by Rev. Wm. MacLean, M.A.
(Sermon preached and recorded in Palmerston North, New Zealand, on Friday, 23rd June, 1967).
TEXT: 1 Peter 1, 3, 4 — “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, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you.”
We shall consider as the Lord will enable us:
1. Those who have this hope.
2. The nature of their hope — it is a lively or living hope.
3. That bound up with this hope is an interest in and a right to the inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for all who have this hope.
In other words, it is those who have this hope, as the words of our text make clear, who are heirs of Heaven.
And firstly — those who have this hope. There was a day when they did not have this hope. The Word of God declares that all by nature are without God and without hope in the world, that is without this lively hope, this good hope through grace. All have a hope of some kind, but only those who have been begotten again, or born again by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, have this lively hope.
Their portion is in this life only. Their hopes and prospects therefore are worldly and materialistic. They have no hope for eternity. Their need of being born again, and of being prepared for death and eternity are matters which give them no concern. They are of the earth earthy. They are like the rich man in the parable who prospered in worldly things, and who said to his soul, “Soul, thou has much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” Luke 12 v. 20. How numerous they are in our day who live as this rich man, blinded by the god of this world, wise in their own estimation but fools in God’s sight, careless and unconcerned as to their latter end! But the wrath of God will be the eternal portion of all who die as the rich man did, for “the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” (Psalm 9 v. 17). They shall then know, when it is forever too late, the answer to the solemn question, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” It would be our wisdom to face this question now, for “now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation,” and to believe that nothing short of having Christ as our portion will profit or save our souls. “Godliness with contentment” the Word of God tells us, “is great gain.” We can have neither, apart from faith in Christ. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” for “none perish that Him trust.”
There are others, and they too form a numerous class, who profess to have a hope. They do not question but that they are God’s children, and that they will be received into Heaven at last. If however they were examined as to the foundations of their hope, they would confess that they live honest and good lives, engage in social work, in helping the poor, the sick and the bereaved, they do much for the Church and serve the Lord. They are not irreligious like the first class. But all without exception, whose hope for eternity is based on what they themselves think they are and upon what they do and what they hope to do, have not “the lively hope” which our text speaks of, but a false hope. Those who have this “lively hope,” their good hope through grace is not based on any works of their own. It is based on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. Christ is the centre and the foundation of their hope. The Truth declares that the hope of the hypocrite shall perish, but that the righteous has a hope in his death. A hypocrite, according to the common scriptural usage of the term, is a person who is deluded or self-deceived. All who are building their hopes for eternity on their own good works, their kindness to their neighbours and so on, are building on a foundation of sand. They are self-deceived and their hope shall perish. They are not of the righteous who have a hope in their death. The foolish virgins were hypocrites, that is they were self-deceived. At death the lamp of their hope went out. Instead of being received into heaven as they expected, they were shut out and shut into the prison of eternal despair. We read that the door was shut. How solemn the words ‘And the door was shut’! But the wise virgins who had this lively or living hope entered in.
Now in connection with the nature of this hope, it is said to be a lively hope or as it is elsewhere called, a good hope through grace that shall not be put to shame. We are told that those who have it, were begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Christ’s resurrection from the dead implies the death which He died in order to make an atonement for sin. “He was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification.” No sinner can be justified in God’s sight, can be accounted righteous and have the pardon of his sins, but on the ground of Christ’s atoning death. “It is the blood,” we read, “that maketh an atonement for the soul.” No blood could make an atonement for the soul but the precious blood of Christ. The blood of the sacrifices slain on Jewish altars pointed to the coming of Christ, to the one sacrifice which He in the fulness of time was to offer for sin. It is Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary that made the atonement that God required for sin. It is the sacrifice which the Lord in His eternal love provided. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” We therefore read, that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth from all sin. There is infinite efficacy and merit in Christ’s blood to wash the foulest sinner clean. As proof that Christ by the offering of Himself met and satisfied the claims of divine justice and made the atonement for sin which justice in God required, God raised Him from the dead on the third day, and not only raised Him from the dead, but exalted and glorified Him in the human nature with the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He is exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour for to give repentance and remission of sins unto Israel. It is in virtue of His death, resurrection, ascension and glorification, that He is set before us in the gospel as a Saviour mighty to save. There is no hope for any sinner apart from Christ, but in Christ there is hope for the greatest sinner out of hell. He is set before us in the gospel as a door of hope and as an open door. “I am the door, by me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”
It is true of those who have a good hope through grace, that they died to the false hope they once entertained. We have either a good hope or a false hope. If we have not been begotten again to a lively hope by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, then our hope is false. It is a hope that will perish. The apostle Paul tells us, there was a time in his life that he was a godly young man in his own estimation. He fully believed he was in possession of a hope that gave him a right to the heavenly inheritance. In the mercy of God he died to that hope. He came to see it to be false and unfounded. It was based on the training and privileges he had as an orthodox Jew, which included the sacraments of the Old Testament Church, Circumcision and the Passover. Besides the thorough grounding he had in the law and the prophets at the feet of Gamaliel, and the zeal with which he did God service, he bore a character which was outwardly blameless and above reproach. If any could lay claim to credentials for heaven on the ground of church privileges and good works it was Saul of Tarsus. A day, however, came in his experience when he was brought to see that they were altogether irrelevant as a ground of salvation, that he was guilty of going about to establish his own righteousness and not submitting to the righteousness of God. “When the commandment came,” he confesses, “sin revived and I died.” The commandment which gave a death-blow to his mistaken hopes was the tenth commandment. “I had not known sin, but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” The Holy Spirit opened up to his understanding and conscience the spirituality of God’s law, that it requires perfect obedience in heart, walk and conversation. Such perfect obedience can only come from a nature that is holy, sinless and undefiled. Adam, as he came forth from the hand of God in a state of innocence, had such a nature. He was therefore, able to come up to the righteousness of the law, to give the law that perfect obedience which the law required. But since the Fall man has a nature that is sinful, defiled and depraved. On account of the sinfulness of our nature and the sinfulness of our actions we are under the curse and condemnation of God’s holy law. As it is written, “Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” The ruin of man’s nature by the Fall, and his total inability to be saved by any obedience of his own to the law, is experimentally opened up in the understanding of all who have a good hope through grace. They are taught to know that by the works of the law no flesh can be justified in God’s sight. That is an unerasable conviction that the Holy Spirit stamps on their hearts. But not only did those who have this good hope die to all hope of obtaining salvation, or of being justified in God’s sight by any works of righteousness of their own, but they also died to all ability on their part of believing in Christ. Persons may profess to believe in, and even defend and contend for, the doctrine of the total depravity of man’s nature and hold to the doctrine of justification by faith, and yet only have a natural faith, or as divines term it, an historical faith. It is the faith of decisionism, the soul-deluding technique of popular evangelists who lead their converts to believe, that their decision for Christ is the fruit of the faith which is the gift of God. We can believe in the Fall of man, the divinity of Christ, His virgin birth, atoning death, His physical resurrection, ascension and glorification, and as we have already mentioned, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and yet have only an historical or intellectual faith. The intellect of man apart from regenerating grace can attain to such a faith and to a sound and profound acquaintance with the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. Persons brought up in orthodox circles unquestionably hold to such doctrines. There are many, too, who undergo an intellectual conversion from Arminianism to Calvinism. They come to hold and to uphold the doctrines of free and sovereign grace. But alas! They unwarrantably conclude that because their creed is sound, that their hope is good. But all who have been convinced of their sinnership before God, whether they were orthodox or unorthodox, were convinced of their inability to believe in Christ. The Holy Spirit convinces all whom He savingly teaches, of the sin of unbelief, that their inability is their sin and proof of their guilt. They are brought in guilty before God, the judge of all, in their consciences and brought to see and to believe, that God would be just in their eternal condemnation. Only those who have been convinced of their total inability, believe experimentally, and therefore savingly, in the doctrine of the total depravity of man’s nature, for no sooner has the sinner died to his own ability and to realise that in himself he is helpless and hopeless, than his mind is enlightened in the knowledge of Christ, so that he sees Christ by faith and receives and rests upon Him alone as He is freely offered in the gospel. All who are regenerated are dead to the law. No sinner who has passed from death unto life looks to the law for life.
All, without exception, who belong to the household of faith, whether sanctified from the womb as John the Baptist was, or like Timothy from childhood made wise unto salvation, whether their conversion corresponds with that of Lydia or of the Philippian jailer, all are dead to the law. And if dead to the law then married to Christ, as the Truth declares, in a covenant which ensures and makes over to them all the blessings which are in Christ. “But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” They are called effectually and justified freely. “It is one thing,” as Dr Owen says, “to be in a state of grace, it is another to know that this is the case. All believers are in a state of grace. They have peace with God, being reconciled to Him by the blood of the cross, but as to what shall be the measure of their understanding of their interest in it, this is left to the sovereign grace and good pleasure of God. There are many believers who all their days never come to an abiding sense of peace with God, but are filled with troubles and exercised with fears and perplexities, so that they go sorrowing and heavy all their days.” Persons with an intellectual or historical faith are not tried as to their faith or as to their hope. They are buoyed up with the delusion of an unquestioned assurance. The savour of spiritual death is in their writings no matter how sound, and in their exercises no matter how scriptural. They are strangers to the poverty of spirit of the living in Jerusalem (Matth. 5). Those who have a good hope through grace are said to be an afflicted and poor people whose trust is in the name of the Lord. . .
A “lively hope” is not apart, as we already observed, from faith in Christ. The confession and desire of those who have it is, “that I might be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith sees a substance, a reality, in the blessings of redemption freely offered to us as sinners in the gospel. We read of those in the parable of the marriage feast to whom the invitation, “All things are now ready, come ye to the feast,” made no appeal. What was real and of substance to them was their land, their oxen, their merchandise and their family concerns. They are the seed of the serpent, whose god is their belly and who live in the dust. They have neither appetite nor relish for the manna from heaven. But the lively hope and the faith unfeigned of saving grace seeks to rise to the confession of the apostle — “the things that were gain to me, them I counted loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” Faith sees a reality in the blessings of the gospel, and hope waits for them. Those therefore, who have this hope, are a waiting people. They wait upon the Lord and look to Him for the blessings their souls stand in need of.
My soul, wait thou with patience
upon thy God alone;
On Him dependeth all my hope
and expectation.
Ps. 62.5 (Metr. version).
Where this “lively hope” is there is an endeavour to keep the commandments of God. Those who are in Christ, are under the law to Christ. Although they are dead to the law as a ground of acceptance, they are under the law to Christ as their rule of life. “If ye love Me,” Christ says, “keep my commandments.” The prayer and desire of grace is, “Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me to go in the path of thy commandments: for therein do I delight.” They love the law of God after the inner man. They are not under the law, but under grace. That is, they are delivered from the condemnation of the law, but not from the obedience due to the law. The grace of love in the soul manifests itself in obedience. “This is the love of God that we keep His commandments.” There is false teaching abroad in connection with the believer’s relation to the law. The verse, “ye are not under the law but under grace,” is interpreted to mean that the law as a moral code and rule of life for the believer is dispensed with. Such an interpretation is not from grace but from nature, for the grace of God that bringeth salvation, as the apostle says in his epistle to Titus, teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world. Saving knowledge of Christ is all of grace. “And hereby we do know that we know Him,” says the apostle John in his First Epistle, “if we keep His commandments. He that saith I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” There are others who hold that the moral law is not the believer’s rule of life, but the precepts of the gospel. But what are the precepts of the gospel, but an unfolding and an opening up of the spirituality of the law?
It is by the resurrection of Christ from the dead that His people are begotten again to a lively hope. The denial of the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, so widespread in our day, is the very negation of the Christian faith. All who deny Christ’s physical resurrection from the dead have no lively hope. They are liars and hypocrites, and all such shall have their portion in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death. All who have this lively hope believe in the resurrection of Christ, for their faith and hope is in a living Saviour, the One who was dead and is alive, and alive for evermore after the power of an endless life. They have, accordingly, a love to the Lord’s day, the divine memorial to Christ’s resurrection from the dead. A person who claims to love Christ and who has no love for His day is self-deceived. His love is spurious and his hope is false. The following question was put by the saintly Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne: “Did you ever meet with a lively believer in any country under heaven — one who loved Christ, and lived a holy life — who did not delight in keeping holy to God the entire Lord’s day?”
Those who have this “lively hope” are said in this chapter to purify their souls by obeying the truth through the Spirit. The Word of God has become precious to them.
“This word of thine my comfort is
In mine affliction:
For in my straits I am revived
by this thy word alone.”
Ps. 119.50.
They are as new-born babes, as we read in chapter 2 of this epistle, desiring the sincere milk of the Word, that they may grow thereby. Nothing will sustain and nourish the life of grace in the soul, but the sincere milk of the Word, unadulterated by false and erroneous views. Those born again cannot feed on the husks of false doctrine. Those who wilfully do, prove that they are strangers to grace and to God. We find the apostle warning the saints in Corinth against complicity in or compromise with what is false and idolatrous in doctrine and worship, and he concludes his warning with the exhortation, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” What is contrary to the revealed will of God as set forth in His Word is “unclean” in His sight. And if “unclean” in God’s sight, it cannot but have a defiling and deadening effect on those who countenance it. It will rob His people of their liberty, and prove a yoke of bondage to them. But in obeying the truth through the Spirit in pursuing the path of duty so clearly set before them in the above exhortation, the Lord will be restoring to them the joy of His salvation, and giving them tokens that they are His sons and daughters. However difficult and trying they may see their duty to be, how gracious the encouragement in the words, “And I will receive you.” To the self-deceived, the approval and the applause of men is more to them than the honour of Christ and His Cause in the world.
They seek also to purify their souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, as set forth in verses 14-16 of this chapter. “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance; but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, as I am holy.” “And every man,” says the apostle John in his First Epistle, “that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” His people are kept conscious of their need of being cleansed and kept. And to Christ, the Hope of Israel and the Saviour thereof in the time of trouble, they look for both. They plead the merit of His precious blood to cleanse them from secret faults and to keep them from all presumptuous sins. With the Psalmist they confess, “If in my heart I sin regard the Lord me will not hear.” Balaam was a prophet whose profession was great and his words were good. “Let me die,” he said, “the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” Although he desired the end of the righteous, for the righteous has a hope in his death, Balaam had no desire to live the life of the righteous. He loved the wages of unrighteousness despite his confessions to the contrary. The Lord exposed the enmity which he cherished to His Israel. His hope, like the hope of every hypocrite, perished at death. How solemn the words, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name have done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” They were workers of iniquity either in secret or in public. But those with a good hope are made honest. They greatly fear being deceived for eternity. “Search me, O God,” is their cry “and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
It is true of His people that they have unfeigned love to the brethren. “We know,” said the apostle, “that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”
They have a love for the Cause of Christ in the world. They seek and pray for the coming of His kingdom, the glorious days promised, when His will shall be done in the earth as it is done in heaven. It is through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit blessing the gospel, which will usher in the millennial glory of the Church, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Their prayer and desire is that of the Psalmist, “The whole earth let His glory fill, Amen, so let it be.” The Rev. Christopher Munro, a godly minister of the last century in Scotland, once remarked in the course of his preaching, “If you can say in truth, ‘Thy kingdom come,’ I tell you that you have what will stand you for eternity.”
Those who have this lively hope have a right and a title to the inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away. Their right to it has its source in their election in Christ before the foundation of the world. Christ redeemed them by the price He paid for them, and by His perfect obedience obtained a right to the inheritance for them. “I go,” He said to His disciples, “to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye may be also.” He was then on His way to Gethsemane and Calvary. They have a right to the inheritance through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood upon them, in their regeneration, in their being quickened out of the grave of spiritual death in which they were, and in their being put in possession of a good hope through grace.
It is through much tribulation that they are to enter the kingdom, but whatever storms they meet with on their voyage to the desired haven, it is said that the anchor of their hope is both sure and steadfast. It is the all-prevailing intercession of Jesus, their Saviour and Advocate within the veil, who is made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec, that keeps the anchor of their hope sure and steadfast. He ever liveth to make continual intercession for them. It is in virtue of Christ’s intercession that they are kept in the world, sanctified through the truth and in His own appointed time, glorified. They are said in verse 3 to be kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. That is the salvation they will receive at death, when they enter into possession of their eternal inheritance. It is through faith in His power that they are kept. It is through faith in His blood that they are washed.
So they from strength unwearied go
still forward unto strength,
Until in Sion they appear
before the Lord at length.
Psalm 84.7.
Their desire is to give to Him the honour, and the glory and the praise which are His due. They feel they come far short of what they desire. When they would do good, they find evil to be present with them. But the Lord has promised to fulfil the desire of those that fear Him. Their desire shall be fully satisfied when throughout the endless ages their song of praise shall be “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever, Amen.”
(The above sermon has been printed in pamphlet form and is available free on request from Westminster Standard, P.O. Box 740, Gisborne, New Zealand.)
If we be content with that which Christ gives us, we shall want nothing.
John Brown.