How Sweet It Is--An Exposition of I Pet 1:3-9

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, 7 so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

I. Introduction

This wonderful passage speaks the language of hope, hope even when vision is deficient (i.e., we haven't seen nor do we really "see" Christ now) and when the heat is on (i.e., persecution is in view). The hope spoken of in the text is a "living" hope. You might wonder what other kinds of hope there could be, but you don't have to live long to know that there is faltering hope, or resurgent hope, or wan hope or fading hope. Here we have a living hope, a hope that anchors us in our work and life, in our relationships and witness-bearing, in every task to which we set our hands and minds. In this essay I want to muse on that hope (vv. 3-4), how we are being kept in that hope by the power of God (v. 5) and how rejoicing, even amidst suffering, is the Christian calling (vv. 6-9).

II. Thinking About Hope

A few weeks ago I began to study and memorize John Milton's Paradise Lost. I had to memorize it because the language is simply too dense for a "quick read" and is too vivid to have to "look it up" whenever you want to make reference to it. Indeed, memorization is a skill shunted aside in our techno-cool and "look-it-up" society. If it can be "googled" then why learn it? But memorization is one of those skills that is a curious one. If you tell people you are memorizing something, they think you are crazy; if you show them the fruit of memorization, however, they think you are a genius. Maybe, then, I am crazy.

Hope is one of the themes of Book I of Paradise Lost. In that Christian epic, which wants to "outdo" the Homeric and Virgilian epics of antiquity (I.16), Milton first portrays the plight of Satan and Beelzebub, his adjutant, in hell. Scholars have often remarked about the genius of Milton's portrait of Satan. We as readers can almost feel and see his utter sense of loss; sometimes scholars speak of the "nobility" of Satan because so many traces of his former glory can be seen through his hateful and hate-filled countenance in Hell. In Book I, Satan and his army of angels have just been cast down to that fiery location because of their unsuccessful fight against the Almighty. The poetic language of Milton is reminiscent of Book I of the Iliad:

"Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night/ To mortal men, hee with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rolling in the fiery Gulf
Confounded though immortal..." I.50-53.

That is, Satan and his "angels" traveled nine days through the air to reach their present location. Satan is, as it were, trying to adjust his eyesight to the "darkness visible" in that location, and he realizes the hopelessness of his plight:

"for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him;..." I.54-56.

Satan has, at first, lost all hope. "Round he throws his baleful eyes" (I.56)...in order to see if there is any way of escape from his situation. I love the word "baleful" to describe Satan. The OED defines it as "full of malign, deadly, or noxious influence; pernicious, destructive, noxious, injurious, mischievous, malignant." Getting the point?

But even in hell Satan will, as it were, fight back. Though he realizes that he is unable to fight God in a direct face-off, because God is just too strong for him, he will devise another method of trying to "get back" at God--through making humans fall. In this way, Satan hopes to nullify the great power and redemptive love of God. So, in Book I of this classic we both see hopelessness and a glimmer of hope--in Satan.

It is that dual picture of Satan's plight in hell, according to Milton, that got me thinking about the text of I Pet. 1:3. There we are called to a "living hope," a hope that isn't a mere pipe dream like Satan's in hell; no mere desperate longing, fueled by contrary-to-fact conditions. Now we have a living hope, a hope made alive by the events of Easter morning, a hope made vibrant by the coming gift of the Spirit, a hope made permanent by the Spirit that is given to us. That, friends, is the good news for today, and news that ought to be preached with eagerness and clarity. We have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. Our body and flesh not only may, but they will fail; our hopes in earthly things will eventually fade; but the hope for eternal kindship with God and Jesus the Son are just taking off for us. As the sermon title says (reminiscing on Jackie Gleason): "How Sweet It Is!" Can you communicate that sweetness and hoepfulness to your people this day?

III. Being Kept By God (v. 5)

The author of I Peter is no dummy, however. He knows that it isn't sufficient just to assert that we have a living hope and then leave things up in the air. We are weak people, and we need the assurance not just of love in the present but of some kind of security. It is amazing to me in intimate relationships how much one partner (I won't mention the gender..) generally needs to be told that s/he is loved all the time or, in my experience, at least once a day. Why is that the case? Why doesn't one declaration of love suffice? Isn't excessive repetition a sign that the person hasn't "gotten it?" Well, actually, no. I Peter assures us that we are "being kept by the power of God" (v. 5). The participle is in the present tense--the "keeping" is going on right now. And, we are not just being maintained by a good diet, though that might be helpful, or by timely workouts, though those are salutary; we are being kept and protected by the power of God. What we often attribute to our skill or luck or to nothing special at all, the Scripture attributes to the power of God at work on our behalf. Never forget that the living hope is living because we are being kept alive by the power of God.

IV. Rejoicing--and Trials (vv. 6-9)

This, of course, isn't the last word. Like a good preacher or motivational "coach," who wants to stress the sources of empowerment before laying out the challenges before us, so the author tells us about our living hope and protection by God before he turns to the struggles that face us. We no doubt rejoice in our hope and in the power of God, but we may now "for a little while" (oligon-v. 6) have to suffer trials. Hah! I just tricked you. The word in the Greek is not "may" but "must" (deon). That is, the author sees the necessity of trials coming upon us. He doesn't say exactly why the trials are necessary, unless they are part of the process of showing what is genuine about us. Heat challenges, makes pure and makes more beautiful the metals around our fingers or necks. So, the "heat" of persecution, a phenomenon much more real to first and second century Christians than to Western Christians today (regardless of what some Christians try to say), is a necessary adjunct of our lives in faith.

Conclusion

But the author concludes with a joyous and upbeat thought. We haven't seen Christ in the past, nor do we see him now, but we still love him and hope in him. This "believing without seeing," a sort of reversal of the Doubting Thomas pheonomenon, will eventuate in the salvation of our souls (v. 9). Believing and loving without seeing--that is the condition now in which we live in the world. It isn't so tough, now that we have the living hope and the power of God with us. We really couldn't ask for more...

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