Imperishable! Imperishable! Imperishable! (Wednesday, Micah 3, 1Peter 1)

Where would you keep your most valuable treasure to guarantee utmost security? A safe, perhaps? If you were a structural engineer, what materials would you select to build a structure that would last forever? Maybe diamonds? As we read 1Peter 1, we discover God’s bank vault for a treasure most precious to us and the materials he selected to construct us from in order to qualify us for that treasure.

Both passages for today’s Daily Delighting in the Word address the persecution and suffering of God’s people from two complementary perspectives. The Prophet Micah declares God’s certain judgment against those who perpetrate injustice against his people.  On the other hand, the Apostle Peter gives God’s perspective on the victims of the injustice – their eternal reward is guaranteed. In what follows, I highlight what caught my attention as I was reading 1Peter 1. 

The Apostle was writing to encourage early Christians who were suffering persecution for their faith. Reading from the NIV, it was striking to me how the Apostle repeated the idea of an “imperishable” quality:

V4: ...an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade...

V7: ...your faith – of greater worth than gold which perishes...

V18: For you know that it was not with perishable things...that you were redeemed.

V23: For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable...word of God.

My summary of these verses is: God has used imperishable means to produce an imperishable faith in us which qualifies us for an imperishable inheritance in heaven. God, having decided on our inheritance, kept it in the safest place possible – heaven. There is no point in keeping the inheritance so safe if the heir is left to the peril of eternal destruction.  Thus God used imperishable means to give birth to and preserve the heirs. We’re constructed from the precious blood of Jesus, the eternal Lamb of God. We’re constructed from the eternal word of God. And finally, the resurrection of Jesus is proof of the security of the heirs. We are indeed imperishable heirs of an imperishable inheritance, by the grace of God!

Harsh as this may sound to one going through persecution and suffering, I have to agree with the word of God that pain is perishable. It, in fact, has quite a short shelf-life “though now for a little while you...suffer grief...”(v6). And God uses it to refine our faith so that it is imperishable.

It seems to me that the Apostle’s argument is that there is nothing in this world  – neither its pleasures or adversities - that should ever be compared to the ultimate goal and locus of Christian experience: the treasure of salvation and an eternal union with Christ our saviour. In light of this, the Apostle gives us two main commands: be holy in all you do (v15) and love one another deeply from the heart (v22). 

For personal reflection:

 (1) How does the Apostle’s argument motivate us to holy living? (2) In what ways can I demonstrate a deep love for my brothers and sisters in Christ? (3) Does it get harder to obey these commands in the face of persecution? (4) Are there subtle ways Christians could be persecuting other Christians?

Elvis Shoko (7pm @ EAC)

Tomorrows Readings: Micah 4, 1Peter 2