1 Pet 1.3-12
The Joy of Our Salvation
(1 Peter 1.3-12)
Jason Procopio
One of the cornerstone concepts in Christianity is that of “salvation.” Whenever we talk about the gospel to other people, whenever we tell people about Jesus Christ, we are hoping and praying that they might come to know him and thus “be saved.”
But all too often our thoughts about salvation are severely limited—not intentionally, but mostly because we haven’t paid attention to what the Bible says about it. Even for those of us who know better, we often find ourselves thinking about salvation as a kind of life insurance policy: we are “saved,” so we don’t have to worry about going to hell when we die. And while that’s true, living as if that’s all salvation is would be like only eating pasta for the rest of our lives: it’s wonderful, we are thankful for it…but we definitely need more than that if we want to survive.
Last week we looked at the first two verses of this letter, in which we saw that God the Trinity has made us elect exiles, through his sovereign will and action, that we might live in this world but belong to another. Those two verses set the tone for the rest of the letter, as we’ll see. Peter’s going to call us to respond in many ways to the good news of the gospel, but before he does that he’s going to tell us why we should respond in this way. And I love that he does that—it’s not as if he has to. Already, the gospel is good enough to deserve every obedience it could ask of us. And yet, Peter gives us even more reasons why the gospel is better than we think.
He’s going to show us that our salvation is assured; he’s going to tell us what happens when our salvation is tried; and he’s going to remind us why the salvation promised in the Old Testament is of such help for us today.
Salvation Assured (v. 3-5)
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 a lot to unpack here. Peter is laying out the foundation of our faith, adding to what he said in the first two verses about God’s work in our salvation. Here he digs deeper. Firstly, he says, According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again...
This phrase alone should dispel a lot of false ideas people have about what it means to be a Christian. We imagine that you become a Christian when you decide to follow the precepts laid out in Christianity. Or you become a Christian when you choose to “accept Jesus Christ into your heart.” Or you become a Christian when you get baptized.
But none of those things make us Christians. We saw this last week—we were dead in our sins. On our own we couldn’t choose God. We can choose to follow the precepts laid out in Christianity; we can choose to pray a certain prayer at the end of a service; we can choose to be baptized.
But we cannot choose to pass from spiritual death to spiritual life. The dead can’t choose to come alive. That’s something God has to do. And, Peter says, according to his great mercy, that is exactly what he did. He has caused us to be born again. He took the dead things we were and he brought us into new life.
So think about every resurrection story in the gospels. Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead, for example, is a physical picture of a spiritual reality: that is what God did in each of us who have faith in Christ, and what he did in us is no less miraculous than what he did for Lazarus.
So it’s not that we don’t choose to follow Christ; of course we do. We choose to obey him, we choose to follow him, every day. But the new birth is what made us ABLE to choose him. We wouldn’t have chosen God if he hadn’t caused us to be born again first, independently of anything we did or didn’t do. It has nothing to do with us, or any merit in us, but it is entirely according to his great mercy.
Now, how did he save us? He saved us (v. 3) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The symbol of Christianity is often seen as the cross, and that is fitting, because it is at the cross that Christ defeated our sin. But it would be just as fitting for the symbol of Christianity to be the empty tomb—for it is at the tomb that Christ defeated death.
There would be no new birth without the resurrection. There would be no life in God without the resurrection. The new birth is possible because we are united to Christ in his resurrection.
Or, to put it another way, we can pass from death to life because our Savior went before us, and he himself passed from death to life first. His life is our life; we are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.
Now, to what end did he save us? He caused us to be born again to a living hope (v. 3). What is our hope? Well, that is the second part of the work of the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ obtained new birth for us; but it also obtained for us the hope of another resurrection.
As good as our new birth is, as good as it is to have passed from spiritual death to spiritual life, that new birth is a foretaste of an even more complete resurrection to come. The hope of Christianity is the hope of our future resurrection. One day, at Christ’s return, he will resurrect us—physically. If we are dead at that time, our bodies will be raised and be made to be like his body: perfect, imperishable, eternal. No more sickness, no more weakness, no more death. The spiritual life he has given us will become a physical life in renewed bodies.
So this idea that we’ll spend eternity floating on clouds and in some kind of ethereal existence goes against everything the Bible teaches. We will be raised again, and live forever as Jesus lives today—in perfected, physical bodies. His resurrection is a foretaste of the resurrection that’s waiting for us.
But our hope doesn’t end there. V. 4: He has caused us to be born again to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you...
What is this inheritance? For the people of Israel, their inheritance was Israel, the promised land. This is what God promised to give them because they were his covenant people, the people of the Old Covenant.
But Jesus said during his ministry that he came to establish a New Covenant with his people. A covenant that wouldn’t be limited by geographical lines. Our inheritance is no longer attached to one solitary country; our inheritance is in heaven—and nothing can challenge our inheritance or take it away. It is being kept for us by God.
Now before answering the question of what our inheritance is—like, is it gold? mansions? buried treasure?—Peter adds something incredible. He says that this inheritance is being kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith (v. 5)…
Do you see it? Our inheritance is being kept for us…and we are being kept for our inheritance. God guards our reward, and he guards us that we might receive it.
We are being kept by God’s power—which is complete and perfect and ultimate, so nothing can threaten it.
We are being kept through faith—the faith he gave us at the new birth. It is by faith that we live our lives with Christ; it is only by faith that we continue, that we obey.
I hope you see how important it is that Peter puts these two together: we are being guarded by God’s power, through faith. There are many ways God shows his power in our lives. But the most fundamental proof of God’s presence and power is the perseverance of our faith.
God works his power in us by sustaining our faith until the end, until the day when we receive the inheritance he has promised us. We, by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. He is guarding us, keeping us, preserving us, so that on the day of Christ’s return our faith will still be intact, we will still be his—and we will see our salvation: no longer by faith, but by sight.
This is our inheritance: the salvation he is keeping for us, and for which he is keeping us. This is our assurance: we are not the ones making sure we “stay saved”; God is the one making sure we stay saved, making sure we persevere until the end. He is keeping our inheritance for us, and he is keeping us for our inheritance.
Now Peter is going to go further, and explain specifically what this salvation entails, and why it is so precious. And he’s going to show us this by explaining what happens when our faith is put to the test.
Salvation Tried (v. 6-9)
6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 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. 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, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
We all know what it’s like to have our faith tested. Even if you’re not a Christian, you understand what it feels like to go through experiences that seem to go against your convictions, which put your beliefs under pressure. Most of us imagine that when our faith is tested we begin to doubt, and to reevaluate notions and ideas we used to take for granted—and often that is the case.
But Peter tells us that true faith, when it is tested, doesn’t work that way. The analogy he gives in v. 7 is that of gold being purified in fire. Most of you know how that works (or at least how it used to work in Peter’s time—it’s far more complicated now): you take gold ore, gold mixed with other minerals, impurities, etc., and you heat it up to such a high temperature that the gold liquifies. Gold is a relatively heavy metal, so when it liquifies, the gold sinks to the bottom, and the impurities—called the dross—rise to the top. You remove the dross, let the gold cool, then you heat it again. Whatever dross is left rises to the top, is removed, and you repeat the process until the gold is as pure as it can be. The dross is stripped away; only pure gold remains.
So the question Peter is trying to ask by giving us this analogy is: What is left when our faith is tried? You go through situations in which every external support is taken away—things you didn’t even know you depended on. Your comfort and security and the predictability of your life and entertainment and pleasure… We will all go through situations in which these things are removed from us. And we will all be forced to face this stark reality—when all these things are stripped away, what do we have left?
Peter says at the end of v. 7 that when our faith is put to the fire, if it is true faith, what is left is praise and glory and honor given to Christ, and our own joy in Christ. That is his main thesis in v. 6-9.
He told us before that God caused us to be born again to a living hope, to the inheritance God is keeping for us, and for which God is keeping us. And he says (v. 6), In this you rejoice. Of course! How could we not rejoice in these things?
But if that’s the case—if it’s so obvious to us that this is a reason for joy—why does he need to say it? Why do the biblical authors need to remind us to rejoice?
Because we suffer. And a great number Christians don’t rejoice in these glorious truths because they are suffering. We live in a broken world in which we will suffer, and when we do, our joy goes out the window. We see suffering as the enemy of our joy.
But it isn’t.
It’s like lifting weights. It seems surprising—at least to me—that the best way to make your muscles grow stronger is to utterly exhaust them a couple times a week. You wouldn’t think that that pain, that fatigue, is actually building more strength. But it is.
Our suffering makes our joy more difficult, for sure; but it actually procures for us an even greater joy further down the line.
Peter says that we rejoice in the work of God for us, even though now, for a little while, we are grieved by various trials. That’s the first important thing to see here: suffering is not at odds with Christian joy. Suffering is not an excuse to stop fighting for joy. Suffering is not an excuse to let ourselves stop rejoicing. We rejoice in our suffering, because we know these trials have come for a reason.
And he tells us what that reason is (v. 7):
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.
When our faith is tested, the result is praise and glory and honor to Christ, and this proves our faith is genuine. And we’ve already seen why this makes sense: when our faith is tested, all of our external supports, the things we usually depend on, are taken away; and in those moments, all we have left is Christ. And when all we have left is Christ, we find that he is in fact enough.
Now, this knowledge will always be imperfect in this life—that’s why we suffer more than once during our lives, and that’s why Peter talks about our faith resulting in prase and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. When he returns, and we see him, we will have the ultimate proof of his faithfulness, and all that will remain for us is praise and glory and honor to him.
So it’s not complete today, but it definitely begins today, and grows over the course of our lives. If our faith is genuine, every time our suffering becomes unbearable to us, all we have left is Christ, and we will find that he is enough.
And the result of such a discovery is joy in Christ. V. 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, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Let me say this another way, and in a way that we may have a hard time believing: despite our suffering, in our suffering, and even because of our suffering, we can rejoice—even more joy should be the norm for us.
We cannot miss this: Peter is taking it as a given that the Christians to whom he is writing live like this. In the midst of their sufferings, they have a love for Jesus which is all-consuming, and they are rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. He’s not encouraging them to live that way, he’s not asking or hoping they live that way—he is assuming they live that way, because that love for Jesus and that joy in him are the norm for faithful Christians.
The question is, why?
If you think about what Peter’s saying here in light of what we saw last week, it doesn’t seem logical. He said we were exiles—foreigners living in a world which is not our own. A world which is hostile towards our God, towards what we believe. A world in which we aren’t truly at home. That doesn’t seem like an enviable position to be in.
And most Christians don’t actually react to this situation as if it’s a good thing. Daniel Liechti—who spearheads the church planting initiatives of the CNEF—rightly said on social media this week that he had made a disquieting observation: that “what counts these days is belonging to the right group of victims.” And his counter-call to Christians was to urgently testify to “the true freedom of the gospel”—to show that we are not victims, but now entirely and completely free in Jesus Christ.
He is absolutely right.
Peter can call us to joy in suffering, joy in our situation as elect exiles, because Christian joy is fundamentally different from ordinary happiness. Christian joy is not found in the potential resolution of our suffering. We don’t rejoice because God answers our prayers that our suffering will stop. He often does, but that is not the foundation of our joy. It can’t be, because as often as God answers our prayers the way we want him to, he often answers our prayers in ways we find counterintuitive.
And if our joy depends on God’s answering our prayers the way we want him to, our joy will be very fickle indeed. We’ll be like kids whose parents won’t give them the candy they want, and who complain about having to eat their broccoli, even though the parent is loving them by not giving them the candy.
Our joy is found in the praise and honor and glory which will be revealed at the return of Christ.
Please hear me, brothers and sisters—if you’re young, you need to be ready to face this, because you will face it sooner or later. If your joy is not in Christ alone, then it is not the joy of your salvation. It’s happiness, and it’s not bad, but it is not the joy on which you can depend when trials come.
Being saved does not mean escaping suffering. Being saved means finding Christ. Finding Christ means loving Christ. Loving Christ means rejoicing with inexpressible and glorious joy.
Why? Because when every other support is removed from us, Christ is still there, and he is still enough. Even more: he is better than escaping our suffering. Having Christ is better than having our prayers answered. He is the inheritance for which we are kept, for which we have been saved. He is the glory given to us, and the glory waiting for us.
And we have him. We always have him. In every trial, in every moment of suffering, in every period of pain so intense we can’t think straight, we still have him, and he is better.
Now at this point Peter sort of circles back on himself. He has told us the goodness of God to us in Christ in the present; but he doesn’t want his Gentile readers to forget that these promises are not new. He wants them to remember that their salvation is anchored in a bigger story, and that even if they are not Jews, they have indeed been brought into that story.
Salvation Vindicated (v. 10-12)
10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11 inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. 12 It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
So Peter takes his readers back to the prophets—the prophets of the Old Testament, of the people of Israel, long before Jesus ever came. He reminds them that the gospel he preaches was foretold and promised long before by the prophets.
Now it’s important to understand that when God spoke through the Old Testament prophets, they didn’t necessarily understand everything he was telling them to say. Peter says they searched and inquired carefully concerning the grace about which they themselves had prophecied. They knew what God had told them to say, but they didn’t necessarily know how or when God was going to bring them about. The Spirit inspired them to predict the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, but they didn’t know exactly how it would all come about.
So in some respects, you can imagine, it must have been a little frustrating to be a prophet sometimes (we don’t need to imagine—just read Lamentations). They had bits of information, but not the whole story. And that is because, as Peter says it was revealed to them in v. 12, they were serving not themselves but you. That is, the predictions of the prophets weren’t necessarily meant to make the people see what would happen (and we see very few people understood the prophecies they read), but rather to prove the validity of what they saw after the fact.
Simply put: the goal of the prophecies of the Messiah wasn’t that people might be ready and waiting for Jesus to come (“Okay, he’s going to be born in this town on this day in this context, so let’s get ready”); but rather, that once they saw him, they might look back and realize—Wait a minute, everything he has said and done fits with what the prophets said would happen.
This is exactly the work the Christians of Peter’s day had to do. This is the work we are meant to do. To listen to the things that have now been announced to us through those who preached the good news to us by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, to go back into Scripture and see just how fully this good news fits perfectly with the promises God had given through his prophets.
And these promises are so precious that, Peter says, the angels long to look into them. The angels had no more information on how this would all play out than the prophets did. And they waited, longing to see what God would do. And when he did it, they longed to experience it, though they never would.
Angels never had to receive grace. Those angels who rebelled were cast into hell with no second chance for salvation. Those angels who faithfully served God had no sin to be forgiven of. You’d think that is a really good place to be. And yet, Peter says, they long to look into these things.
Think about that for a minute, because it’s huge. Experiencing grace is, apparently, better than not needing grace in the first place. Do we ever come close to realizing the gift we have received? Just how good we have it? We have rebelled against God, and instead of receiving the condemnation we deserve, we receive his grace. The goodness of his gift is immeasurable, so much so that the angels wish they could experience it.
And we complain about our trials.
The Bottom Line
And that’s the bottom line of this text. The suffering of the Christian who has true faith in Christ will have a very different result than for anyone else. One of the primary questions of this letter is, How are we as the people of God distinctive compared to the rest of the world? We are elect exiles, Peter told us in v. 1—marching in this world to the beat of a different drum. What will that look like? In this context, what will that look like in the midst of suffering?
Let’s take two scenarios. Scenario A—you have an unbeliever, let’s call him John. Just a normal guy like anyone else. Intense and unmanageable suffering comes; trial upon trial upon trial, to the point where he just feels it will never end. Unless something happens to change his situation, he’ll probably react like most people do—with sadness, anger, frustration, desperation, depression (and I’m not talking chronic depression, not chemical imbalance, but depression in response to a hard situation). That’s the way normal people react to an onslaught of suffering.
Now, scenario B—you have a Christian, let’s call her Anne. Imagine she goes though the same suffering, the same trials as John. They are just as painful for her, just as incomprehensible, and just as unmanageable. How will she respond differently than John, and why?
She’s not surprised at her suffering, because she knows we’re foreigners living in a hostile world.
She’s not afraid of our suffering: she knows that whatever came to her has passed through the hands of her sovereign God, who is using all things for his glory and our good.
She’s not robbed of her joy: no matter how bad things get, her joy is in Christ, and Christ hasn’t gone anywhere; God’s promises to her are still sure.
Can you see how radically different that is from simply gritting your teeth and bearing it on your own? How different that is from saying, “Alright, take a deep breath, tough it out—it’ll get better eventually.” Can you see how different it feels to go through it if you have these sure and proven promises?
Can you see how differently other people will see us when we respond like this? This text isn’t primarily about our Christian witness, but the implication is definitely there… Imagine that John and Anne from these two scenarios know each other, go through similar things at similar times. (It’s not that hard to believe, it happens all the time.) Let’s say they meet in the hospital, for a treatment of chemotherapy, and they start comparing notes.
What will John think about what he sees in Anne? What will the Anne’s reaction to her suffering make John want? Who doesn’t want an unshakeable joy? Who doesn’t want to know the source of unshakeable joy?
This is our testimony. This is our witness. This is one of the primary ways God brings his gospel to bear on people’s hearts: through the testimony of the joy of his faithful servants in the midst of suffering
But even more fundamentally, this is our anchor. This is our joy. This is the rock on which we stand firm in the storm. No matter what life takes away from us, we know the inheritance which God is keeping for us, and we know we are being kept for that inheritance. No matter what life takes away from us, we know the promises of the Bible, and how perfectly those promises were fulfilled in Christ. No matter what life takes away from us, we know we still have Christ, and he is enough.
So brothers and sisters, don’t be afraid when trials come. Let them test your faith, let them put your faith under the fire, that it might result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ. Though you haven’t seen him yet, love him. Believe in him. Rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, because you know that you are obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
And if you don’t know Christ today, here’s the good news for you—there is nothing you have to do to make it happen. It is God who causes us to be born again. It is God who draws us to Christ, who opens our eyes to see the truth of the gospel. So if you want to know him, ask him. If you want to know him, trust that he’s doing this work in you. Repent of your sin, and place your faith in Christ, and follow him. If you want to know him, chances are he’s already been working in you to give you that desire. Ask him. And trust that if you place your faith in him, you have the same inheritance, and the same Savior.
