1 Peter 1
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..
1 Peter 1:3-4
In yesterday’s devotion from Mark 16, we spent time thanking God for saving us through Jesus and prayed for Him to help us tell someone else about Jesus.
Today, our reading from 1 Peter 1 exhorts us to do that all the more. Come to think of it, we can never thank the Lord enough for what He has done, and is doing in our lives can we? In the light of that, let’s reflect especially on verse 3-4.
Who does all our praise go to? To the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – no one deserves praise and honour and glory and thanksgiving as He does – no-one!
What is the reason for such praise? His mercy. That is, not getting what we absolutely deserve. Note that it’s actually described as great mercy.
We have been given (not earned or merited or deserved) new birth – that is, we’ve been born again. A very different day between the day of our natural birth and the day of our spiritual birth – in one, we were born to death; in the other, we were born to life!
Birth into a hope that is not a dead hope, but a living hope. Alive today and for all eternity!
Oh dear Christian, stop and consider this great truth: that because Jesus did not remain dead but was raised to life, we, when we physically die one day, we will be so much more alive than we ever were. That is something worth praising God for!!
Because of the Son’s resurrection, because of the Father’s mercy, we have an inheritance that is kept in heaven for us and we are kept now for it. Because our inheritance is in heaven, it cannot perish, spoil, or fade. Isn’t that worth praising God for? All the stuff that we are and own here on earth perishes, spoils, and fades away. It ends up on the local dump! But not what God has gifted us! Not the riches that He has kept for us in heaven.
In the light of all these incredible blessings that are ours by the Lord’s incredible kindness, we pray that God, by His Spirit will help us to be holy, set apart, different, not conforming to evil human desire (verse 14-15). We pray that we too will be holy just as He who called us is holy.
And that He will enable us to obey the truth so that we have sincere love for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and love one another deeply, from the heart.
For our praise … is not just to praise God with our lips, but with our lives given in gratitude and thanksgiving to Him as a holy offering!
Our Father in heaven, help us to understand all that is ours by faith in and through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead; and help us to overflow with praise and thanksgiving. Help us to understand all that we are by faith in and through Jesus’ resurrection, and help us to offer our lives as a holy offering to you. Amen