Theme of 1 Peter 1:3-9: "From God you have received a glorious expectation of things to come: Praise God and rejoice in it in spite of affliction." Or "God gives new life and a living hope and reveals that this salvation is yours now. Praise God and rejoice in this."

• Rebirth? New birth may simply be another way of describing grace-God’s initiative in human salvation. Negatively stated, the image suggests our inability to birth ourselves into God’s grand plan and place as children of God. Such an interpretation may go a long way toward keeping us from becoming mote-pickers when it comes to whose in and whose out of God’s Kingdom based on some "born again" experience. ("Are you sure you are born again?") Rebirth need not be stretched to such doctrinal or moralistic extremes. At least it means fundamentally that God has taken the initiative vis-à-vis our inability to bring us into a new place in the Kingdom of God-heaven, inheritance, shalom, et al.

 

Listening to the Earliest Christians-Venerable Bede on 1 Peter 1:

Your place in the kingdom of heaven is ready, your room in the Father’s house is prepared, and your salvation in heaven awaits you. All you have to do, if you want to receive them, is to make yourself ready. But since no one can do this by their own efforts, Peter reminds us that we are kept in the power of God by faith. Nobody can keep doing good works in the strength of their own free will. So we must all ask God to help us, so that the One who made it possible for us to do good works in the first place may bring us to perfection.

• "Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark." -Unknown

• "Gracious Lord, thank you for showing me the delight you take in me. You give me great joy in turn because you choose to make of me your home. May my contemplation of you make me more like you and increase my own joy in your glorious creation."

 

Born again-what does this mean? The claim that Christians are born anew raises issues and eyebrows! Born-again Christianity can sometimes refer to a particular spiritual experience without any social or ethical implications.

• Move to "born anew" in the 1^st century: for the Christians of Peter’s time, it was clear that being born again not only meant adding joy to one’s life, but also leaving behind one’s congenial relationship with neighbors and community. Being born again hurt. How might that ancient understanding impact our post-modern church views of the term?