By: Tim Keller
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, who through faith are shielded by God's
power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the
last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you
may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that
the proven genuineness of your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which
perishes even though refined by fire -- may result in praise, glory and honor
when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and
even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an
inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your
faith, the salvation of your souls.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Jesus is risen! The Bible says when we connect with Him by
faith, we are not only raised physically
at the end of time, but we also experience resurrection now. Eph 2 says we are
already spiritually raised with him; In Philippians 3, Paul says, "I want
to know Him in the power of His resurrection."
What does it mean to
actually live a life now powered by Jesus' resurrection life?
Something happened when you believe in Jesus. In 1Peter
tells us:
1. What happened to
us.
1 Peter - Praise be to
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy he has given us
new birth - It tells us, when you are a Christian, you experience
the new birth. And notice, it does not say that God gives some of us new birth;
which typical for people to say Yes, I
know people who got broken lives, they are probably alcoholic, or in prison, or
drug addicts, and these people need this expression of "born again". People
say, "born again Christianity" is a type of Christianity. The trouble
is Peter says that "born again" is not a type of Christianity, it is
Christianity. He's speaking to church and does not say that some of you have
rough lives have to have a "born again" experience. He says
"WE", means all of us we can assume. We are not Christian if we
haven't experienced the new birth. It is, of course, a metaphor. Born again means like spiritually
something happened to us, like being physically born. So it is a metaphor, for
2 things: a new vitality and a new identity.
First of all, to be born again means that you get the
implantation of new kind of life, spiritual life. And we have to be careful
here, because from the outside what that impartation looks like can be very,
very varied. There are the sorts of ways in which the new birth happened. We
have to be very careful not to create a template that everyone who experience
the internal impartation of a new life has to have an external experience like
this. It actually can come out from a whole lot different ways.
One is, Dr. David M. Jones was a preacher in Westminster
Chapel in Buckingham
Palace, London in the 20th century, there was a man who is on his way to the
river at night in an attempt to kill himself, and went by the Westminster
Chapel that had the window opened, and he heard the music that gives him a
little bit of hope, then he walked in, sat down, and listened to the preaching
of the Gospel, and eventually was converted. It is a dramatic story, which a
lot of people think of "being born again" - dramatic.
Second is a well known person who just died in his 90's, a
friend of Rev. Jeff White, a surgeon general of the US, a brilliant surgeon of
a children hospital in Philadelphia. He remembered how he became converted that
his wife dragged him to the evening service at downtown Philadelphia, the Tenth
Presbyterian Church. He remembered at the beginning of particular year, almost
everything the preacher said sounded stupid to him. And a little over a year
later, he realized he believed it all. And he said, "Where I kind of
crossed the line, I wasn't quite sure. I couldn't even give you a day or an
hour, or even a week or a month."
And the 3rd story is Billy Graham's wife, Ruth. Billy Graham
is the master of the dramatic of the "come to Jesus" moment, a
dramatic conversion. But his own wife only remembers that as a child, as she's
growing up as a child, every time she heard a new story about Jesus, she
embraced Him, and she embraced about the new Christian faith, and eventually
she didn't even remember at the time she believed it, and some where I crossed
that line to a real faith, but do not know where.
On the one hand, you've got to say to yourself that the new
birth can happen in such a variety of ways of external manifestation, which is
extraordinary important. There is a moment where it happens, but we can't
always discern where that moment is. But what comes in, whether dramatically or
quietly, it's stupendous. Paul, in the book of Titus, says, "He saves us
thru the washing of rebirth and regeneration." But one of the 2 words he
uses there is a Greek word "palengenetia".
In Matthew 19:28, Jesus is talking about the renewal of all things at the end
of time when He comes back and sits on His throne, and makes everything right.
And He says, "at the renewal of all things..." - using the word palengentia. Jesus is saying that at the
end of time God will regenerate the whole world; He is going to wipe the world
clean of everything defective or stain. He
is going to remove all death, suffering, wipe away every tear. He is going to
make everything that is deform perfect. This world is going to be perfect.
Imagine the power that is going to take to do that, that is the word palengenetia. And Paul is using the same
word. And what this means is that when you become born again, you get the first
and solemn on down payment of that very power in your life now. And that leads
to another reason why becoming a Christian is having a new birth, because it is
not only the new vitality, but essentially the new identity. The changes can be
so drastic, though doesn't have to be drastic immediately. Even like a little
child, who's first born grows in something considerably different than that
little crying lump of flesh that you have there in the very beginning.
Nonetheless, even though it can start very, very small, it changes you so much
that you are essentially another person. That is the reason of being born
again.
Do you see the necessity and the power of the new birth?
That is Christianity. That is what happened to us.
2. Where it happens.
It happens to you when you are hopes. - 1Peter 1:3- In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope...and
into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade...shielded by God's
power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the
last time." To understand how
does this, "to be born again" into the new vitality and to have your
life change, happen? It is in your hopes, in your hearts, and spread the rest
of your life. To understand this, we have to know what hope is.
Hope actually
consists of a desire and an expectation. When you come to believe that X will
fulfill your desire, you will set your hopes in X. To hope in something is to
have faith that this will satisfy one of your desires. To say that you are born
again into a new hope means that your whole heart is changed, because your
heart is not the place of your emotion so much. When you are reading the Bible
and see the word "heart", English speaker will immediately see it as
the seed to the emotion vs seed to the thoughts. That is not what the Bible
uses the word "heart". If anything, the "heart" is the seed of the hopes. The seed of the things
that is your most fundamental commitments. Your heart is where you have decided
in a sense where your most fundamental commitments are, what you most fully
believe will satisfy your deepest desire in meaning of love, and significant,
and security. See, every body's got to live on something. Everybody got to set
their hopes on something. And when you do that, you set your heart on it; you
set your whole life on it; and build your life on it. And therefore, that's
what hope is. Hope is you get this deep desire, and you come to have faith at
certain thing will satisfy this desire. And those things give you the structure
of your heart, because those things could be work, career, money, or status,
family or community, or love, romance or sex; they could be some kind of great
noble cause; what is it will give you meaning in life. And that will bring
structure of your heart and mind, bring your emotion, the things that scare
you, things that move you. And therefore, the Bible says "hopes disappointed makes
the heart sick” (Proverbs). Because all your well being is based on
hope. Study has shown, if you give the
very same job with the very same circumstances, and you tell one that
"I'll pay you $1000 to do that" and you tell the other one,
"I'll pay you $100,000" (same job, and utterly different hopes), they are going to experience radically in
different ways. One will say "this is boring" but the other might
say, "no, I don't find it boring", because one is doing it in light
of $1,000, and the other one is in light of far more. And that means that you interpret your
presence completely in terms of where you set your hopes.
Another thing that you have to learn to understand to be
born again into a living hope and imperishable hope, is that this is the only
thing on which this is the only thing that will satisfy your heart according to
the Bible. Only the imperishable hope
will satisfy the human heart. You, especially when you are younger, you do
not know just deep the desires of your heart are. When you are younger, you got
a vision for a life. When you say, "If I can get into this school..."
, "If I can have this kind of work... or meet this kind of person...
everything will be fine." Your heart has infinitely deep hopes and
desires. And if you think, which almost everybody does, especially in Western
society, "If I achieve this "thing" in my life...I'll be
happy... My life heart would be satisfy." You are WRONG! At some point in
life, you begin to realize these perishable things are not going to give me
what my heart is really hoping for. When you started to realize things are not
happening as I thought, you are actually
more discontent than you thought; you are more unhappy that you thought. When
you decide the thing that you thought that's going to make you happy, once you
realize the thing you set your heart's hopes on are not really satisfying the
deep desire. You will think, "I just need a new thing... a new
spouse...another job... another life... move to another country... go to
another place... " - so, you are restless driven person. The second
possibility if you believe, "Well, it's still out there... But I haven't
been able to get them...because this person gets in the way... or this happened... or my family did this...
"-prejudice happens, so you become a bitter angry person. Thirdly, you can decide, it is not out there
, that nothing in this world would satisfy you - then you will become an
unbelievably cynical, disdainful, laugh at everyone... laugh at liberals...
laugh at conservatives...becoming incredibly ironic, bored, and move to other
places; or else you become despondent, medicating yourself, always depressed,
always kind of suicidal, or you can go to get a "living hope". C.S. Lewis
said in a radio talk, "...so, a
ducking wants to swim, there is such a thing as water; a baby wants to suck,
there is such a thing as milk; and if I find in myself longing with this world
cannot meet, probably I was made for another world as well."
What interesting is, if you decide what I've been looking for in parents, I'll get it the end of time when I
fall in the arms of the real Father of my heart; or what I've been looking for
in romance and love, but never really found completely, I will get it at the
end of time when I fall into the arms of my real Spouse; when I am trying to
accomplish something in this world and make this world a better place, but I
realize the only thing that will last, the only thing that I've done for HIM,
and then I'm looking for in that time when He says to me, "Well done, good
and faithful servant." When that happens, there's going to be a kind
of significant come upon me that will never ever fade. And what this all means
is that, even though at the end of time I can begin to have a foretaste of it
now is so powerful. 1John 3 "When we
hope in Him and seeing Him that day, that hope is so powerful that it begins to
transform us now." - It is satisfying now. Even the foretaste of that
is better than the reality that simply getting the job / family you wanted. The
heart is completely based on what your hopes are in. If you change your hopes,
you change your heart, you change your life, you are not the same! It's not me. The same things don't define me;
the same things don't drive me.
3. How it continues
to happens.
How the new life that comes in through the new birth, how
does it develop? How does it grow? Babies are beautiful when they are born, but
you don't want them to stay as babies, you want them to grow as adults. So how
does the new life develop? There are many, many ways. But 1Peter is about one
particular way. It says that one of the main ways that we grow into something
radiant, beautiful; the main way we turn into something a lot like pure gold is
through suffering. And look carefully, this is a brief point, but very
important, "In this you greatly
rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all
kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than
gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and
may result in praise, glory ad honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." (1
Peter 1:6-7) The word, "suffer grief" means to agonize. In here, "...you greatly rejoice..." is
using present tense, even though right now you are in agonizing pain - and that
is a present tense. It does not say that
you used to rejoice in it, and now as
you are in agonizing pain, you are not rejoicing for awhile, hopefully you will
get back to rejoicing later. It does not say that! It actually says, it's
also not being stoic (def: seeming
unaffected by pleasure or pain). No! You are crying out from agonizing
pain, you are feeling you feelings, not repressing / denying them. You are
feeling the agony and you are crying out, and the same time you are able to be
rejoicing. What does it mean? Most of us, if we are honest, even after we are
born again, don't really detach our hearts from these other hopes, not
completely. We say, now we hope in Jesus
Christ, but basically I am still
hoping if I am living a good Christian life, God will give me the things that I
really hope in, which is prosperity, status, and success. That's what I really
want. The trouble is, if you build your life on anything in this world, and
suffering comes, it destroys your life. But if you build your life on God, and
suffering comes, the suffering just drives you deeper into your joy. The fact is that we rejoice not as much as we
ought to in these things - the new
birth, the imperishable hopes. But during suffering, suffering drives you more
into that - drives you to prayer, worship, fellowship with other believers more
deeply into your joy. You look at what has He given you, and you say Yes! I've got this! This is imperishable. I
need to think about this, and you do. It is almost like when it's getting
hotter outside, it kicks the furnace on. It is that when bad things happened to
you, if you are a believer, have been born again into a living hope, the
suffering, as hard as it is, drives you more into the living hope; it moves you
more into the living hope. Again, if you build your life on to anything but
God, suffering will just destroy your life, because it will take the things
away that you build your life on. But if you build your life on God, He is your ultimate hope, then suffering
just drives you more into your joy, and in a long run makes you more a joyful, poise
person, because what it does is it moves your hearts off these other hopes more
into God that you actually have to put your hope on principle, but not so much
in actuality. And therefore, when you are born again into a living hope, then
even suffering just turn you into gold.
4. Why.
Why is it all possible? It is talking about the facts of the
Old Testament prophets talked about the suffering of the Messiah and the glory
that would follow. Isaiah 53, the New Testament apostle knew and preached what
they saw what OT prophets had prophesied. And when they preached, then that's
the Gospel - which is the suffering of the Messiah, and the glory that would
follow. "Concerning this salvation,
the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently
and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to
which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings
of Christ and the glories that would follow...Even angels long to look into
these things. " (1 Peter 1:10-12) First of all, there is the answer to
why you can have an imperishable hope. How can you and I stand here now knowing
that we have failed God, we have failed to love God and our neighbors. We have
failed, and we will fail. How in the world that Peter say that is imperishable
hope? It is guaranteed. It's kept in heaven for you. It is absolutely assured. How
can they say that? Because Jesus went to the cross and perished - suffering of
the Messiah, the heart of the Gospel. You and I can be sure of the future glory
and even get a foretaste of it now because Jesus emptied Himself of His glory. But
the most amazing thing is the entire chapter, even angels long to look into these things - the Gospel! Think
about this for a second. First of all, the word "long to look..." is the word epithomio, which basically means
to lust. They are hungry. Their tongues were hanging out. They love looking at
the Gospel. Secondly, maybe that just means they are looking forward to Jesus'
coming. That's present tense. Even angels right now, presently, intensely,
never get tired into looking at the Gospel. Angels!! What in the world can be
so astounding that it would not bore angels? Angels have been told about this
for billions of billions of years. How
in the world they still can be interested in it? And if you think of the Gospel
as the minimum doctrine requirement for getting converted, then this makes no
sense. What we are talking about here is the infinitely rich story what Jesus
Christ did to save us. There are infinite implications, applications, infinite
number of excellence of the glories of the Gospel, and even the angels never
get tired to looking into it. Now, if you want to heal your heart, with the
fact because our heart's hopes are so deep and they're always kind of been
disappointed, our hearts are always sick, always feeling that we don't have
what our hearts want. Even in this world, because we are not in the end of time
yet. We have not got there yet. Even here, we are still experiencing sickness
and death. Hope differed makes the heart sick. Hopes disappointed makes the
heart sick. If you want to heal your heart, do what the angels do. Look into
the Gospel! Every great story that you've ever heard that temporarily makes you
feel good, stories about heroic self sacrifice, the great stories that beyond
all hope that anything good happening, somehow somebody comes through, and
there is a joy, and there is a happy ending. All of those stories are true.
Look at what Jesus Christ did. Look at that story as the angels do, and that
way, it will heal your heart.
