Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to the Gospel in Life podcast. What sustains our faith when life feels overwhelming? The Bible tells us that when we become Christians, the power of Christ's resurrection is already at work in our lives. Today, Tim Keller explores how this resurrection power forms a framework for perseverance and hope amid the pressures of everyday life.

Guest (Male): Tonight's scripture reading comes from 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 through 12. 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, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.

This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with great care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.

It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told to you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Tim Keller: Now, the Bible says that when we unite with Jesus Christ, his resurrection power comes into our lives. It says in Ephesians 2, we've been raised with Christ already. It’s a spiritual resurrection. Philippians 3, Paul says, "I want to know him and the power of his resurrection."

So, even though Christians believe that we will be resurrected in our bodies at the end of time, there’s already a spiritual resurrection that happens to us now. What does that look like? What kind of life is that? That’s what we’re going to explore for a number of weeks at Redeemer over the next few weeks by looking at these early chapters of 1 Peter.

1 Peter 1 and 2, and actually some of 2 Peter as well. These are, I’ve realized as I was getting ready to do this with you, some of the most important verses and passages in my life are here in 1 Peter. So look at this first chapter. We’re going to go through and notice that Peter says something happens to you when you become a Christian.

By marching through the text, we’re going to see what happened, where it happens, how it keeps happening, and why it happens. What happens, where it happens to you, how it keeps happening, and why. So first, and we're just going to march right through. Let's go.

Here's what happens to you when you become a Christian. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy, he has given us new birth." The first thing it tells us, and it's very significant, is that we experience the new birth. That's what happens to us.

And it's to us. See, Peter doesn't say—he's writing to a church, right?—he doesn't say, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy, he has given some of us new birth." People today, especially in New York, I've talked to people who say, "Oh yes, I understand born-again Christianity. It's a type of Christianity for people who need a kind of cathartic experience.

If you've had troubles in your life, I can understand why you want to have some kind of deep emotional experience. So born-again Christianity is for a kind of person. It's a type of Christianity, I get that." But Peter is saying no, it's not a type of Christianity. The new birth is Christianity.

He's saying "us." Who's "us"? Christians. He has given "us." He can talk to a whole group—an entire church—and say every one of us has received the new birth. Why? Because if you haven't received the new birth, you're not a Christian. It's not a type of Christianity. It's Christianity. If you haven't experienced the new birth, you're not a Christian.

Now, what is the new birth? This is the good and bad part about these epistles. Peter's bringing up a subject which he doesn't give us a lot of answers. You have to go to John, James, a lot of other places. But in a nutshell, let me tell you what the Bible says about what the new birth is. It's a new vitality and it's a new identity.

The reason why the metaphor is used—see, being born physically is one thing, being born spiritually is a way of talking about what happens to us spiritually. It's like being born, being born again. How so? It's like being born spiritually because it's a new vitality, new identity. First of all, new vitality.

By that, I mean that when you become a Christian, there is an implantation of a new kind of life. Spiritual life comes into you. 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 3 says we are partakers of the divine nature. It means God puts his spirit in us, God puts his lifeblood in us, his very nature in us.

Now, the two things I want to tell you about that are, on the one hand, sometimes that can be subtle. It doesn't always have to be dramatic. But on the other hand, what comes into you is stupendous. First of all, I think it's very important, if the Bible says that every person who's a Christian has to experience the new birth, we need to immediately say there are an enormous number of varieties of how that can happen.

We must not decide that there's one kind of conversion experience that everybody has got to somehow toe the line with. So let me give you three very famous examples to show you how different these things can be. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a pastor, was a preacher in the center of London for many a year in the 20th century.

He preached at Westminster Chapel. Westminster Chapel was this big church at Buckingham Gate. It was right outside of Buckingham Palace, not far, right in the middle of London. He tells this story in his preaching lectures. And the story is this: that there was a man one Sunday night, there was a man so despondent he was suicidal.

And he was walking through the streets of London on his way to the River Thames to throw himself in. He was going to find a bridge and walk across the bridge and throw himself in. He was that suicidal. And as he was going—true story, by the way—as he was coming along, it was a Sunday night and Westminster Chapel had Sunday night services and the windows were open and he heard the music and it gave him some kind of hope.

He said, "I think I'll go in." And so he went in, sat down, heard the Word of God preached, and eventually he became a Christian. That's pretty dramatic, right? "I was on the way to kill myself, and then I heard—I went by a church and I went in and I heard the Word of God and I was converted." That's dramatic. Very dramatic.

However, another story. C. Everett Koop, who just died recently, was in his 90s. He was the Surgeon General of the United States in the 1980s. And he was also a brilliant doctor at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia. If I remember correctly, he was the first person to successfully separate Siamese twins.

But he was just a brilliant doctor. And he was not a Christian believer, but his wife dragged him to the evening services at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia where Donald Grey Barnhouse was the preacher many years ago. It must have been in the '40s or '50s. And this is what he tells happened to him.

He said he remembers that when he began going to hear the preacher in the evening services, his wife dragged him, when he listened to the sermons, it was like almost nothing that he heard that he liked. Virtually everything he thought was stupid. He said he just didn't believe hardly anything the guy said.

And he realized that about a year and a half later, after continually being dragged by his wife, a year and a half later, he realized he believed pretty much everything the guy was saying. And he looked back and he said what happened? And he realized that very slowly, bit by bit by bit, he had—one argument made sense, "Okay, I guess I believe that," and another argument made sense, "Well, I guess I believe."

And bit by bit, he came to believe more and more the Christian faith until he realized, about a year and a half later, that actually he believed. That he really believed. He was praying, he had given himself to Christ. But if you'd asked him what day or what month or even what week, he couldn't tell you.

It was just somewhere the new life came in, but he couldn't even tell you when. And one more example. It's a pretty famous example and interesting, is Billy Graham's wife, Ruth. Billy Graham, of course, was the master of the dramatic "Come to Jesus, born again" experience. "The buses will wait for you."

And Ruth, the story is that Ruth experienced almost what C. Everett Koop experienced, only as a little child. She found that as she grew up, she heard the stories about Jesus. And you know, at the age of three, at the age of five, at the age of eight, every time she could understand a little bit more because she'd gotten older, what she understood she embraced bit by bit.

So somewhere at 12, 14 years old or something like that, she realized, "I profess faith." She believed it. She could never remember when she didn't believe it. On the other hand, she could remember when she didn't get it. And at some point, bit by bit by bit, it grew together, and therefore she never really could remember a time in which she didn't believe and she experienced the new birth.

When? What year did it happen? Age five? Age eight? When did it happen? She didn't know. But she experienced the new life. Now you see, I'm telling you that because it is crucial to realize, because of what I'm about to tell you, that in spite of what I'm about to tell you, the new birth can be dramatic or it can be incredibly subtle.

And you must not insist that it always happens in a certain way. But let me tell you what's coming into you. I'm going to do a little Greek on you. There's a word in the Bible, *palingenesia*. It's a word that means regeneration. You can even see the word *genesia*, you can see the Greek word 'generate' in there. *Palingenesia* means the ancient regeneration.

Paul says in the book of Titus that when we're born again, we experience regeneration, which is another way of saying rebirth, regeneration. And he uses the word, this is in Titus, *palingenesia*. Now, if you go to Matthew 19:28, Jesus says this: "When the Son of Man comes to sit on his glorious throne, at the renewal of all things, everyone who left houses or fathers or mothers or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and inherit eternal life."

Now Jesus is saying someday he will come back and he will sit on his throne and everything will be put right. He calls it the renewal of all things. Of *all* things. God's power at the end of time, when Jesus Christ comes back, will come down and everything stained and deformed about this world will be wiped clean.

All suffering will be gone, all death will be gone, all deformity will be gone. Everything sad will become untrue. All tears will be wiped away. Think of the power it's going to be, the power that's going to be exercised at that minute to make everything in the world perfect.

The renewal of all things. Well, guess what word Jesus uses there? He says when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne at the renewal of all things, at the *palingenesia*. What he's—see, "the" *palingenesia*, which means at the great regeneration of all things. Paul has the audacity to use the same word, and this is what most commentators and theologians understand Paul to be saying.

The tremendous power at the end of time that's going to make everything new actually comes into your life now—first installment, down payment, foretaste. But it's that same power that's going to renew the world at the end of time that comes into your life now through faith in Jesus Christ.

Do you know the power to change you've got? I want you to know that everybody in this room who has experienced the new birth, you're putting up with stuff you shouldn't put up with, including me too. Give up your small ambitions. The potential for change, the potential to change things in your life that are hard to change—you've got it! The *palingenesia* is in you.

And that's the reason why this metaphor is used, the new birth. It's a metaphor not only that when you become a Christian, you get new vitality, but you get a new identity. How so, the new identity? Well, it's a little bit like when a person is born, you've got a new person, right? And in many ways, when you become a Christian, it's you but it's not really—I mean, you're almost like a new person because the changes eventually can be enormous.

Very often it starts small, just like baby starts small. Baby start just a couple pounds in some cases. And so the new life starts small, but the possibilities for change are enormous. It's almost like becoming a new person. The story is told, supposedly, that Saint Augustine, you know, the great theologian Saint Augustine, had been a very licentious guy, a kind of wild and crazy guy before he became a Christian.

And then he became a Christian. And one day he was walking along on the street and one of his old mistresses came up and threw herself at him. And he was polite, evidently, and he was courteous to her, but he wasn't doing that. He wasn't going there. And she was stunned by his change.

And she looks at him and then suddenly it occurred to her, maybe he didn't really recognize me. So then she says, "But Augustine!" She says, "Augustine, it's me!" And Augustine says, "Oh yes, yes, I see. But it's not me." Those things don't define me anymore, he was saying. Those things don't drive me anymore. I'm really kind of somebody else. I'm not somebody else, but I am.

He has given us new birth. That's what happens to us. But secondly, where does this happen? Now, what I mean by that is: what makes this change so great that Augustine could even say, "Well, but it's not really me anymore"? And the second thing we learn is: the new birth operates in your hopes.

The reason the new birth changes you so much is it changes your hopes. And if you change your hopes, you change everything. Look here. It says, "Praise be to the God and Father who's given us new birth into a living hope." Isn't that interesting? What does that mean? That's what we're going to look at.

We're born again, which is like a huge change. Why? Because we now have a living hope. We're born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and into an inheritance that can never perish, or fade, or spoil. Kept in heaven, imperishable, living hope. Now, what does that mean? It means a lot.

If you can change a person's hope, you change everything in their lives because essentially—whether you know it or not—the course of your life is being set by what you hope in the most. That's why the new birth is so radical, because it gives you an imperishable hope and takes you off the perishable hopes that you've got.

So let's talk a little bit about this. What do I mean by hope? First of all, what I mean by hope is: hope is actually a desire and an expectation. See, everyone's got certain desires. We want meaning, we want significance, we want security. We want purpose, we want to feel like we're important, we want to feel like we're secure.

We have those desires, then you have to decide what will fulfill those desires. What will fulfill your desires? You need to look up there and figure out what that is. And whatever it is that you believe in that will fulfill those desires, whatever it is that you believe in—that'll fulfill it—you're building your life on that, you're setting your heart on that, you're setting your hopes on that.

Now there's a whole lot of things you can do. There's a whole lot of things that you could invest in and say, "This'll fulfill my deep desires." There's clusters of them. There's career, and money, and accomplishment, and status. That's one cluster. Another cluster is love, romance, finding that right person, building a family, beauty, maybe sex.

These are things that—that's another whole set of things that you can say, "That will fulfill my hopes. That will fulfill my desires for significance and security. I'll set my hope on that, or I'll set my hope on that." Another thing is being a good—is political causes or social causes or trying to make the world a better place or that sort of thing.

And then there's smart people who diversify their portfolio. Honestly, very often people who are—if you build your whole life on your career and you have a career reversal, you build your whole life on your family and somebody in your family's not doing well, you build your whole life on this or that.

And some people say, "Well, I'm kind of, I'm going to diversify the portfolio. I'm going to invest in a lot of these things." Nevertheless, all of us—all of everybody's heart chooses something to believe in that will fulfill those desires. You might believe in God, but you're building your life on some of these things. These are your hopes.

Now, secondly, I want you to see—that's what hope is—that we are unavoidably hope-based creatures. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs: hope disappointed makes the whole heart sick. Your entire well-being is all based on your hopes. Let me give you an example. This has been proven, by the way, empirically.

If you have two people in a room, let's just say you put a person A here and a person B here and they're in the same room—the room is the same, two rooms but they're identical, identical conditions, identical situations—and you give them a task. "Put this in this," or "do this." They have the same job.

And then you tell them, "When you're finished with this, I'm going to pay you $100." And you tell the other person who's got the same job, same condition, "When you're done with this, I'm going to give you $10,000." So they're working. It's kind of tedious work.

And they take a break and they go out and one person says to the other one, "Isn't this tedious? This is awful, I'm ready to quit." And the other person says, "Oh, not tedious! No, it's fine. It's all right. I have no problem with it," because one person thinks at the end of the day I'll get $100, the other person thinks at the end of the day I'll get $10,000.

And studies have shown that you experience your present in completely radical different ways depending on your hope. They're having the very same experience but because their hopes are different, one of them can hardly bear it and the other one is whistling while he works. Why? Hope. You see how radically it affects you?

And so what you decide—I mean, here you have very often, frankly, I mean over the years whenever I've counseled couples, in Christian couples, very often if the career isn't going well, very often the money's not doing well, very often the husband says, "I'm just falling apart," and the wife says, "There, there, honey, we need to trust the Lord."

But there's something wrong with one of the children, the wife's saying it's the end of the world and very often the husband saying, "There, there, honey, we need to trust the Lord." And the reason was because very often, though they both cared about money and they both loved their children, very often the wife had built her hopes for her significance, her security, her meaning in life was based on "my children be okay."

And though the husband loved the children, his hopes were a little bit—were actually more invested in his career. And even though everybody believes in Jesus—we all believe—and yet our hopes are different and it really sets the course of our life. When you're born again, however, everything changes.

What changes? The things that you used to look at as your hopes, you begin to pull your heart off of, and now you have an imperishable hope. See, your career is perishable, your children are perishable, everything else is perishable. But not this hope. And this hope is so powerful that when you actually begin—the more you really set your heart on it, and by the way, this takes time as we're going to see.

The Lord's Supper tonight is a way of actually investing more in your hope. It's a way of just saying, "Okay, I'm going to pull my heart off these other things. I love these other things, but this is my hope. This is really what I'm building my life on." The text tells us many places in the New Testament that if you build your life on this future hope, even the foretaste of that, at the end of time, the love you've always been looking for from your parents you're going to get in the arms of your Father.

The love you've been looking for from your spouse you're going to get in the arms of your ultimate spouse, Jesus Christ. The significance you've been trying to get from your job or your achievements or your art or your political causes or whatever, you're going to get when the triune God says to you, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Even the foretaste—we don't have that yet, but even the foretaste of it, even the anticipation of it that you get in prayer, you get in worship, even the anticipation of it, knowing what it's going to be, even the foretaste of our imperishable hope is more exciting, it's more fulfilling than the aftertaste of having built your life on all these other things.

And that's where the new birth happens. It changes your hopes. It changes your hopes. Thirdly, here's how the new life grows. Now, when I said we're going to look at what has happened to you, where it happens to you in your hopes, how it keeps happening to you. Now, I don't mean the new birth actually keeps happening to you. You're either born again or you're not. I don't mean that.

But I mean the life that comes with the new birth grows. How? Now there's a lot of ways to do it. I don't want you to think this is the only way. But 1 Peter is particularly good at talking about something: that one of the best ways, in fact, one of the main ways that all people grow into their hope and become more Christ-like, become more buoyant, live more loved, become more joyful, is through suffering.

Look at the next verses, verse 6. "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." What is that saying? Here's what it says.

First, look at the first sentence. "In these things you rejoice." In other words, you're rejoicing in your hope. A Christian is somebody who through the power of the Holy Spirit realizes the stuff I've been looking for here or here or here is in there. It's in Jesus. It's in the Lord. I'm not going to rest my heart's deepest hopes and faith in anything but that.

Now, to rejoice in what you've got, to rejoice in that, he says you're doing that now. "You greatly rejoice." Present tense. And then it says, "Now for a little while, however, you've had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." Now, I think actually the English translation mutes us a little bit. But look carefully. The word "suffer grief" means you are in agony. It's a strong word that means you're in pain.

But notice what he says: you are rejoicing. Isn't that present tense? "In all this you greatly rejoice." Present tense, even though right now you are in pain. It doesn't say you used to rejoice but now you're in pain. It doesn't say because you're rejoicing you're not really in pain. It says you're crying out in pain, you're in agony, you're feeling your hurt, and yet you're still rejoicing. They're both present tense.

And if that's true, he says, if you, when you're crying out in pain, you still go look at your hope, you still go look at it, you still do everything you can to remind yourself of what you've got coming in spite of the pain now, that's like putting gold into a fire and you become a person of greater poise, of greater joy, of greater faith. You become like gold.

You say, how is that the case? I can tell you. Think about what we just said about the hopes. If you build your life on anything more than God, suffering can only destroy you. If you build your life on your career and you lose your career, you are destroyed because your life's based on that. If you build your life on your children and something happens to your children, you are destroyed because you have no other life but your children.

If you build your life on anything but God, suffering will just destroy your life. But if you build your life on God, then suffering will just drive you deeper into your real joy. It'll just drive you deeper into your real hope. It'll show you what your real hope is through prayer, through fellowship with other Christians, through wrestling and struggling, and you'll find that as time goes on, the suffering, as bad as it is, is driving you into your real joy.

And when you come out the other side, you're going to be more stable, you're going to be more strong, you're going to be more poised, you're going to be more buoyant than you ever were before. That's how—not the only way, but one of the main ways—that this new life that comes to you in your new birth continues to grow. Build your life on something more than God, suffering will destroy you. Build your life on God, suffering will just drive you more into your joy.

Now, here's the last thing. Why is this all possible? Why? Or put it like this, how can God—how can Peter say that if you're a Christian, your hope is imperishable, kept for you? See all the stuff he says? It's a living hope and it can never perish, it's imperishable, never spoil, never fade. Kept in heaven. Phew! How can he say that to us?

We fail each other, we fail God, and we will fail each other and we will fail God. Jesus says, "Love your neighbor as yourself, love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." That's what God wants from you. You and I have never done that and we will not do it. How in the world then can Peter promise us a hope that doesn't perish? See, this is the essence of it all. The problem with every other kind of hope is it perishes.

Every tree here is coming down. You know that story, I've told this story, haven't I? The lumberjack went into the forest and he saw a mother bird making a nest, you know, for her eggs and chicks up in one of the trees. And he knew that he was taking that tree down.

So what he actually did was he took the side of the axe and he started pounding on the tree. So that poor mother bird was getting all shaken up until finally she fled over to another tree. And so she started making her nest there. But he was going to be taking that tree down too.

So he went over there and he started banging on the tree, trying to shake her up. And of course, until finally she said, "All right, all right," and then she went to another tree and he started banging on that tree. Certainly this bird felt like, "What is this man doing persecuting me? What is wrong with this man?"

Finally she flew to a high rock and started making her nest there. And then the lumberjack let her alone. And see, the moral of the story is: every tree in this world is coming down. And sometimes God shakes you and you say, "Why is this God persecuting me?" But he wants to get you to build your nest in the rock, because every tree in this world is coming down.

Now, how is it possible for us to believe that we actually then have this imperishable hope? Every other hope is perishable, that's our problem. We keep losing things. The older you get, the more you'll see that. When you're younger, very often you just really don't believe it. You believe, "If I get in this school I want, and if I get the job I want, then I'll be happy."

You do not understand how deep your desires are. Your heart has desires for something that nothing in this life will ever satisfy. You don't understand the greatness of your own soul. You don't realize just how deep those desires are. And the best thing God can possibly do for us is shake it up because he says, "I really want you to have an imperishable hope, every other hope is perishable."

Well, but how can it be imperishable? How can God guarantee it when we don't live like we should live? We don't deserve that. Why aren't you worried that we're going to lose that just like every other hope? And here's the reason.

At the very end, it says: concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. And those who preached the gospel to you spoke of those things into which even angels long to look.

What is the gospel that the prophets revealed, that the apostles preached? What is the gospel? That Jesus Christ suffered. He came as a Messiah not in triumph but in weakness to suffer. That's the reason why your hope is imperishable, because Jesus Christ perished in your place. Your hope, my hope is imperishable because Jesus Christ perished.

He came and he took the punishment we deserve so that God could forgive us, and so that now that's not based on our performance anymore, it's based on his performance. Your hope is imperishable, that's why we can know it's there. Your hope is imperishable because Jesus Christ perished. Your glory in the future is assured because he emptied himself of his glory, completely.

Isn't it amazing it says angels long to look into these things? Do you realize what it would take? Angels have been around for thousands of years, millions of years, maybe billions of years, we don't know. But here's what's interesting: it says there that angels never get tired of thinking about and looking at the gospel, what Jesus Christ did for you.

Wouldn't you think they'd figured it out by now? Wouldn't you think at this point to keep looking at the gospel would be boring? Why wouldn't the angels say, "Oh yeah, gospel, I've known about that for a million years." They never—it says actually "even angels long." The word "long" is a strong word, it means to lust for something.

Their tongues are hanging out. There's nothing greater for an angel than to look at what Jesus Christ did to save humankind. And every day they see a new glory, every day they see a new application, implication. Do you? That's how you're going to heal your heart of the existential despair that we have until we rest our hopes in a living hope, in the imperishable hope. Keep looking at the gospel, look at it over and over again. That'll heal your heart. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for the hope that you have given us, the living hope that we're born into. And now, as we continue to worship together, stir up our hopes. Help us see what you've done. Teach us how to look like the angels do at the gospel until we're changed more and more into the likeness of your Son, Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2014. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.