Our Hope In Life and Death

Our Hope in Life and Death

1 Peter 1:3–9

Introduction

In the early years of the third century, in the North African city of Carthage, a young noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua was arrested for her faith in Christ. She was twenty-two years old, with a nursing infant son.

Her father, who did not share her faith, came to her in prison and begged her — weeping, pleading — to renounce Christ and save her life. If not for her own sake, then for the baby at her breast. Perpetua loved her father. She loved her son more than her own life. But she would not deny her Lord.

In the days before her execution, she wrote of a dream — climbing a long ladder into a garden, where a shepherd fed her something sweet, and when she woke, the sweetness stayed in her mouth. On the day she died in the arena, those who watched said she walked out not like a woman dragged to slaughter, but like a bride walking to her wedding. Her face, they said, was radiant.

How does a young mother — with a nursing child, with everything this world calls precious hanging in the balance — walk toward death with her eyes full of joy?

I ask that question not because it is far from us, but because it is very near. This has been a hard season for our church family. We have stood at gravesides we did not expect to stand at. We have watched couples ache month after month for a child who does not come. We have sat with diagnoses that turned whole futures upside down in a single phone call. I cannot explain why. But I want to show you where Perpetua found the strength to walk toward death singing — the same place the apostle Peter points a suffering, scattered, grieving people in the passage before us. Turn with me to 1 Peter 1:3–9.

Read 1 Peter 1:3–9

Peter is writing to Christians scattered across what is now modern-day Turkey — exiles, foreigners, people who did not fit comfortably into the world around them, and who were beginning to suffer for it. They were losing jobs, reputations, family relationships, and in some places, their lives, simply for belonging to Jesus. And into that hard providence, Peter does not write a word of pity. He writes a doxology. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!" Before a single word about their trials, he fixes their eyes on their hope.

That is exactly what we need. Not a strategy for pain management. Not five steps to feeling better. We need our eyes lifted to the God who has given us — in the middle of a world of dying bodies, empty cradles, and frightening diagnoses — a hope that cannot be shaken.

Peter lays out this hope in three movements. First, God establishes our hope in Christ. Second, God maintains our hope — an inheritance that cannot be touched. Third, God matures our hope through trials, filling us, even now, with a joy that suffering cannot reach.

I. God Establishes Our Hope in Christ (v. 3)

Peter begins: "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."

Peter cannot help himself. He simply has to bless God. This is a man writing to churches under pressure — a man who will himself be martyred for his faith — and the first sound out of his pen is praise. Before instruction, before comfort, before a single word of counsel: worship. When our hearts are heavy, the first movement is not inward, toward our pain, but upward, toward our God.

Notice why he blesses God. Not because life is easy or the circumstances pleasant, but "according to his great mercy." Mercy is not the same thing as grace. Grace looks at us as guilty and forgives. Mercy looks at us as miserable and has compassion. Peter reaches for mercy here because he knows what we are apart from Christ — helpless, unable to lift ourselves out of the wreckage sin has made of us. And into that wreckage, God, moved by nothing in us, has acted.

What has He done? He "has caused us to be born again." This is not self-improvement or turning over a new leaf. Did you decide to be born? Did you contribute anything to the process? You were entirely the object of an act done to you, not because of you. That is the picture Peter wants in your mind. Salvation, at its root, is something God does to us, in us, and for us, before we do anything at all. We were dead — Paul says as much in Ephesians 2 — and dead people don't decide to come alive. God speaks life into the grave.

This new birth results in "a living hope." Sit with that phrase; it is the engine of this entire passage. We use the word "hope" so loosely that it has lost its weight. "I hope it doesn't rain this weekend." "I hope the biopsy comes back clean." That kind of hope is a wish dressed in nicer clothes — no certainty in it at all. We only call it hope because we know it might not happen.

That is not the hope of the New Testament. Biblical hope is not a wish; it is a certainty not yet fully in hand — the confident expectation of a promise already secured. And what secured it? Peter tells us plainly: "through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

Think what that morning meant for Peter personally. Three days before, he had watched his Lord die. He had, in the darkest night of his life, denied even knowing Him — three times, with curses, while a rooster crowed in the distance. When Jesus breathed His last, every hope Peter had was buried with Him. There was no future. Only shame and grief.

And then the tomb was empty. The risen Christ, before He had even gathered the other disciples, sought Peter out, restored him, forgave him. The hope that died on Friday walked out of a grave on Sunday morning, and it has never died again. That is the hope Peter now hands to suffering churches across Asia Minor. It is the same hope he hands to us.

Here is why this matters. If our hope rested in circumstances turning around — the diagnosis reversing, the pregnancy finally happening, the loved one somehow still being here — our hope would be exactly as fragile as those circumstances. It would rise and fall with every doctor's report, every calendar month, every hard providence. But Peter roots our hope in something already accomplished, something no diagnosis and no grave can touch: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. That fact does not change no matter what happens to us this week.

If you have trusted in Christ, hear this: your hope is not resting on your health, your fertility, or your family staying intact. Your hope is resting on an empty tomb, two thousand years old and unshakeable. That is why Peter calls it a living hope — not because it makes you feel alive, though it will, but because its source, the risen Christ, is himself eternally alive, and cannot die again.

II. God Maintains Our Hope: Our Inheritance (vv. 4–5)

Peter is not finished. Verse 4: this new birth brings us "to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

An inheritance is something you receive not because you earned it, but because of whose family you belong to. Peter's readers would have thought immediately of Canaan — the inheritance God gave Israel, tribe by tribe, family by family. That land was the visible sign that they belonged to God, and He to them.

But that land, precious as it was, was ravaged. Invading armies burned it. Israel's idolatry defiled it. Drought withered it. Every earthly inheritance eventually crumbles, corrodes, or is stolen — including the inheritances we quietly hope will carry our name forward: a family line, a headstone grandchildren will visit, an estate passed down. All of it is subject to moth and rust and thief, as Jesus said (Matthew 6:19–20). All of it, eventually, perishes.

Peter stacks up three words, each one closing a door this world leaves open. Imperishable — it cannot be destroyed by war, disease, or time. Undefiled — it cannot be stained or corrupted by sin, ours or anyone else's. Unfading — it will never wither, never grow old. Everything you can hold in your hand in this life will fail one of those three tests. Nothing you hold in Christ will fail any of them.

I want to speak tenderly to some of you specifically. Some of you have longed, and prayed, and wept for a child who has not come. In a culture — even a Christian culture — that so often measures legacy in children and grandchildren, that grief can feel like more than sorrow; it can feel like exclusion. Hear me carefully: your inheritance in Christ is not diminished one ounce by an empty nursery. God has not measured out a smaller portion to you. The imperishable inheritance kept in heaven is yours in full, on exactly the same terms as anyone else in this room — by grace, through faith, because you are a child of God. Your name is not carried forward by your children; it is held forever by your Father.

And to those grieving death — a parent, a spouse, a friend, a child — hear this too: whatever was buried in the ground was never the whole inheritance to begin with. It was a shadow, a good gift, but never the substance. The substance is coming, and it cannot be buried, because it is "kept in heaven for you." God is not still working on your inheritance, hoping to have it ready in time. It is finished. Guaranteed. Waiting, from the moment you were born again.

Peter adds something that should catch us off guard. Not only is the inheritance kept for us — verse 5 says we ourselves are "being guarded" for it. That word is a military term, used for soldiers standing garrison duty around a city. God is not simply holding a prize at the finish line, hoping we make it there on our own strength. He is himself surrounding us, guarding us, the whole way there.

Notice how He does this: "through faith." God does not guard us like a man locked in a cage against his will. He guards us by sustaining the very faith by which we cling to Him. Your perseverance to the end is not, ultimately, a testimony to your own grip strength. It is a testimony to God's — holding on to you even when your own hands feel too weak to hold on to Him.

That is good news for a room that has been through what many of you have been through this year. God's guarding power does not promise exemption from suffering — He guards you through faith for a salvation still future, still coming. He is not promising an easy road. He is promising that whatever road you walk, He walks it with you as garrison and guard, and the destination is secure no matter how hard the road becomes.

Notice, too, the word "ready" in verse 5. Our salvation is not under construction, waiting on some final piece before God can hand it over. It is finished, complete, sitting ready — a table set before the guests arrive. You are not waiting on God to prepare something. You are waiting on the appointed hour for what is already prepared to be unveiled. That should steady anyone in this room who feels like they are waiting — on test results, on a pregnancy test, on a hospital bed. God is not waiting on anything. He has already finished the one thing that ultimately matters for you.

III. Joy Through Trials, Our Hope in Christ (vv. 6–9)

This is the heart of the passage — and, I suspect, the heart of why many of you needed to hear this word today. Verse 6: "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials."

"In this you rejoice" — in what? In everything Peter has just said: the living hope, the inheritance kept in heaven, the guarding power of God. That is the fountain of Christian joy. And notice what Peter does not say. He does not say, "in this you rejoice, and therefore you feel no grief." In the very same breath, he says you have been genuinely grieved — real anguish, the kind that puts a lump in your throat.

Hear this plainly: the presence of grief in your life is not evidence that your faith has failed. Peter does not tell suffering Christians to stop grieving and just be happy. He holds joy and grief together in the same sentence, as neighbors, not enemies. You can weep at a graveside and still overflow with living hope. You can ache every month for a child and still be filled with the joy of Christ. These are not contradictions in the Christian life. They are what the Christian life looks like on this side of the resurrection.

Peter adds two things that steady us. First, it is "for a little while." Compared to an inheritance that never fades, however unbearable this trial feels, it is — measured against eternity — brief. That doesn't make the pain smaller now. A little while can feel like forever when you're in it. But this present darkness is not the final word.

Second, "if necessary." These trials are not random. They are not accidents that slipped past God's notice, or the universe malfunctioning while God looks away. If it was necessary for you to walk through this valley, then your Father — who spared not His own Son (Romans 8:32) — has determined it necessary, not because He delights in your pain, but because He is doing something your comfort alone could never accomplish.

What is that something? Verse 7 tells us: "so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

Think of a goldsmith at his furnace. He does not put gold in the fire to destroy it, but to purify it — to burn away everything false until only the pure metal remains, and it shines. Fire is not the enemy of gold; fire is what reveals gold for what it is. Trials do not exist to destroy your faith. In the hand of a wise Father, they burn away your self-reliance, your illusions of control, your quiet trust in your own health or your own plans — until what remains is faith in Christ alone, refined and shining.

And here is the staggering claim: your faith, refined this way, is more precious than gold. Gold, no matter how pure, will not exist forever — this whole created order will be dissolved. But faith proven genuine through the furnace of suffering is imperishable. It will still be shining when Jesus Christ is revealed, and it will result in "praise and glory and honor." Some of that will come to you — the "well done" of a Father delighted in the faith He himself sustained. And ultimately, all of it circles back to Him, because it was His power that kept your faith burning in the first place.

A museum in the south of France keeps the memory of Christians sent to labor and die at the oars of galley ships, simply for worshiping according to their conscience. Chained to their rowing bench, they worked until they died there. On the wall of that museum hangs an old oar, and beneath it, the words one prisoner scratched about his own chains: "My chains are the chains of Christ's love." He did not deny they were chains. He did not pretend the suffering was pleasant. But he had come to see, in the furnace of it, that even his chains were held by a sovereign, loving hand for purposes bigger than his pain. The trial does not stop being a trial. But in the hand of God, it becomes the very fire that proves your faith real and makes it shine.

One practical word here, because faith being refined does not refine itself in isolation. Peter is writing to a whole community of scattered believers, not to individuals white-knuckling their way through private pain. If you are in the furnace this year, do not walk out of it alone. Let this church family in. Let someone sit with you in the waiting room. Let someone bring a meal on the anniversary you dread. And if you are watching a brother or sister walk through the fire, do not wait for them to ask — go to them. Weep with those who weep. Carrying one another's burdens is one of the ordinary ways God guards His people "through faith." He does not only guard you directly from heaven; He guards you through the hands and prayers and casseroles of the people sitting next to you.

Peter turns from the future to the present, in one of the most tender verses in this letter. Verse 8: "Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory."

Peter had seen Jesus — eaten with Him, walked with Him, watched Him die, watched Him rise. But these scattered believers had not. And Peter marvels: they love someone they have never laid eyes on, and trust someone they cannot see. The result is a joy so full it cannot be put into words — a joy already touched with the glory of the world to come, breaking into the present before they've even arrived there.

That is exactly our situation. We have not seen Him either. In the middle of grief, in the middle of waiting for a child that hasn't come, in the middle of a diagnosis you didn't ask for, He can feel far away, silent, unseen. And yet Peter says — to people suffering far more visibly than most of us ever will — that this unseen Christ can be loved with an unashamed, wholehearted love, and that loving Him produces a joy circumstances cannot touch, because it does not come from circumstances. It comes from Him.

Why? Verse 9 gives the reason: "obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls." The love, the belief, the inexpressible joy — all of it flows from one settled confidence: the outcome is secure. The salvation begun in you will be completed. The story does not end in the hospital room, the empty nursery, or the graveside. For everyone in Christ, it ends in glory.

Toward the Cross

I want to be honest with you. I do not know why the Lord has allowed the particular things He has allowed in this room this year. I don't know why some babies are given and others are not. I don't know why cancer takes a mother of young children and spares another for decades more. I don't know why one prayer is answered as we asked and another is not. I will not stand up here and hand you a tidy explanation for the specific providences God has ordained in your life, because I don't have one — and anyone who claims to have one for you is claiming more than Scripture gives us the right to claim.

But here is what I do know. The God who ordained your trial is the same God who, in the person of His Son, walked into the very worst injustice and evil this world has ever seen, and let it be done to Him — willingly, for a sinful, undeserving people — so that we could be called sons and daughters. If God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things (Romans 8:32)? The cross is the proof that God is not distant from your suffering. He has entered it. He has borne worse than any of us will ever bear, and He did it for you.

And I know this: if I were God — and I say this carefully, reverently — I would not have done a single thing differently than He has done. He knows what we do not know. He sees what we cannot see. He is orchestrating all things, down to the smallest detail of your life, for His glory and the good of His people. Romans 8:28 does not say all things feel good. It says all things work together for good, to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. We can trust that He is good, and that what He does — even what confuses and grieves us — is right, because He himself is the definition of what is right.

Jesus told His disciples plainly, on the night before His own suffering: "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). He did not promise a smooth road. He promised His own victory over every dark power standing behind our pain, including death itself. Because He has overcome, the tribulation you are walking through right now, however heavy, does not have the final word over your life.

Lift Your Eyes to Eternity

One of the great cures for our present sorrow is simply this: lift your eyes further out than this week, further out than this diagnosis, further out even than this life. This present existence, however long or hard, is — as one old saint put it — but a drop in the ocean of eternity. That does not minimize your pain. It puts it in its proper size next to the inheritance that is coming.

Let me say one more thing carefully. Don't let your grief curdle into resentment against the very God who has prepared unimaginable blessing for you. Don't make heaven awkward. I mean this tenderly: some of us are tempted, in sorrow, to quietly nurse a grudge against God — as though He has been stingy with us — while all the while He has an inheritance stored up that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, that will make every tear of this life look like the smallest shadow next to the substance of glory. He has not been stingy with His children. He gave His own Son. Let your grief be honest — but let it rest, in the end, in the character of the God who has promised you everything that truly matters, forever.

Conclusion

Nearly fourteen hundred years after Peter wrote this letter, an English preacher named John Bunyan sat in a jail cell in Bedford for the crime of preaching the gospel without a license. He had a wife and children on the outside — one of them blind — with no guarantee he would ever see them again. From that cell, he wrote this about the church, and about what suffering was doing to her: "The Church in the world is like Esther in the perfume chamber, she is dressing and perfuming, that she may be ready for the presence of the King."

That is what is happening to you, family, in the fires you are walking through. You are not being destroyed. You are being dressed — prepared, perfumed, refined — for the presence of a King who loves you and is coming for you. The gold is in the furnace, and the goldsmith has not looked away for one second.

So this morning, whether you are standing at a graveside in your heart, counting empty months on a calendar, or holding a diagnosis you did not choose — lift your eyes. Your hope was not established by your circumstances, and it cannot be destroyed by them. It was established by an empty tomb. Your inheritance is not measured by what this life gives you or withholds from you; it is kept in heaven, guarded by the power of God, imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. And your joy — yes, even now, even here — can be inexpressible and full of glory, because the outcome of your faith is not in doubt. It is the salvation of your soul.

We have not seen Him. But we love Him. Let's pray.