Chosen For an Inheritance

1 Peter 1:3-5 ESV

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

There is not a whole lot that I am good at, but one thing that I have always been good at is eating a good pizza. Just take me to Monical’s sometime and I’ll show you how it’s done.

But when I go out for pizza somewhere, I will eat and eat. Then after I have ate several pieces, I will notice that there are still several more left on the pan. It is at that point that I must make a decision. Either I can ask for a to-go box and ate the rest for lunch the next day, or, seeing that I still have room for more, I can keep on eating.

Well, I almost always go with the I still have room for more, so let’s eat a few more pieces approach. And when I leave the restaurant, I am happy and full.

Well, between my sermon for last week and my sermon for this week, I have found myself in a similar dilemma. Through the passage that we worked through last Sunday and the passage that we are going to work through today, I have come to discover that there are tons and tons of information in the verses that we have studied and that we will be studying.

And just like the pizza, I have been forced to look at what is in the text and ask if I should just speak of part of what I am finding in the text for each sermon and break it up into several sermons. Or if I should pack it in.

But I believe that God has summoned me to give it all to you today, so I hope that you’ve came with your spiritual appetites and your take home boxes so that all week we can chew on what God has given me to give to you.

So, let’s not wait any longer, let’s look at our text, where first we see Peter make the following exclamation in the beginning of verse 3, where he says:

1 Peter 1:3a ESV

3a Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Last week we looked at the greeting that Peter gave to those he was writing to and the theological significance that surrounded how he addressed the recipients of this epistle. This week we begin to look at the content of this epistle.

And for Peter, the first thing that he wanted to express was praise for God. Before he wrote his recipients anything else, he started by proclaiming, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”.

So, we see a couple of things here. First of all, with Peter starting the content of his epistle in this way, it shows that what he is desiring to accomplish is that most all, first and foremost, God is to be praised. Praised for Who He is, praised for what He has done, and praised for what follows this.

And the next thing that we see here is part of the trinitarian formula. Peter says blessed, or praise be to the God and Father of our, which does not refer to all people, but to Christians alone, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Thus, we see God the Father and God the Son being described here interchangeably. In effect, what Peter is saying here is that both the Father and the Son are God, and while the two Persons consist of the one Triune God, they work together here in their own respective ways to accomplish the same end, the salvation and security of God’s elect.

And as we continue on to the next part of this third verse, we see what it is that Peter specifically praises God for when he says:

1 Peter 1:3b ESV

3b According to his great mercy,

So, we see here that what Peter praises the Father for is, not just His mercy, but His great mercy. You see, this mercy that Peter speaks of here is more than just not giving us what we deserve, it goes even further, it means grace.

Grace means to not only not give someone what they deserve, but it also means to freely give that same person a blessing. Grace represents freely giving and freely receiving to the fullest extent possible.

And as we see in our reading, what Peter is praising the Father for is doing something according to, or, as a result of, owing only to His great mercy, owing only to His grace.

So, what is it that the Father has done according to His grace that Peter praises Him for? Well, we see the nucleus of what the Father has done on behalf of His people in the next part of this verse where it says:

1 Peter 1:3c ESV

3c he has caused us to be born again

So, Peter says that it is according to the Father’s great mercy, not according to anything that we have done that He has caused us to be born again.

Now, let’s stop here and discuss in further detail what was just said.

What Peter says that the Father has done here is very remarkable indeed. But what Peter is not saying here is that the Father has made what he describes here, as possible to obtain. When it comes to what Peter is describing here, there is no possible way that we can have anything to do with it.

That’s why Peter says in our reading that what has happened here is the Father caused us. God Himself done what Peter describes here, He caused it to happen.

And He caused it to happen to us. Now, who are the us in this verse? Who does this refer to? A lot of us would naturally say that this refers to everybody, but that can’t be the case, because if it referred to everybody, then everybody would be saved, and that’s clearly not the case.

Remember last week in our message, as we exposited the introduction of this epistle, Peter said that those he was writing to were those who were elect. The elect of God, those who were chosen by God to salvation. Therefore, the us here must refer to those whom God graciously saves.

And what it is that Peter says the Father has caused His elect to do is be born again. Now, we all know what it means to be born, everybody obviously experiences that. In order to be in the world you have to be born into the world. But only the us, only the elect become born again. And so, while everyone experiences the physical birth, only the us, only the elect experience the spiritual birth.

But Peter doesn’t stop there, he goes on to tell us what this new birth consists of, when he says that we are born again:

1 Peter 1:3d ESV

3d to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

The only thing that the physical birth guarantees us of is death. The fact that we experience the physical birth, that we become physically alive signifies that one day we will be physically dead.

But for those who become born again, we receive a hope, a guarantee that Peter says is living. This means that for we who have been born again, we have now been granted life that never ends, because everybody will eventually die in the physical sense, the elect, those who have been born again, we live eternally in the spiritual sense.

But just like anything else that we receive that comes with our salvation, we receive them not because of anything that we have done, but absolutely through what God has done.

That’s why Peter makes plain here that the eternal life that we receive, we receive through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You see, when we as the elect experience regeneration, we then identify ourselves with Jesus. He becomes our federal head, therefore what Jesus receives, we as His saved people also receive.

And anyone who has read of the happenings on that first Easter morning knows that what Jesus received was a resurrection from the dead. Therefore, because Jesus lives to never die again, so do we as His elect also receive life that we will never die from. And the reason why we have been granted this, once again, is not because of anything that we have done, but because of what Jesus has done on our behalf.

But what does this living hope, this eternal life consist of? Peter tells us in verse 4 of our reading, where he says:

1 Peter 1:4 ESV

4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

So, Peter says that those whom God saves have been born again to a living hope, through Jesus, and Peter says here that this living hope consists of an inheritance.

Now, when speaking of an inheritance, we again speak of freely receiving something. And what Peter makes plain here is that God’s elect have an inheritance that they will receive.

This inheritance that is spoken of is mentioned by Jesus Himself in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. In this particular portion of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is speaking of the final judgment at the Last Day.

Concerning that judgment, Jesus says that He will have assembled before Him the sheep, those who are saved, at His right hand, and the goats, those who are not saved, at His left hand.

And over in Matthew 25:34, we read of where Jesus will say to those who are saved, those at His right hand:

Matthew 25:34 ESV

34…‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

So, in connection with this, it’s obvious that the inheritance which Peter speaks of in our reading is the same inheritance that Jesus speaks of here in the 25th chapter of Matthew.

And this inheritance that both Peter and Jesus speak of is a kingdom, the new heavens and earth which will be established at the end of the age. A kingdom which has been prepared for us by God from the foundation of the world.

And because this kingdom has been prepared for us by God, it is then, as Peter says in our reading, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Therefore, just as the hope of the elect is living, eternal, never fading away, so is the inheritance of the elect, living, eternal, never fading away.

And the reason why our inheritance is an eternal inheritance is because, as Peter says, it is being kept for us. But not only is our inheritance being kept for us, even we ourselves, the salvation that God has graciously given to His people is being kept for us, as we see in verse 5, the last verse of our reading, where it says:

1 Peter 1:5 ESV

5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

We know here that Peter is speaking of individuals who are saved rather than the inheritance that they will receive, because we doesn’t speak of what here, he speaks of who.

Peter says in the previous verse that this inheritance is kept in heaven, for you, those who are saved, who by God’s power, not by our own obedience, but by the power of God are being guarded through faith.

This means that God powerfully works through our faith, which by the way, is a faith that has been graciously given to us by God in order to guard us, to keep us saved.

And what God guards us for, is what Peter here calls a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

What this means is that when God saves us, He saves us for all time. The Father started our salvation, it originated in Him, therefore, the completion of our salvation, ensuring that we make it to receive our inheritance will also be completed by God.

What this means, beloved of the Lord, is that the salvation that we received from God is truly a gracious salvation. Graciously it originated, graciously He caused us to receive, and graciously God keeps it for us so that we may be able to fully receive and enjoy our inheritance… that, my brethren, is amazing grace!

Glory to God for His amazing grace!