1 Peter 1:3-4 (NKJV) 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
Yesterday we began looking at what Peter had to say about the resurrection. In 1 Peter this eyewitness of the actual event tells us a number of things that are ours due to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yesterday we focused on the idea that the resurrection provides us a living hope. Hope comes when we believe that things are possible. Faith is the substance of that for which we hope. If there is no hope, there can be no faith.
When we consider the resurrection, we see that God has overcome the greatest impossibility in man’s experience, death. If God can do that, he can do anything. Every challenge I face is less difficult than raising Jesus from the dead. We need to make an awareness of the hope of the resurrection a component of our everyday walk of faith.
Today I want to look at the next verse and the next thing that Peter says is ours because of the resurrection. We have an eternal inheritance.
In looking at Paul’s perspective on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he said that if we have hope in this life only we are “of all men most pitiable.” I pointed out that we live at a time where life in the earth is better than it has ever been. This is especially true in countries like the United States. There are challenges to be sure. The world is in a time of great upheaval and uncertainty. Most people who live in countries like ours are not aware of what that could mean for our future. We go blissfully along with our comfortable lives thinking they will last forever.
I pray we are able to overcome the challenges in the world without war or economic collapse etc. I pray our lives stay as blessed and comfortable as they are now. I am not sure that is going to happen. History tells us that eventually things will drastically change. However, right now it is hard to imagine anything being better than the life we now have.
This was not the case in the days when Paul and Peter were writing. I have had the privilege of traveling to many countries. Some places I have stayed are developing and some are undeveloped all together. Imagine a world with no technology. No TV to watch. No music players or digital devices. Imagine no electricity or running water. How would that change your life? You might enjoy the adventure for a while but most of you would want to get back home as soon as possible.
Now imagine that your life is under threat. Imagine that there were people who wanted to arrest you or worse. Imagine not knowing if you family would be there when you got home because the soldiers may have come to arrest them. Imagine life without the freedom, privileges and comfort that we enjoy. How important would your eternal inheritance be to you under those circumstances?
I know that is a bit of a bleak picture, but it does accurately reflect the world Peter and Paul lived in. The truth is that just because our world is so much more comfortable and blessed does not change the fact that our time on earth will end. We just have a hard time focusing on that. They dealt with the inevitability every day.
As wonderful as life in our modern world can be, let me ask you to imagine something even better for a moment. This verse tells us that our future inheritance is “incorruptible and undefiled and does not fade away.” What would that world be like?
Corruption is all around us since the fall off man. Politics is a prime example of corruption. The purpose of government should be to protect and benefit the people of a country. However, we see many politicians who use their office to benefit their own pockets or their need for power. The people end up serving what should serve them. This principle of something good being tainted by compromise appears in almost every area of life.
What would a world with absolutely no corruption be like? It would be a world where everything functioned as it should. It would be a world where beauty is never overcome by ugliness. It would be a place where there is no decay of any kind. That is our inheritance.
What does it mean to be defiled? My wife heard a story about some very special brownies. Some children needed to understand that sin was a bad thing and that even a little sin will defile. It seemed that they thought a little sin was not so bad. So she told them her special brownies had a secret ingredient. That secret ingredient was dog poo!
The children said, “Yuck! We won’t eat that.” Mother said, “It’s just a little bit of secret ingredient.” The children responded, “We don’t care we won’t eat anything with poo in it!” I am sure we all agree with the children, but why.
Just a little bit of feces would “defile” the whole. We might not taste it. It probably would not hurt us but just the thought of it would turn our stomach to the point where we might well throw it up if we did eat it.
The world we live in has been defiled by sin. The affect of it is all around us. We have become so used to living in a defiled environment that we cannot imagine what an undefiled environment would be like. Try to imagine what life would be like in a place that was absolutely pure and undefiled by sin of any kind. That is our inheritance.
Finally Peter says our inheritance does not fade away. Everything in this life fades. The colors in our clothes fade with the washing. The flowers fade in the heat. Our youth fades over time. Romance fades, excitement fades and we grow tired of things we thought we could not do without.
Picture a world where everything is always fresh and new. Where the colors and the excitement are as rich as the day you first saw them. Imagine a place where the sense of love and joy in relationship never diminishes. Try to imagine a place without boredom or the dulling sameness of everyday life. Each moment is fresh and new for eternity. You cannot imagine such a place, but it is what your eternal inheritance is like.
How can we be sure any of this is true? We can be sure because of the resurrection. If Jesus was raised from the dead, he was raised for a greater life. That greater life belongs to you as well. The last thing Pete says is that we have a reservation already made for this wonderful world to come. The resurrection is a reminder of that reservation.
We should live our lives here and enjoy them. We should take advantage of what the world has to offer as long as it does not compromise our relationship with the Lord. We should serve the Lord here with zeal and gladness of heart. However, we should never forget that this is not our inheritance. That is yet to come and it will be better than anything we can have here on earth.
Thank God for the resurrection!
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