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 1 Peter 1:3-4 “3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by His great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, 4 and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.”

When Adam and Eve embraced the satanic lie that humanity needed more than what God had already provided, they essentially, spiritually, they died. That death undid in them all the goodness that God had given them. In their act of rebellion against God’s clear and loving warning, they lost everything, not just somethings. Their spiritual DNA has been passed on to every human being that has ever lived, save One…Jesus Christ.

Identity, worth, purpose, intimacy, honesty, truth; it was all lost. Blame-shifting became the norm. Adam blamed God for giving him Eve; Eve blamed the serpent. Scarcity, jealousy, envy, pride, murder and the like, were the fruit their decision to try and live life without God being at its center.

There is no one more ineffective at altering their condition than a person who is dead. What is broken cannot fix itself. Knowing our helplessness and our hopelessness, God in love intervened.

Because of what Jesus Christ did by His Incarnation, His life, His substitutionary/sacrificial death for humanity and His resurrection from the dead (whereby He showed that all that sin, death, hell and the grave contained had been permanently vanquished), those who would come to believe God would experience the restoration of all that was lost in Adam’s rebellion.

Our past, present and future have been secured and restored by what God has done. We receive the gift salvation is by admitting our need, believing God and surrendering all we are to all He is.

St. Paul writes in Romans 5:1 that we have peace with God NOW because of what has been done through Jesus Christ. We have been reconciled to God. That speaks to the here and now we live in.

There is also a final restoration the future before us. 1 Peter 1:4 states, “Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.”

Inheritances belong to heirs. In Romans 8:15-17 “So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when He adopted you as His own children. Now we call Him, “Abba, Father.” For His Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are His children, we are His heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.”

In New Testament times, a Roman citizen would have a ceremony of adopting their own natural-born children to designate an heir. You could disown a natural-born child, but you could never disown an adopted child. God wanted us to understand the eternal nature of His salvation and redeeming love. We are kept, secure. Known, loved, accepted and a commitment has been made to us to so transform our lives that it is Jesus’ life that is being reproduced in us by the Holy Spirit.

This is indeed Good News for everyone.



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