We are born again by God to a living hope. So now you’re starting to hear cause, goal, cause, goal. God caused me to be born again. Why? Unto a living hope. You don’t have anything in the middle yet. That’s coming. How did I come alive? God and his mercy. Why did I come alive? To have a living hope. Unto a living hope.

God’s Delight in Hope

God loves to have people hope in him. Psalm 147: “His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 147:10–11). So if you want to be pleasing to God, you might work out at the gym. You might — he’s not impressed. I don’t care how much you bulk up — he’s not impressed.

What he’s impressed with is if, as you’re in the locker room, you’re feeling afraid to talk to your friend about what he’s dealing with and what you know he needs, and your hope in God is so strong you overcome your fear. God’s impressed.

I’ll read it again: “His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure.” Do you think that you can be God’s pleasure? A lot of you don’t believe that, but it’s in the Bible: “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him.” We’ll say more about fear, but here’s the one I’m focusing on: “The Lord takes pleasure in those who hope in his steadfast love.”

You want to be pleasing to God this afternoon? Hope. Hope. You have a living hope. You were born again to hope. God’s design for your life is hope. Born to hope. If I were doing a series of messages on the new birth, I might say born to hope. “Born to Hope” be the title.

The Essence of Living Hope

What does it mean when he calls it living? A living hope? What would you do? You go to the immediate context and you look for what are some other words that point to living? And I see two. I see birth and I see resurrection. So if you push me — I don’t want to just dump anything I think in there — living hope would mean, “Whoa, it’s exciting and I feel alive.” Well yeah, but what about the text? That’s what we’re trying to do here: look at the book.

“Once you were dead and now you’ve been born,” which means you are alive, which means your hope is living. That’s my first clue. You are alive. The hope you have is of a new creature in Christ who’s alive.

Then, “Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” Now that brings us to the means. So caused by God in his mercy, aiming at hope through the resurrection. Same three prepositional ideas: from him, through him, to him. All things.

That’s why it recurs over and over again in the Bible, because Romans 11:36 says that’s the way the world is. “All things are from him, through him, and to him.” You could expect this to show up everywhere and you should ask it about everything in your life. Anything that happens, from earthquake to cancer to encounter at Starbucks. “From him, through him, to him are all things. To him be glory forever.” Help me to get it. Help me to fit into the flow of what you’re doing in the world as You bring all things to be and through all things are working and unto goals are working. Help me to feel this, get this.

So, resurrection is coming alive and that sheds light on living. Now if I put those two together, are they different? That’s a question I ask. Life that comes from birth, and life that comes from resurrection, and here’s what I see. My life that comes from my birth is the life I have now. The life I get from the resurrection comes from when I’m getting resurrection. I don’t have that yet.

So, the hope is living in that right now I’m a living hoper and the hope is living in the sense that what am I hoping for is I’m going to be alive on the other side of the grave. I’m not just right now living. “Oh, it’s just so wonderful to know God, walk with God, be forgiven, then death and nothing.” No, no, no, no. This living goes on because of resurrection. The living starts with new birth and the living goes on on the other side of death because of resurrection.

The Link Between Birth and Resurrection

So, evidently this word through here means what? So, he has caused us to be born again through the resurrection. Born again to a living hope through the resurrection. There must be a link here. Everything in me wants to go to Paul here, right? I just think, “Oh, Paul talked about this.” He talked about it in Romans 6. He talked about it in 1 Corinthians 15. I want to go to Paul here. Which is just fine, but here’s the danger, and it’s not a big danger.

In fact, I don’t even like the word danger. You could lose out on something if you quickly bring Paul in too fast. I mean, Paul’s not going to mislead you about the relationship between life and resurrection, between birth and resurrection. Not going to mislead you. But Peter might be saying something else and Paul might be saying something else and you want both in your heart. And so, to try to lay Paul too quickly on Peter, or Peter too quickly on Paul, just might mean you’d miss out.

And I think what we have here all by itself necessarily implies that when I was born again, I was connected to Jesus so that his resurrection secured my everlasting life. Is the way I just said that implicit here? When I was born again, what happened was that the Holy Spirit connected me.

I’m trying to avoid words that Paul used. They’re in my mind. “Connected me with Christ.” So that when I look at his resurrection, I don’t just say, “Well, nice for him. No relevance for me.” No. Peter says massive relevance for you. You are born to hope through his resurrection. Then I must think, “Oh. Well if his resurrection causes me to have living hope, then my new birth must have somehow connected me with Jesus so that his resurrection counts for me.”

Union with Christ in Resurrection

And now I can’t help but go to Paul. “He is the firstfruits of those who’ve fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). What is firstfruits? There’s one big harvest of resurrection and you’re in the harvest, Jesus is in the harvest, and he comes alive. That’s called firstfruits, which mean the rest of you are coming, because it’s all one. It’s one harvest.

Or Romans 6: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5) And so, the union with Christ is precisely what’s going on here, to use Pauline language of union with Christ.

So, the livingness of it then is I have life now, my hope is living now, my hope is energized by life that’s coming from the Holy Spirit in me now. And because of the resurrection, that’s never going to end. When I die, you think I’m dead. I’m not dead. You put that body in the grave, because of the resurrection my hope is alive. It’s alive. So this is just massive. Remember, he’s going to say, “In this you rejoice” (1 Peter 1:6).

Peter’s Response to Suffering

Peter’s fundamental response to suffering is hope. Living hope. His fundamental response to suffering is not to teach you how to avoid it or get out of it. It’s not. His fundamental response to suffering is how to have undaunted hope in it, which has remarkable effects on you and the people around you, especially we’ll see in 1 Peter 2:9–12 on the unbelievers in Asia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Bithynia, Vancouver, Minneapolis.

To an inheritance. Living hope to an inheritance. Let me read it again. See it in context.

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, to an inheritance. (1 Peter 1:3–4)

My understanding is that this “to a living hope,” and this inheritance are in grammatically apposition. They’re the same. They’re repetition. To a living hope. What do you mean? That is, the content of the hope is “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.”

Let me stop right there. He’s defining now on the other side of the resurrection, or on the other side of death. We are saved in stages. Right now you enjoy the stage of forgiveness, the wrath of God being removed, Holy Spirit being granted, fellowship with Jesus being enjoyed. And yet, none of you would want this to be it forever, because death comes and all kinds of frustrations come.

But we’re saved now and we’re enjoying huge and wonderful benefits of the saving work of Christ now. If you die tomorrow, you will be saved more. You’ll lose your body temporarily, but you’ll be with Christ, which Paul says far greater. Then at the resurrection, the body is raised gloriously, we live on a new heavens and a new earth, and salvation is complete. So at least those three stages we’re saved.

New birth and the incompleteness of our enjoyment of Christ now, after death without our bodies, at home with the Lord, far better, and then resurrection and we enjoy God present on the new earth. And here he is talking about, I think, that final inheritance.

The Joyous Expectation of an Inheritance

So our living hope is a hope that, beyond the resurrection, we have an inheritance coming, and it is imperishable, undefiled, unfading. And somebody asked, “How do you know what to linger over?” Well, you linger over what you have time to linger over. Because I want to know why is this called an inheritance?

And my first answer there is because I’ve been born into a family that has a pretty big inheritance. I’m now born. So if I wasn’t born — I belong to a family. The Piper family. Bill and Ruth Piper had a son and he was born to that family and he was not in any other family. And then he was born again into a new family and a new father, and that father happens to own everything. So that the inheritance of his children — I’ll let you finish it. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” That’s a lot.

I won’t go too far into arguments with people over the role of Palestine in the new earth. “You get that, or only Jews get that?” I said, “I get the earth.” Which includes Palestine. So whoever else is there, there just won’t be any no trespassing signs. That’s my eschatology. I get to go to Palestine in the new earth, and Jews can come over to Vancouver. They’re going to be everywhere. We’re talking redeemed, saved Jewish people, Gentile people.

Romans 4:13: Abraham is the heir of the world. Why do you boast in men? “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas.” All things are yours. The world, things to come, “and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:21–22).

So I linger over the word inheritance because I want to be happy, and I get real happy when I think how rich I’m going to be.

The Riches of the Inheritance

Back to the prosperity thing. Since I will inherit the whole world, I don’t need any of it now. Literally. I don’t need. I get some. I own a house, which makes me filthy rich in the world, right? And the word filthy is a biblical word. Unrighteous mammon it’s called. I didn’t make that up. We get a little bit now, but Paul said, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content Those who desire to be rich pierce themselves with many pangs” (1 Timothy 6:8–9). It’s okay to desire to be rich this way. I get an inheritance and it is imperishable.

And I think he’s trying to say anything right now that you try to store up, what did Jesus say? “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20).

Isn’t that what’s going on here? Right now, anything you put away, the stock market’s going to crash. You got stock markets? It’s going to crash. It’s going to crash and all that. “Oh, I’m so rich. I invested in Apple.” Bam, it’s over for Apple. It will be over for Apple. You know that, don’t you?

Undefiled. So that when we do get it, when we do get it, it has no ugliness in it, no imperfection. Not only doesn’t it rot and go bad, but it never had anything impure in it. You’ll never go deep enough into this treasure to find anything unsavory, inappropriate.

And it’s unfading, which I think adds the dimension of not so much does it rot as will it ever get boring. If you give your wife — I’m a man, something in that way — give your wife a beautiful bouquet, it’s beautiful and she loves it. She puts it in a vase, and how long does it have? Depends on whether you feed it, I suppose. Put some of that little granular stuff in it, and whether it’s one kind of flower or another. But it’s gone in a week. It’s ugly and it starts to smell and you got to get rid of it. And what was so beautiful is now boring.

As a child, I used to fear heaven. Not just hell, heaven. Because as a nine-year-old lying on the roof of my house, looking up into the stars, feeling the size of eternity and expanding my present experience of enjoying church into eternity, it was scary. And I’ve grown up now and I realize that that’s not the way to think about eternity. It’s not never ending the best West Side can do in worship.

That would be great. But you all know that it wouldn’t suffice for a trillion years. God is infinite. You will never get to the top of the mountain of God’s glory. Ever. That’s what infinite means. Unfading here, I think, implies — as you climb the mountain of God’s glory for a million years — discovery, discovery, discovery.

More reason to be happy, more reasons to be amazed, more reasons to rejoice, and as you climb over the hill that you’ve been climbing for a million years, there’s another range of mountains stretching. Because that’s the very meaning of infinite. We will be climbing into thrilling discoveries of God’s glory forever. That’s the only way to keep heaven from being boring, is to believe in an infinitely satisfying God.

Guarded Through Faith

“Imperishable, undefiled, unfading.” And then he adds, “Kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). So God is keeping it. Nobody can take it. It’s there for you. He has it. “I go before you to prepare a place for you” (John 14:3). “Who, by God’s power,” I’m in 1 Peter 1:5, “are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

So this inheritance here and this salvation are almost the same. You were born to a living hope, that is, to an inheritance. He’s keeping the inheritance for you, and he’s guarding you for it. This is what I love here. So kept in heaven. Right there. Kept in heaven for you and you guarded for it. What’s the point here? What is the stress?

The stress here is you exiles who are coming into a fiery ordeal, put your hope fully in this inheritance because it cannot fail you. It cannot fail you because all the attention being paid to it in heaven, and it cannot fail you because all of the attention being paid to you on earth to get you there. That’s the connection between 1 Peter 1:4–5.

And I love it because I’m an anxious person. By nature, I can think of more reasons to be anxious probably than you can. My imagination runs wild when I think about ways to be anxious. Therefore, I love texts like this because it looks like Peter’s trying his best to come at me from every angle. Don’t be, don’t be, don’t be anxious. He’s got everything covered. He’s got that covered. Nobody’s going to mess with it out there. It’ll be there when you get there. Awesome. Off the charts. Unfading. And if you worry that you’re not going to make it there, he’s guarding you. He’s going to get you there.

Now, here’s the big exegetical theological question. Through faith, you are being guarded for your inheritance. For your salvation. Through faith. Does that mean God stands back, sees whether you have faith, and if you have it, he guards you? Or does it mean the instrument by which he guards you is faith? That he works?

You talk about what to linger over. To me, those are two worlds, two views of Christianity, two ways of John Piper facing his future. Sixty-nine years old. I’ve given up a long time ago that the trajectory from age six to death is a straight line up. It’s not. And where will it be when death comes? See how anxious I am? If life is like ups and downs in Christianity, doubts and assurances, and joy and despair, what if death shows up on one of these days? How you interpret “through faith” here will depend on whether you can go to sleep tonight thinking about that. So think about it with me.