A Word in Season: Living hope (1 Peter 1:3)

The Nature of Biblical Hope

Do you have hope? And if you do, what kind of hope do you have? When the Bible talks about hope it doesn't use that language in the way that many of us do, in the sense of a vague future possibility that may or may not come to pass.

Rather, biblical hope is something that is future and certain, something that is absolutely definite, but just hasn't happened yet. And there are far too many people in this world, and you actually may be one of them who's listening to this, who don't have the kind of solid hope that the scriptures talk about.

Dead Hopes Versus a Living Hope

Too many of us are living with dead hopes. We don't really know what lies ahead. We've got no certainty, there's no vitality, there's no lively expectation of any good. But when the Apostle Peter wrote his first letter in chapter 1 and verse 3, he said that God, according to his abundant mercy, had begotten his people again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

That's the Christian's state and condition. It begins with God's abundant mercies, his ever-flowing and overflowing kindnesses to the undeserving, the ill-deserving, the hell-deserving. Mercy isn't given to those who deserve it.

It's by definition bestowed upon those who don't. And out of that abundant mercy, that free favor towards those who deserve only condemnation, God has begotten us again. This is the language of regeneration or rebirth, the born-again idea of John chapter 3.

We were dead in our trespasses and sins, said the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2, but now we are alive together with Christ. And having been brought from death to life, we now have what Peter describes as a living hope.

That is, it's this certain, future, definite, and substantial expectation that pulses with vitality, that is sustained. It is energized and energizing. It invigorates, it delights, it stirs the soul. It is a hope that in itself cannot and will not die.

It will never simply dissolve. It cannot be taken away. It is and remains alive. Now, what's the basis of that kind of confidence? Why can every Christian who knows that they have this new life in them say, I have a living hope?

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ as the Basis of Hope

It is, says Peter, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And that tells us not just why the hope is living, but what it actually involves. It's a hope of life. Because if we are alive together with Christ, who died but rose again, so too as believers, we are confident that though we may die, we shall live.

That we are looking forward to a life that is not just in our souls, but also in our bodies, where our whole redeemed humanity enjoys life as God intends it to be in the new heavens and the new earth.

This is a hope that nothing can dent. This is a hope that nothing can dissolve. This is a joy that no one can take away from us. It is rooted in the abundant mercy of God. It is established by our being begotten again, born again into this living hope.

And it is guaranteed, it is formed and fashioned and relies upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If we have come out of spiritual death into that life, if we have left behind that emptiness, misery, sorrow and darkness to come into the kingdom of God, then we now have a living hope.

As I said, I hope you don't have a dead hope. I hope you're not trying to go through this life with no hope. The hope that we need, not just to make us alive, but to keep us alive and to enable us to live with that expectation of real joy, not just now, but to come, is a hope that is grounded in God's mercy, rooted in his mighty work in making us alive in Christ and that goes on resting on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as the pattern for our own future existence.

Thank you.