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”…the things which are now reported unto you.”
— 1 Peter 1:12
Dear Friends,
We live in dark times! When we look at all the evil that abounds in our world and in our own hearts and lives, we might be inclined to idealize the past, yes even idolize it, as if it then really and essentially was better. However, the fact of the matter is that neither the times nor the people were any better. Ever since Adam’s fall every time and every generation, including those we look back to with fondness, has been sinful. We read in Genesis 6:5, “And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” In other words, He knew we are hopelessly incorrigible; that is: left to ourselves! But thanks be to God, that is not what He did. He send His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to live and die for sinners such as you and I are. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Now here we have Divine Light for dark times, for any time, anywhere in the world, also for us as we face Anno Domino (the year of our Lord) 2008!
We live, as one said, both in the worst of times and in the best of times! It is a time in whch Satan goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom He may devour, but it also is a time in which Jesus Christ is gathering in His elect. That is exactly how Peter encourages the scattered, persecuted Christians in 1 Peter 1. Now perhaps “for a season, if need be, in heaviness through many temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6, 7). The days in which we live are wicked indeed, and so are we, but God still is gracious towards sinners who turn to Him confessing their sins and then find in Him overwhelming and abundant reason for hope and expectation for the future.
Is that you? Peter writes to encourage such, that though we still are sinners, yet that God, “according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (v. 3). No matter what happens, we are safe for two reasons. The first is that our salvation is “kept in heaven for us” as “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled” (v. 4), so we can’t spoil it. Secondly, we who are still on earth, “are kept by the power of God through faith” (v. 4), so have no reason to boast but in Him, nor have any reason to fear!
This salvation, now so readily available to us, was not like that in other times. Simply because the Word of God and many good books expounding it have never before been printed and placed in so many hands as in our days. This is the Word, “which liveth and abideth for ever” (v. 23), “endureth for ever.” And which “by the gospel is preached unto you” (v. 25).
Proclaimed by God’s sovereign and gracious providence not only to “strangers scattered” nearly two centuries ago from the Old Testament, but to us, to you and me, today, both from the Old and the New Testaments. A salvation of which “the prophets have enquired and searched diligently” (v. 10) and guided by “the Spirit of Christ which was in them” as they “testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow” (v. 11). They were blessed, as were their hearers, but none has benefited as much from it as we today. “Unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent from heaven: which things the angels desire to look into” (v. 12).
May these words ‘now reported to you’ not come to you in vain, unto eternal condemnation; but rather with blessed fruit, ‘by grace through faith’ unto eternal glory and praise of the Lord Jesus? And that we may expect great things from the Lord our God in spite of our sins.
With warm Christian greetings,
Pastor Foppe VanderZwaag