1 Peter 1:3-5 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, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

Isn’t it interesting that Peter writes of a new birth into a Living Hope! 

To understand the significance of this phrase, Living Hope – and where it comes from – let’s think about the source of the phrase.  The source is the Holy Spirit working through the Apostle Peter.

Peter was an educated fisherman.  By educated we mean that he could read, write, add and subtract.  He was not what we would call a college graduate today.  He had the same basic education that all Hebrew children received so we can think of him as a High School graduate.   He caught fish, weighed them, counted them, sold them and then reinvested his profit in boats and equipment.  In other words, he was a businessman.  Peter was not a scribe and he was not a Pharisee or Sadducee.  He didn’t have time for polite company because he worked for a living and he worked hard.  Today we would describe him as “rough around the edges.”

Peter is the very essence of what, today, we would call a blue-collar worker – he was smart, he was hard working and he had a no-nonsense attitude.  

Peter jumped to defend Jesus the night he was arrested and cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant.  He was direct speaking, quick tempered and also quick to see the error of his way and repent. 

He was not always known as Peter.  His original name was Simon bar-Jonah.  Jesus gave him the name, Peter (The Rock) and told him that he would build his Church on that rock and the gates of hell would not prevail against it![1]

Who is Peter?

But what about his personality, his life experiences?  We all know that our life experiences mold us and make us so what experiences did Peter have that made him who he was?  Let’s review some of Peter’s life and see what made him tick.

We know he was married.  We can guess that he liked his mother-in-law because she lived with him (Matthew 8:14-15).  We know that he didn’t like liars and cheats (Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5:1-10).  We know that he was quick to defend his friends (John 18:10).

It was Peter who was rescued from prison by an angel and when the Sanhedrin found the cell doors still locked and the guards standing outside but no prisoners inside, they were completely mystified.  While they were scratching their heads in puzzlement someone came in and told them that Peter and the disciples were preaching in the Temple.  Instead of hiding, Peter was boldly preaching and teaching the Gospel.  He did not run away, he did not cower, he did not quake from fear – he followed God’s instructions and stood in the Temple square preaching and teaching the good news about Jesus Christ.  And when they were brought before the Sanhedrin again it was Peter who looked them straight in the eye and said, “We must obey God rather than men.”[2]

Peter – Honest to the core!

In spite of Peter’s impetuousness, in spite of his willingness to jump into the middle of a fight, in spite of his all too human flaws.  (Which one of us does not have any flaws?)  In spite of all that, there is one quality Peter had that we could all use more of – he was honest to his core. He spoke his mind and heart with sometimes brutally direct honesty.  He was painfully direct when he spoke to Ananias and Saphira![3]  If ministers spoke to straying parishioners like that today they would be out of a job in under 15 minutes!  And Peter also spoke directly and bluntly to thousands of people during his sermon on the Day of Pentecost.  He looked straight at the assembled crowd, summed up the prophecies and history of Jesus Christ and then boldly told them they had murdered the Messiah.  He didn’t hold back.  His words were like a direct punch to the jaw of the surrounding crowd. And the crowd was stunned!  They asked what they must do.^[4]  Peter’s directness and honesty probably did insult or embarrass people occasionally but his directness also – while being guided by the Holy Spirit – lead to the immediate salvation of 3,000 people on the Day of Pentecost.  And there can be little doubt that some of those very people had been standing in Pilate’s courtyard that infamous night screaming “Crucify Him!” as Pilate lifted his arm to point toward Jesus and say, “Behold, the man.”[5]

The Living Hope

If there is one witness to it all, one disciple, one apostle whom we can trust to be brutally honest and tell us exactly what he saw with his own eyes it is Peter.  And it was Peter who said “he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…”  And that is the true meaning of a Living Hope!  Jesus Christ is alive!

Here we see this brutally honest man assuring us that we have a Living Hope because he saw and spoke to the resurrected Jesus Christ!  

The hope of humanity cannot be found in a movie star, a news anchor, a Prime Minister, a congressman, a congresswoman, a member of parlaiment or in the ravings of a mentally ill “philosopher” and his equally unsettled heirs.[6]   The hope of humanity is found in the words of a plainspoken fishermen who shared a meal with a resurrected and living Jesus Christ.[7]   

Jesus Christ is alive!

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[1] Matthew 16:13-18

[2] Acts 5:17-29

[3] Acts 5:1-10

[4] Acts 2:36-38

[5] John 19:1-15 – Ecce Homo!  This phrase was usurped by Nietzsche who used it as the title of his autobiography.  This is curiously reminiscent of Carl Jung’s description of a Messiah Complex.

[6] Frederick Nietzsche suffered from manic-depressive illness with periodic bouts of outright psychosis.  Curiously, some still feel drawn to the ravings of this madman who persuaded himself that he could kill God with his words.  One point in his favor was his acknowledgement that without God there would be no coherent sense of objective truth.  But he failed to apprehend or acknowledge humanity’s inability to fill such a hypothetical moral vacuum.

[7] Luke 24:36-43

M. Andrews