This article is the first in a monthly series that will examine the theme for this year’s upcoming conference, Rooted 2022: Living Hope, Walk Through 1 Peter. As we experience the pains of a perishing, defiled, and fading world, our hope can feel distant or idle. Yet, in Christ, we are born again to a hope that is both living and active. We no longer have to count our trials as foes, but can rejoice in a hope which does not put us to shame, knowing it is offering us a gift more precious than gold — a tried and true faith. As we survey 1 Peter together, our prayer is that we would have renewed eyes to see that which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us by our living hope!
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When I was growing up, the media portrayal of the teenage experience seemed to circle around the idea that your teenage years were the best times of your life. Sure, there is awkwardness, hurt, and (of course) drama—but that is outmatched by the hope, freedom, and excitement that comes with being in high school. All of teenage life could be summed up with a pumping fist in the air at the end of The Breakfast Club.
Today’s portrayal of adolescence strikes a different tone. Film, television, comedy, drama, Youtube, and TikTok all capture the life of teenagers as one of disorientation, displacement, loneliness, and longing. This is not unwarranted. Studies continue to show us students are, indeed, lonelier, more anxious, and experiencing more acute external pressure than ever before.
As the Rooted Reservoir study on Daniel notes, teenagers “feel displaced from one another by the failing promises of social media, displaced from their emotions as depression and anxiety are increasingly medicated, and displaced from politics as parties look less and less like the good guys and bad guys they were told to expect.”
In other words, our students are familiar with what it means to be exiles. Their experience of this world has already taught them how to long for a better world, a place where they can truly be at home: a Promised Land.
Perhaps no book in the New Testament identifies with God’s people in the face of the world’s brokenness quite so powerfully as 1 Peter. As Elisabeth Elliott Hayes has written, 1 Peter is an open letter to exiles.
From beginning to end, Peter writes to those in exile, displaced from their home and scattered throughout the world. He seeks to encourage exiles to live faithfully as the day of the Lord draws near. Peter does not write from the Promised Land; rather, he looks forward to it in hope.
This is why 1 Peter is a gift to our students and our ministries. From the very start of the book, Peter makes clear there is a hope—hope in the resurrected Christ—that defines and secures us.
A Living Hope that Defines Us
Part of being a teenager is sorting out identity and belonging. Students are looking for something—a belief, style, talent, their intelligence, or something else—by which they can say, “This is who I am.” But in exile, the search never feels complete.
Peter begins his letter by identifying his audience as “elect exiles.” They are exiles in dispersion, “grieved by various trials” (1:6), and “tested by fire” (1:7). They are displaced from their home and disoriented at who they are.
Still, exile is not the most defining part of their lives. Peter calls them “elect” exiles. In verse 2, Peter shows that the elect are set apart by the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to live a life following the Son, our Savior Jesus Christ (1:2). To be an elect exile means you are one defined primarily by God, not yourself or your circumstances.
For students searching for a way to understand who they are and where they fit in this world, the defining aspect of the hope they are offered in the gospel speaks a powerful message.
First, their self-definition pales in comparison to their definition as those created by God for fellowship with him. Staking their identity in a personality trait, talent, relationship, or anything else might feel hopeful, but ultimately, exile will expose brokenness in all of those areas. Even these identities are perishable, defiled, and fading. Thankfully, the reverse is true for the elect exiles of God.
We must continually call students to look to God for their identity. His defining is deeper, more intimate, and more permanent than any self-definition ever could be. Certainly, as exiles, they will experience the pain and alienation of displacement in the world, but as elect exiles we can offer them the eternal joy and purpose of belonging with God.
Second, holding to this living hope does not diminish their present experience. Gospel hope is a living hope that operates in their lives, giving voice to the turmoil of the teenage experience. This hope allows us to lament with our students that our world is alienated from the presence and love of God. At the same time, living, gospel hope looks past this present world to the world to come “at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (v. 7).
Third, this living hope is one that enlivens our experience in the present world. The identities we seek for ourselves can never offer life that rescues us out of exile. Only the enlivening power of the gospel can offer us new life. This is why he writes that we have been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). It is the power of God to bring life out of death, the resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead, that is offered to us in the gospel. This raises us from our spiritual deadness and gives us a new life defined by our relationship to God himself.
A Living Hope that Secures Us
Every human being is living on some hopes. Most immediately, we have hopes each day for what the day will bring. Most intimately, we have hopes for our families and what they will be. Most importantly, we have hopes for what will give us life and secure the life we dream of. All of life is essentially living out the hopes we have for our world and the world around us.
But what’s important for our students to see is the living hope Peter offers transcends any vision of hope the world offers. On the one hand, the world offers hope as nothing more than sheer optimism. Optimism is a mental commitment, to choose to see the world a certain way. How hard can I hold on to this belief that things will be okay and turn out for the good?
This kind of hope manifests itself all over our student’s social media feeds. Inspirational messages on Instagram stories, supportive words in the comment boxes, and empowering videos shared on platforms are frequent ways they speak back this message into their hearts, “It’s all good!”
On the other hand, we see hope presented as the force and determination of the will. In a 2013 report in The Journal of Positive Psychology researchers studied the power effects that hope has on humans. They defined hope as, “having the will and finding the way.”
Both of these cultural ideals center the power of hope in the self. In other words, it is my commitment to believe or my commitment to will that keeps my life running on hope. Peter’s message is much better news.
Peter’s message is not that our students have to find the force of will within themselves or find the way against all odds. Peter’s message is that the eternal inheritance that belongs to them as children of God is kept for them in the heaven, the true Promised Land, and protected by the very power of God.
The living hope of the gospel is grounded in heaven. That this hope is kept for them in heaven demonstrates that it is, literally, untouchable. No external circumstance can come against their hope and snatch it. That this hope is guarded by God demonstrates that no power could prevail against it. The power they need to continue in this life of exile is not an internal power but an external one, the very power of God.
The living hope that saturates the entire book of 1 Peter calls students to look for their true home. In the gospel of Jesus, they have a hope for their lives both now and in the future. It is a hope upon which they can secure their identity because it is founded in God himself.
