1 Peter 1:3 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,
Peter praised God for the new birth that we received through Jesus Christ. This new birth comes through God’s great mercy (eleos). God as merciful is a core theme of the Bible from the first pages to the last. God’s mercy extends to both sinners and righteous. The difference between the two is receiving God’s mercy in faith. Faith will be an important theme in this letter. God’s mercy is unconditional but is experienced in two ways. For those who receive it in faith, it leads to a living hope. For those who reject its free offer, mercy becomes judgment and condemnation because of God’s holiness. Peter writes to those who have experienced this mercy because of their belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Receiving God’s mercy brings a new birth. Jesus talked about being born again in John 3. This is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) that transforms us from sinners into Christlikeness. The reason we need to be “born again” is because our old life has many problems and will lead to death (Romans 6:23). We need a fresh start. This begins as a spiritual change within us, first in our relationship with God (being “born from above”). This then affects our thinking as we being to take on “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), which filters out to our attitude. How a person lives is determined by their inward disposition and thoughts (our “conscience”). As we change within, our behavior begins to match our thought patterns and people begin to see a difference in us.
Our experience of God’s mercy leads us to a living hope. This hope is living because it grows and affects how we live. It is not static. Static things are passed up because they do not move. They are eventually forgotten. This hope continues to grow stronger the more we are changed and the recreation process continues.
The basis for all this is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Resurrection brings hope, and hope as the object of resurrection. Our hope in Jesus’ resurrection does several things: 1) it confirms that our hope in eternal salvation is based on a true historical reality–we can count on the promises of the Bible; 2) it provides a basis for our own resurrection from the dead, that there is something after death and eternity is real.
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