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, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV
In the first verse of Peter’s epistle, we learned that his letter was written to the dispersed (or scattered) Christians throughout Asia Minor. Many of these believers were suffering for their faith, having lost property, freedom, and loved ones under tremendous persecution. Peter wrote his epistle to encourage and strengthen his fellow brothers and sisters, and today’s passage certainly reveals that intent.
Peter begins by praising God the Father and noting that it is according to His great mercy that we are saved. For the second time in three verses, Peter expounds on the nature of the Triune God. Here we see how the Father orchestrated our salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus. The Father and Son have unique roles in our salvation, and both are worthy of the highest praises for the mercy and grace they have shown us.
We also see how we are born again to a living hope through Christ’s resurrection. Peter touches on this again in verse 23 when he says that we “have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.”
Jesus spoke of the necessity of being born again when he talked with Nicodemus in John 3, and here Peter draws out some important details on the true meaning of our rebirth, mainly that we are saved only by God’s mercy, Jesus’s death and resurrection, and by the living and abiding word of God. While we know that Christ is also called the Word of God (John 1:1), Peter explains later in verse 25 that “this word is the good news that was preached to you,” i.e.: the true gospel of Christ and the faith provided by the Holy Spirit. The understanding that the gospel is also the word of God can be found throughout the New Testament in places such as Colossians 1:25, 1 Thessalonians 2:13, Hebrews 6:5, and 1 John 2:14.
And what are we born again unto? An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Consider that promise… being with our Savior in a place full of joy, peace and safety, without the burden of temptation, trial, sin or death, and it never, ever diminishes.
It’s unlikely we truly comprehend what it’s like to personally suffer for Christ on any meaningful scale, but we may be able to conceive how wonderful the unending blessing of such an inheritance might be. Now imagine how encouraging these words must have been for Christians who had lost everything to follow Jesus! And no doubt Peter’s words will resonate magnificently with anyone who is suffering the same persecution for their belief in Christ today, which we know is happening across the globe.
While the world can take everything away from us, even our lives, it can’t take God away. Indeed, our inheritance is kept in heaven for us. Kept can also be understood to mean guarded, like a bank vault. No one can break in and steal our inheritance because it’s guarded by God Himself! And He’s guarding not only our inheritance, but us too, as Peter says, “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Again we see how secure our salvation is. It is anchored in God and Christ, not in our works, not in our religiosity, not in our will, but in the unchanging, eternal God who spoke the heavens and earth into existence.
With this knowledge we find great encouragement and a source for true joy, because we can really see how this world is not our home. We are aliens and strangers in a foreign land, longing to be at home with our Savior. Yes, there is work He has for us to do here: good works He prepared even before the earth was formed (see Eph 2:10), but we don’t need to be sucked into in all the chaos of the world. Eternal joy awaits us, so let’s try to put aside the stresses and worries of the world and remember the blessing we already have secured and ready to be revealed to us very soon.