1 PETER 1:3

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.

TO PONDER

All through recorded history, people have had an expectation that there was a future life after we died, and they committed themselves to religious observances to be eligible for entry into that future life. It is interesting to ponder on where they received advice on what this future life was like and how to be eligible for it. My cynical side sometimes thinks that the ruling priestly class made up religious rules to keep their subjects in control, threatening them with missing out if they didn’t surrender to the religious demands of the priests.

For Christians, we have Jesus who not only tells us about the future life, but also how to attain it. To start with, Jesus came from this future life, so He had full experiential knowledge of it. But He didn’t just come to us to tell us about this future life, He first joined in with us in living this earthly life, and He did it in a way that showed us how His Father originally planned for us to live in a wonderful relationship with the Heavenly Family while we lived here on this earth. But, not only to show us, but to attribute that perfectly lived relationship to all of us.

Then we get to the part about what we have to do ourselves to be eligible for this future life. And Jesus tells us there is not a single thing we can do to make ourselves eligible, no matter how much we might try. So that is not much good news. And yet it is; because it means we can stop trying. Jesus tells us He has got it all under control. As a full representative of all humanity, He will do all that is needed for all of humanity, over all time, to enable us to be eligible for this wonderful future life that He knows so well.

But it is going to cost Him, and out of His love for us He is prepared to go through all that is needed to achieve our eligibility for an eternal living relationship with the Heavenly Family.

Through the Lenten season and our Easter observances, we have been reminded again of all that Jesus had to go through for our future with Him. The highlight is that Jesus came back to life on that first Easter morning with a new resurrected human body. Before Jesus entered that miraculously created foetus in Mary’s womb, Jesus had been only a spiritual being, but He then added a human body to His being. Now, after His resurrection He had a new human body, the exact same human body we will receive at our resurrection.

The significance of Jesus going back to Heaven with His new human body shows just how much our Heavenly Father is committed to our future with Him. Through what Jesus has done for us, God has adopted us into the Heavenly Family for this awesome relationship with them. This assurance we have for our future, the bible refers to as “hope”. If refers to something we don’t fully have now, but is a certainty in the future; not wishful thinking.

But our awesome relationship with the Heavenly Family is not just something we have to wait for in the future, it begins now. Our Heavenly Father has guaranteed this by giving His Holy Spirit to live in us now, to guide us in learning how to live as members of this family.

The challenge we face is learning to trust the commitment and love of the Heavenly Family to us and learning to let go of all the things we cling to for our security. Holy Spirit is continually working in us to achieve this.

What an awesome committed, loving God we have!

Prayer: Dear Jesus, Thank You for becoming a human being and living among us to reveal the full level of the plans the Heavenly Family has for us. But most of all, thank You for all You did to make us members of Your Heavenly Family. And thank You for all You are doing to teach us how to live as Your brothers and sisters. Amen

Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping