Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. Why was Martin Luther so anxious about his salvation?
2. Do you think about heaven much? If so, what about it stands out? If not, why not?
3. What aspect of heaven--imperishabl, undefiled, unfading--is most appealing to you?
4. What from this passage gives you confidence about your assurance of salvation?
5. How would you respond to someone who would say that 1 Peter 1:5 really means that God's power is only capable of guarding us, to the degree that we muster up enough faith?
In 1510, a young German monk named Martin Luther, was crawling on hands and knees up the Scala Santa in Rome, allegedly the 28 steps that Christ ascended in Pilate’s Praetorium, moved to Rome and now venerated as a holy relic, capable of imparting special grace to the faithful. Kissing each step, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer at each one, Luther was told that if he performed these rituals (among many others) he could deliver loved ones from suffering in purgatory, or at the very least, reduce his own time there.
While Rome affirms that salvation begins with God's grace and is made possible only through Jesus Christ, they also teach that it is something that can be lost. And even when the guilt of sin has been forgiven, temporal punishment for that sin may remain. Unless that punishment and the need for purification have been entirely removed before death, the believer must undergo purification in purgatory before entering heaven—and they may spend many thousands upon thousands of years roiling in the fires of purgatory for their sins.
But, there was a way that one could shorten their sufferings in purgatory: indulgences. An act of penance performed, usually by visiting a holy site or venerating a relic, where the Church would promise that a certain number of years could be taken off of your sentence in purgatory.
Luther was an extremely devout Catholic who was strict and rigorous in his pursuits of repentance, fasting, vigils, and asceticism, that he wrote that he was certain that he would have likely killed himself from his austerity. What was dominating Luther’s troubled conscience? How can I be sure that I am right with God? The more Luther strove to flee temptation, to live a life of strict discipline, the more sin he found lying dormant in his heart. He would spend six hours in the confession, confessing his pride at his own spirituality, only to then immediately feel proud for confessing his pride, and then again be back. It felt like the more Luther strove, the more uncertain he was of his ability to maintain his salvation.
Perhaps an indulgence was what he needed?
Yet, shuffling up the steps on hands and knees, reciting the prayer, a strange sense of uncertainty began to overtake him. As he stood at the top of the stairs he thought: “Who knows whether it is so?”
Where do we gain assurance from?
Indulgences are not a relic of history. They are an important part of Roman Catholicism to this day.
The great question at the heart of the Reformation was this: Has Jesus Christ done everything necessary to secure my salvation, or must I contribute something of my own to bring that salvation to completion?
Is my hope of heaven founded entirely upon what Christ has accomplished for me, or does it ultimately depend upon what I must still accomplish?
The Protestant answer is that Jesus Christ has done it all. His righteousness is sufficient for my justification, his sacrifice is sufficient for my forgiveness, and his power is sufficient to preserve me until I stand before him in glory.
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. 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. - 1 Pet 1:3-9
Our hope of heaven is sweet, certain, and soon.
Our Hope of Heaven Is Sweet
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 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, - 1 Pet 1:3-4
Our “inheritance” is our eternal reward, what Christians of a previous era referred to as “our blessed hope.” Jesus did not only give us the new birth, but has left to prepare a place for us so that we may reside with Him, forever. Peter uses the language of inheritance to describe this hope.
It is imperishable
The most delicious piece of fruit eventually turns brown and buzzes with flies. The most beautiful flowers eventually wilt. The healthiest of us eventually diminish. Life winds down under this discouraging truth. And we wind down with it. Our body grows weaker and our eyes dim. We fade. But not so in the place that Jesus is preparing for us.
For God so loved the world that He gave His son that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. - John 3:16
Just as Christ resurrected from the dead into a body that is incorruptible, so too shall we. And what’s more, we will inhabit a renewed material world. Our final hope is not imperishable because it is immaterial, as if we existed in a spiritual plane. When Christians die, we depart from the material realm to be present with Christ. But that is not our final resting place. Our final resting place is the New Heavens and New Earth. You and I will exist in redeemed bodies, standing on the green grass of God’s new earth.
There we will get to climb mountains, and play soccer, and learn how to play the cello, and ten thousand more things, all with a mind and body which do not break down. Our eyes shall be fresh with childlike, newborn wonder at the world around us, our bodies surge forward with renewed vitality, and our emotional capacities for joy and delight will not deaden under the spiritual callouses of old age but will grow deeper, more sensitive, and more satisfied as we enjoy our God.
The book of Revelation strains human language to describe it, but it is a place of incomparable beauty, untouched by the ruinous effects of sin. It will include all of the best experiences this earth has had to offer, amplified to dizzying levels, and will exclude all pain and all loss:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. - Rev 21:4
We shall never attend a funeral again. Never experience heartbreak, betrayal, or loss. No cancer diagnosis, no layoffs, no public humiliation, no torn ACL’s. It is imperishable, invincible.
It is undefiled
But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. - Rev 21:27
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; - Rev 22:1-2
God’s pristine garden of Eden was defiled by the serpent’s schemes. Like a tanker bleeding its oil into the ocean, death poured into creation, poured into the minds and heart of man, into their marriage, into their very bodies. After Adam and Eve sin, they flee and hide in shame. They have been defiled. They feel irredeemably dirty and humiliated. And this experience—this feeling of a defiled conscience, of a deep shame—is not an extraordinary experience for people who have experienced extreme sins—but the ordinary reality that all of us know too well. Romans 2 tells us that all of us have our conscience accusing us of failing to measure up to God’s Law (Rom 2:15).
What do we need? Cleansing. We need “our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water,” (Heb 10:22). After Paul lists a long series of sins that we may be all too familiar with—sexual immorality, greed, tearing people down with our words, drunkenness—he then states, with painful honesty: none of these people will inherit the kingdom of God. Why would you think that you could go to heaven, the place where “nothing unclean will ever enter it” if you have defiled yourself with your sin?
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. - 1 Cor 6:11
Rome believes that we participate with God in our justification, that through the use of relics and indulgences and our own obedience, we can be purified of the punishments of our sins. But the great discovery that Martin Luther found several years after climbing the steps in Rome was that justification was by faith alone; it was not a process where we participated with God in perfecting ourselves. It was a declaration given to those who simply ask in faith. And in that moment, our sins are washed from us, removed, and we are righteous in God’s eyes.
That reality is ours now by faith. But one day, it will not be experienced through faith, but by experience. In the new heavens and new earth, there will be no tang of impurity. As we pass through the bright threshold of death and are translated into glory, we will shed, once and for all, our final defilement of sin.
How well I know what happened at the instant when they snatched him from you! There was a sudden clearing of his eyes (was there not?) as he saw you for the first time, and recognised the part you had had in him and knew that you had it no longer. Just think…what he felt at that moment; as if a scab had fallen from an old sore, as if he were emerging from a hideous, shell-like tetter, as if he shuffled off for good and all a defiled, wet, clinging garment. By Hell, it is misery enough to see them in their mortal days taking off dirtied and uncomfortable clothes and splashing in hot water and giving little grunts of pleasure — stretching their eased limbs. What, then, of this final stripping, this complete cleansing? - Lewis, Screwtape Letters
It is unfading
The most thrilling of vacations must come to a close. The most novel and exciting of experiences eventually fade behind the veil of familiarity. The vista that at first took your breath away when you moved into that dream home or finally got that corner office, in time, becomes just another invisible part of the background of your daily life. You take it for granted.
Just as I was writing this sermon, I kept hearing little children giggling right out of my office. Eventually, I stepped out to see what was happening, and two pre-school boys, maybe four years old, were standing in the bathroom, taking turns flushing the toilet. And every time the toilet flushed, they erupted in a fit of giggles, as if the silliest and most wonderful thing were happening. I went from mildly frustrated at the disturbance, to a kind of wonder at their wonder. Christ called us to learn from children, and one of the ways we can learn is their seemingly inexhaustible joy at the most mundane of all activities.
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. - GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
We will reach no twilight of our joy. In C.S. Lewis’ final installment in the Chronicles of Narnia, he describes life in the New Creation like a great book, “which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
Our thoughts of heaven may give us little comfort or hope because we struggle to imagine what it could be like. I asked my three boys what they think heaven will be like and I’ll share a few of their answers:
- My four year old believes that there will be a pool full of his favorite cereal there so that he can swim and eat at the same time.
- My seven year old believes that there will be unlimited gold coins and unlimited video game time.
- My nine year old says “I’d be able to do all the things I’ve wanted to do that I couldn’t.”
And you know what I tell them? If it will make you happy in Jesus, it will be there! But my children are doing what most people do: they picture what they like about their life most (Lucky Charms and video games for my kids), and just supersize it in heaven. But that is stopping far too short of what is offered us. And is part of why we seem to draw so little daily hope from our eternal reward. Heaven is far more than what this world has to offer.
The reason our hope of heaven is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading is because Jesus Christ Himself is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, and He is the bright center of what makes heaven heaven.
Our earthly joys are a faint, far off echo of the Song we will be awash in upon our entrance into the next world. But what is the melody of that Song? It is Him. We shall be with Him, shall see Him, know Him, embrace Him. And in that embrace, beholding His face, like a lanced boil, all of our sin, defilement, disappointments, sickness, and bitter sorrows shall drain from us and slip into a hole that itself shall be thrown into the great void, never to be seen again.
And there shall dawn upon us a new day which will have no end.
Certain
Our hope of heaven is sweet. But Peter, after considering that wonderful inheritance we have in Christ anticipates what could be a far more terrible thought: what if you lost it?
And it is that very terror which is one of the means that Rome believes is to keep you from disobedience. No one in Martin Luther’s day would have said that they were confident they were going to heaven when you died, at least not like the thief on the cross or Paul in Philippians 1:23, who were confident that on the day they died, they were ushered immediately into the presence of Christ. That would be seen as impossible pride. Why? Because the assumption was that the only way you got to heaven was through your cooperation with God and constant vigilance to not veer into mortal sin, and you have to purify yourself through purgatory, so to claim that you could just skip that entirely would be to claim that you had perfected yourself prior to death.
The Council of Trent, Rome’s response to the Reformation, teaches that “no one can know with the certainty of faith…that he has obtained the grace of God” because all of us know how weak our own faith can be! And if we commit a mortal sin, we can lose our justification, so “Let no one promise himself anything as certain with absolute certitude.”
But the Scriptures show us that we can have certainty of our hope of heaven and union with Christ.
First, God’s mercy, not our merit, is the cause of our new birth.
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, - 1 Pet 1:3
God causes our new birth, because He is merciful, through the resurrection.
Just consider how there is no ground for anything we contribute in the text: According to God’s mercy, He causes us to be born again, through the resurrection of Jesus. If you had to brag about something you did in this verse, what could you boast in? Nothing. You don’t cause your new birth. God was not motivated by your moral impressiveness, but His own mercy. And the mechanism to accomplish this act was the death and resurrection of Christ. You contribute nothing to this.
Second, your inheritance is kept safe in heaven for you.
to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, - 1 Pet 1:4
There is a reason that we do not give our children their inheritance when they are children. Could you imagine a father approaching his four year old son and handing him a key saying, “Son, this key will open a lockbox at the bank. In it is all the inheritance I have prepared for you—and it is far more wonderful than you can imagine—make sure you don’t lose the key!” That would be a negligent father. And, thanks be to God, our heavenly Father loves us too much to pass that key into our hands. He keeps the hope of our salvation safe in heaven for us. It is not just in heaven, but in heaven for you.
Third, you are being guarded by God’s power.
who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. - 1 Pet 1:5
We are, according to Peter’s words, “being guarded” by God’s power through faith. Faith is our trust in God. So, some people may say, “Ah, see—God’s power will guard us, but only by our faith, and faith is up to us. So, if we refuse God, we cannot access that power.” Two response to that:
First, faith is a gift that God gives through the new birth. God caused us to be born again, and an integral part of that new birth was our faith!
Second, what good is a promise of God’s power to guard us if that same power is not capable of strengthening our faith? If God’s promise to us is: “I will guard you for salvation…but I cannot help you have faith in me, that is up to you.” Well, faith is essential for our salvation! If God’s power does not extend to empowering our faith, then this promise doesn’t mean anything.
Fourth, we are refined, not ruined, by trials.
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, - 1 Pet 1:6
The Greek word for “trials” here can also be translated as “temptation.” So, this could be suffering they are enduring, or it could be temptation to sin. Both are possible, and both create grief in the audience.
Nevertheless, this grief at suffering and sin does not eliminate the audience’s joy in their living hope of heaven.
But Peter’s encouragement to us is that none of our pain is wasted. There is a purpose in our 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.
If you dig gold out of the ground, it does not shine. It is mixed with other minerals and impurities. To purify it, you must heat, and under the heat the gold melts, the impurities separate from the gold, and can be skimmed off the top. So it is, Peter understands, with our faith. It is mixed and impure. But it is more valuable than gold. Eventually gold perishes away. But not our faith. In fact, Peter says that our faith on the other side of the test, proves to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ, at the last day. Your endurance, your repentance, your sanctification, your grief through loss—all of it is compounding interest that results in the increasing joy and delight you will experience when Jesus arrives at the last day. He will personally attend to you. He will look over your life, see your suffering, see your hard-earned obedience, see your acts of service, and see your grief from trials, and will say: Well done, enter into the joy prepared for you. So, hold tightly to His hand!
Soon
But this joy is not only future oriented. It bleeds back into the present. So Peter concludes:
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 can rejoice now in our present suffering, not only because we will be compensated for it in the future, but also because that future joy can be enjoyed by faith now! We do not see Jesus…yet. But we love him, we trust him, and rejoice with that joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory! Why? Because this is the outcome of our faith, this is our eternal destiny, and we know down deep in our bones that we will make it there, because GOD is the one who brought us to life and GOD is the one who keeps us by His power, and GOD is the one who will welcome us home. This is how certain we are of the outcome of our faith!
“For a little while.”
Soon, far sooner than we think, we will be there. The trials (and the triumphs) of this life feel so permanent. But what are they but a thin string of smoke, here for a moment, and then gone. This morning, while working on this sermon, I was looking out my window of my office at home and I saw the sunrise, and it lit the clouds ablaze like flecks of fire. It was stunning. So, I took it in. But then I got back to work and, the next time I lifted my head, the brilliance was gone. The clouds were ordinary again. That is what our life is like. And if you are younger than me, you don’t really think that is true. And if you are older than me, it is still hard to believe, but not as hard.
Time goes fast. And faster still the more of it is behind you. Do not became enamored with this life, as if it were your one shot at living. We can have eternity amnesia. We forget that we are going to die. We live like this world is all there is.
Maybe you don’t ponder with the kind of Martin-Luther-esque fear and uncertainty about going to heaven because you frankly don’t believe you are going to die.
Signs of eternity amnesia:
- Easily discouraged, anxious, sensitive.
- Enamored with the desires of the world and the flesh
Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his [carriage] should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him, if we saw him wringing his hands, and blubbering out all the remaining mile, “My [carriage] is broken! My [carriage] is broken!” (John Newton)
Be not discouraged, brother and sister. We are bound for the promised land. One short trip across the river Jordan, and we shall feast in Zion.
