And the future starts now

Interesting door handle on a dark door, opening to a hazy, but very green, world

This is the last in a series of seven posts that explore what God says to his people who have been shunned and exiled by abuse in the church.

In the Old Testament, Jeremiah promised a future filled with hope to people forced to leave the place they had always belonged, people who may have felt they had no future at all.

In the New Testament, Peter echoed and expanded on the theme. We know his letter “to the exiles scattered” as 1 Peter. It specifically addresses those cast out for daring to follow the Lord Jesus, when others disapprove. It announces from the start:

Not one is missing, not one forgotten. God the Father has his eye on each of you, and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus. May everything good from God be yours! (1 Peter 1:2 MSG).

Then, 1 Peter explores our living hope, our current sufferings and how to live in the tension between the two, with grace and even joy. It teaches us not to deny what is painful, lonely and hard, but also not to forget what is equally real and far more lasting.

Hope and inheritance

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 (1:3-4).

The Message says it this way:

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven – and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all – life healed and whole (1:3-5 MSG).

Joy and suffering

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials (1:6).

Rejoicing and suffering grief don’t seem to go together at all, until we realize “greatly rejoice” doesn’t mean “act giddy and embrace denial.”

The joy God gives isn’t a giddy, you’re-really-up-then-you’re-really-down feeling. Nor is it a rose-colored-glasses view of life. Rather, it bubbles up deep within you, yet somehow undergirds you. It is, at once, bedrock and an underground spring. It does not tell you to deny hardship, injustice or grief. In fact, by welcoming joy, you give yourself new permission to feel sadness, anger and fear. And each time you do, after they are spent, the joy remains.¹

One further thing: By giving yourself permission to feel sadness, anger and fear, you enlarge your capacity to feel joy. You prepare the way for joy.

For the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross (Heb. 12:2).

On the way to rejoicing greatly:

Jesus prayed in the Garden, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:42, 44).
Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

In Christ, suffering weeps. It prays. It cries out. But it does not have the last word. Joy does.

So does faith. The sufferings we experience while living as exiles and strangers on earth deepen and strengthen, purify and prove our faith.

Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him – with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation (1 Peter 1:7-9 MSG).

Life energetic and blazing

So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that’s coming when Jesus arrives. Don’t lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn’t know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, “I am holy; you be holy.”

You call out to God for help and he helps – he’s a good Father that way. But don’t forget, he’s also a responsible Father, and won’t let you get by with sloppy living.

Your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in. He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, you know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately – at the end of the ages – become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for you. It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that you trust God, that you know you have a future in God (1:13-21 MSG).

I don’t know about you, but I don’t normally associate the words “energetic and blazing” with holiness. Yet genuine holiness isn’t snooty religiosity. It’s not about self-effort or perfection or the illusion thereof.

Holiness is “set-apartness.” Flawed people in a fallen world give themselves to the God who has given himself for them, the God who is, himself, set apart. They’re thus “pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life.” Facing down disillusionment, weaknesses, heartbreak, doubt and sins, they keep learning to trust him, to follow, to obey.

They can do that because Jesus’ death and resurrection has made the way. It opened the way for God the Spirit to live in us and to work in us what seems impossible this side of heaven. It opened the floodgates of grace.

And thus, holy is something the Father has made us in the Son. It is something we become as we cooperate, day by day, choice by choice, by grace and faith and Spirit. Every time we go with him who is by nature energetic and blazing – even when we feel exhausted and spent – we welcome our future into our now.

On and on

Now that you’ve cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God’s living Word. Just think: a life conceived by God himself! That’s why the prophet said,

The old life is a grass life,
Its beauty as short-lived as wildflowers;
Grass dries up, flowers droop,
God’s Word goes on and on forever.

This is the Word that conceived the new life in you (1:22-25 MSG).

“Just think: a life conceived by God himself!” Even in suffering, even in exile, may you find growing within you:

a life energetic and blazing with holiness,
life healed and whole,
laughter and singing,
genuine faith proved genuine,
living hope,
one-anothering love,
a future that starts now.

Posts in the series, To the exiles scattered

Footnotes

I made a similar statement in the post, Sukkot: The Feast of Joy. ↩︎

Healing from toxic church – seeking what is precious, and truly God