I Peter 1.1-2 tells us that God chose us a long time ago. This doesn’t mean we have no say, it just means he’s always known who would and wouldn’t follow him. Broadly speaking, it means that he specifically chose Christians to be the ones who leave with him at the end. This means three things: One, he wants us to have a spirit of moral purity. Two, he wants us to obey him. Three, he wants us to be made clean by Jesus’s sacrifice.
1.3-12 — Our reason for living this difficult life is hope. In the context of this letter, hope is the anticipation of what we’ll get after we die. The entire letter points to the next life as our primary incentive for living morally pure lives. When Peter says to do something difficult or painful, he usually follows it up with a reminder that this life is nothing. Everything we do is in view of the next life. Below are a few examples (we’ll look at the rest next week):
- 1.3 — His mercy gave us new life.
- 1.3 — This new life makes us live with anticipation for the next life and gives us a powerful, unstoppable hope. We only have this hope because Jesus came back to life, proving that we can and will, too.
- 1.4 — This new life has us waiting for God to reward us at the end.
- 1.4 — We know it’s at the end because vs 4 says that it’s being guarded by God for us. Unlike our current life, which is subject to the law of entropy, the next is not capable of wearing down or losing any of its value or novelty. Things that are new and exciting to us in this life can get boring after a while. Hobbies may eventually become an expensive ritual, rather than something that gives fulfillment or excitement or purpose. New Earth has none of that. It’ll be just as exciting on day one trillion as it was on day one!
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