Living Hope

The Living Hope Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, I Peter 1 v 3 God the Father is the source and fountainhead of all blessings. The word blessing means to be lifted up, to be enlarged, to increase. He blesses because He is greatly blessed. His is the greatness, glory, goodness, honour, power, majesty, victory. Everything in heaven and earth is His. His is the kingdom and He is exalted as the head above all. Both riches and honour come from Him. In His hand is power and might. He can make great and give strength to all. He reigns over all. All of His glory, power, grace, blessings and other attributes are contained in the very name of God. When we hold onto His Name, we hold on to Him. As He is absolutely holy and cannot violate His own standards described in the Word of God, we depend on His grace and mercy in order to be so blessed. It is His Son and heir Lord Jesus Christ who makes us co-heirs to all the blessings in the heavenly places by virtue not of our deeds but our faith. Satan cannot bless as he is cursed. Jesus who is the absolute manifestation in flesh and blood of the glory, goodness, power, love and grace of God needed to submit to death in order to give mankind the lively hope of eternal life and to give us the inheritance of blessings of God. Satan is the absolute manifestation of evil. If satan the evil one was overcome by power and might of God, it would have made God a greater evil. He could not bring Himself to be part of a power struggle with satan. Instead, He purposed that His sinless Son Jesus submitted to die in the place of all. Jesus is the living and eternal bridge between God and man. The incorruptible eternal seed of the Word begets hope in us that we too are blessed and live forever. The corruptible seed of man works towards our death. At the same time our faith in the promises of God in Christ gives us the living hope that we too will be resurrected like Jesus Christ. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead works in us to quicken or make alive our spirits. Till the death and resurrection of Jesus, death was the absolute dead end of the human soul. Now it became just a punctuation mark or a comma in the sojourn of a man. Hence faith in the Son is sufficient to give us abundant grace and power in all of life’s situations and challenges as well as for life eternal. The word abundant indicates that on account of our living hope, we will have even more than what we need of blessings, of power, might, strength and grace. A lively or living hope implies that hope that is at work in all of our life situations or all aspects of life- physical, emotional, spiritual, social, intellectual, financial or professional. It is a hope that is real, practical, holistic, consistent and enduring. Hope is based on the Word and it is what fuels our prayer. Prateep V Philip