Praise to God for a Living Hope

Peter lets us know where we can find our hope and our inheritance. We may look elsewhere, but only in Jesus do we find real hope that carries us through this life and the inheritance to what awaits us in the next.

Apart from Jesus there is a false hope. Hope in the world fails, is vain and dead. The natural man finds himself in a state of hopelessness. What he searches for he does not find. But we thank God for his abundant mercy through Jesus, our living hope. Spiritual hope is living; it supports, has strength, is durable, and lasts. In irritations we have hope to be patient and kind. In struggles we have hope to persevere and to press on. In battles we have hope of victory. What awaits us is our hope of spiritual excellence and perfection. The living hope we have while on earth is but a shadow to what will come; the inheritance that will never end:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,  who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3-5.

We rejoice in this living hope but as humans we live in a broken world. There are all sorts of afflictions; temptations, injustice, adversity, pain, and suffering of all kinds. God allows these difficulties to refine us in the fire. Our Christianity depends on our faith. There is nothing else spiritually good in us. A tried faith is more precious than gold. The testing of our faith is a process of purification. Suffering is meant to our advantage, not to our ruin, not meant to destroy but as a probation period. We need to suffer to grow but never longer than is needed. The effect of the trial is to give praise, glory and honor to Jesus Christ. The blessing we are receiving is the joy of salvation; knowing and believing in Jesus as Lord, and the restoration of our souls to which our faith in him is made complete:

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:6-9.