it did.
Given a
cultural context like that, you can imagine how uneasy and afraid Peter’s
audience may have felt if they had been kicked out of their families because of
their faith – and again, I think it is likely that they were. They didn’t just
suffer an emotional and perhaps financial loss – they had lost their main
source of protection as well.
But lest
they think that they were now without any protection, Peter reminds them in
verse five that they are those “who by God’s power are being guarded through
faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” In the same way
that their heavenly inheritance was under guard for safekeeping, these
believers were themselves under the guardianship and protection of God. That
fact did not rule out the possibility that they might face continued persecution
for their faith, but it did mean that God’s plan for them would never be
thwarted. His destiny for them would not fail to be realized.
Notice
again how the stress in this whole passage today is on the future. Peter wrote
that they were guarded “for us salvation ready to be revealed in the last
time.” That might sound a bit strange to us, because we are so accustomed to
talking about salvation in the past tense. We say things like, “I was saved
back at such and such a time when I placed my faith in Christ.” That’s true of
course, but I know I don’t have to tell you that God’s whole plan of salvation
has not yet been realized.
It’s the
ultimate fulfillment and completion of our salvation that Peter has in view
here, and notice how Peter stresses that it is all ready. There’s no doubt here
about whether it’s going to happen – Peter says it’s ready to go right now!
There’s nothing that remains to be done in order for your salvation to be
established or acquired because Jesus completed all of that through his death
and resurrection. So the full and final enactment of your salvation is ready to
go – it waits only for the word of God to give the go-ahead for this stage of
human history to come to an end.
I know that
some of you here might be able to sympathize with the situation of these
believers in a very personal way. I know that some of you have faced at least a
degree of exclusion from your own families because of your faith. Perhaps your
convictions about how to serve God did not line up in every detail with their
convictions, and as a result, you have faced exclusion and rejection to one
degree or another.
To those of
you who fit this description, I hope the new realities that are yours in the
family of God can be a great comfort to you. If your earthly family has turned
from you, know that God never will. You have been born again and adopted and
his family, and now you face a certain and secure future, within in perishable
inheritance that is waiting for you, reserved for you, and you are protected by
the very power of God so that you will receive it.
And to
those of us who have never faced this kind of situation with our earthly
families, we need to remember that our greatest hope and confidence and
security for the future comes not from those biological relationships but from
the Lord. If we receive in earthly inheritance that’s fine, but let’s not put
all our eggs in that basket! Let’s not tie all of our hopes and dreams and
something like that – something that is still only subject to decay and loss.
Let’s build our greatest dreams upon the living hope that we have through God,
not the slowly dying hope that characterizes all of the goods and values of
this world.
May we all
rejoice today, and make it our heart’s cry in every situation to say, “Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
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