A Living Hope

Peter continues to develop the theme of “Elect Exiles” introduced in his salutation. How do the church corporately, and Christians personally, thrive in the midst of difficulty and discomfort? Not by escaping our exile, but by embracing our identity within it.

Just as no one chooses to be born, no one chooses to be born again. The new birth is not ultimately owing to human initiative, but, as Peter says, to God’s mercy. And being born again is not a special category of Christian; it is the very definition of one. The new birth is not marked primarily by a particular emotion, but by the presence of a living hope—not a dead, vain, empty, or imaginary hope, but a certain hope anchored in the objective reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Hope is an essential micronutrient of the soul. Macronutrients supply energy, but micronutrients enable the body to put that energy to work. In a similar way, Peter says that when we are “grieved by various trials,” a living hope produces a remarkable and paradoxical result: joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. The trials are real—they truly grieve us. But in the presence of genuine faith, they also truly refine us. Gold is not put into the fire because it is worthless, but because it is valuable. And so the trials that test our faith do not mean that God has abandoned us; they are among the means by which he purifies a faith that is more precious than gold.