Resurrected Hope

“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…”
1 Peter 1:3

Hope is a funny word. It’s one of those that is hard to grasp. I remember reading a book when I was little called “A Picture of Freedom”. One of the most memorable scenes is the scene that gave the book it’s name.

Clotee was a slave during some of the darkest days of the United States. She learned to read by associating words with pictures. Clotee had heard the word “freedom” before, but had no picture of what it was like. She couldn’t imagine what freedom looked like.

The scene moved me to tears, even as a very young kid. The idea that freedom, something that was freely available to me, was so foreign to someone else made me feel all mixed up inside.

While the circumstances are very different, I fear that some of you have a similar picture problem. There is a hope I know that I desperately want you to know too.

But, just like freedom for Clotee, hope may be a word that is so foreign to you that you don’t really have a picture of it. Maybe it’s your slavery to sin that has kept you from understanding hope. Maybe it’s being stuck somewhere you can’t get out of. It has you wondering, “What does real hope look like?”

Let me paint a little bit of a picture for you. 1 Peter 1:3 describes the hope we have in Jesus as a “living hope”. I’m certain you have a picture of what dead hopes are like… but what about living hope?

The Greek manuscripts record the word “living” as zaō - to enjoy real life, active, blessed, and endless in the kingdom of God; to be fresh, strong, active, and powerful.

Most of our hopes can’t be described this way - they’re mere wishings for the stars with no power to change anything… they’re just hopes (you may call them dreams).

But what if there is a living hope? What if there is a hope that is active and has the ability to change you? What if there is a hope that is endless, fresh, strong, powerful?

That’s the picture of hope God gives us in His Word. He gives us this hope through the resurrection of Jesus so we know it is truly alive. If God can make the dead to live, then surely he can make my hopes to live too.

The same God that resurrected Jesus, resurrected your hope.