"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" (1 Peter 1:3, ESV)
______________________________
At True Life Church, we talk about truly living Christ and living the gospel in community. Yesterday, Pastor Norm spoke about what this means. A person doesn't believe the gospel in order to become a Christian and then move on to the real business of acting like a Christian. The gospel is essential for every moment of every day for every person, no matter how long they have been a Christian. We are never beyond the need for God's grace to cover our sin and we need to be reminded constantly that our identity is found in Christ rather than in our performance.
I think the main reason why we find it hard to live the gospel daily is that we have a wrong perspective or orientation regarding the gospel. We consider the gospel to be only about what God has already done for us in Christ: Jesus died and rose again. We think that the gospel simply demands that we believe that this is true and accept it. From where we stand, the gospel has to do only with what has happened in the past and very little to do with what is to happen now or in the future.
Please don't misunderstand me. The gospel is about what God has done in the past: Jesus Christ lived a life in perfect conformity to God's law, he died a bloody death on the cross to suffer the penalty for sin, and was raised from the dead, overcoming sin and death. But the gospel is also about the present and the future. The work of Christ in the past was not an end in itself; it was a means to an end. It was the beginning point of a plan that was drawn up by God before creation and set in motion with the birth of Jesus Christ. That plan was to deal with the sins of men (1 Peter 2:24), to make it possible for sinners to be brought into relationship with God (1 Peter 3:18), and to make the promises of the covenant available to them (2 Peter 1:4). This last part is the key for understanding how the gospel has just as much to do with the present and the future as with the past. In other words, the gospel is about hope, not just history.
The best place to see this dynamic of hope and history is Ephesians 2:12-13. Paul reminds the Gentile Christians in Ephesus that there was a time when they were "separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (v. 12). These things are related: because they were not a part of God's people, they were not the recipients of God's promises, and because they could not claim the promises, they had no hope.
That was their past; their present was very different. Now they had hope (Ephesians 1:18; 4:4). What made the change? Paul writes, "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ" (v. 13). They had been separated from Christ; now they are in Christ. They had been without God, now they have been brought near to God. The other elements in the string have been changed as well: they had been alienated from God's people but now they are one with them, Jews and Gentiles having been brought together in order to form one new people (Ephesians 2:14); they were strangers to the covenant of promise, but now they "are partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:6). And how has this happened? There was a conjunction of their past with Christ's past, of their present with Christ's present. His death and resurrection in the past has covered their past, and his life now supplies them with life, gives them access to God now, and provides them with hope for tomorrow.
This is, I believe, what Peter means when he says, "he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Your salvation was accomplished by the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the past. But when you were saved, you were given "precious and very great promises" regarding the future (2 Peter 1:4), promises that were purchased and guaranteed also by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the past (2 Cor. 1:20). This expectation of a certain future guaranteed by the work of Christ is what the Bible calls hope. This hope is living because it belongs only to those who have been born again, i.e., those who have embraced the gospel for life.
When we live in this living hope, we are living in the gospel. We take the promises of God in hand, we look to the past, to a crucified and risen Lord who purchased the promises with his own blood, and then we look to the future, waiting and watching for God to do what he has spoken. This hope is what gives us the power to endure suffering (1 Peter 1:6-7), to overcome sin and grow in holiness (1 Peter 1:13-16), to be better husbands and wives (1 Peter 3:1-7), and to be faithful members (1 Peter 4:7-11) and ministers (1 Peter 5:1-4) in the church.
No comments:
Post a Comment