“…set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” 1 Peter 1:13b
What does that look like, to set your hope fully on future grace? It looks like a desperate gambler that has placed every bit of livelihood that the Roulette wheel lands on black. It looks like the poker player sitting with pocket Aces convinced that he will have the “nut hand”.
If it doesn’t land on black you are homeless. If some other guy gets lucky on the flop and you find yourself up the river with only a pair of Aces and the other guy is sitting there with a Full House you’ve not only lost the farm you’ve lost your shirt, shoes, and family dog.
Keeping a few chips aside just in case you are wrong isn’t going all in. It’s not setting your hope fully on something. It’s not really having absolute confidence in your hand. To set your hope fully is to throw in all your chips and maybe your watch to boot. You aren’t leaving anything back.
So when Peter tells us here to “set your hope fully on” he is saying don’t leave an ounce of hope to anything else. Go all in. Don’t shore up your bets. Don’t keep a few chips into the stock market, or a few chips into another religion, or a few chips into your good works, or a few chips into having a nice house or a nice family, or a few chips into money, or a few chips into entertainment, or a few chips into relationships. Don’t shore up your bets. Go all in. Set every ounce of your hope onto Jesus Christ and what is awaiting you in Him.
May we hope in nothing else.
If we’re not that way with our soul, then we really don’t have any hope, do we? And that’s about our dying, so why not be that way with our living, too? I can recall many times folks have shared a dilemma with me, not knowing how to proceed in something. I almost always ask them which action would take the most faith on their part. Their reaction has uniformly been like turning on a light switch. And I’ve never seen God let them down. And yet I have to remind myself of that every day, myself. I’d think that… Read more »
‘the in-rushing of grace’ directs our gaze to what lies beyond this world in a way that prepares us to ‘go forth’ in this life as Christian people: Are we to embrace a dying world, in His Name? Or remain aloof from it, in our own comfort zones with our own kind? The ‘contact’ Our Lord had with ‘unbelievers’ did not always end with faith on their part . . . but still, He did not stay aloof from them Can we take some hope from that? The kind of hope spoken of here: “Hope is an orientation of the… Read more »
The ‘contact’ Our Lord had with ‘unbelievers’ did not always end with faith on their part . . . but still, He did not stay aloof from them No, but He did preach the gospel to them. He did proclaim that no one comes to the Father except through Him, which means that any other faith is a false religion. So, He told them the truth and when we call all men and women to repent of their sins and place their faith in Jesus Christ, we are not being “aloof”, we’re preaching the gospel that Jesus preached–the biblical gospel.… Read more »
Love the analogy and the firm reminder!
Thanks, Mike!