There’s Power in the Word

1 Peter 1:17-25

¹⁷And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, ¹⁸knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, ¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. ²⁰He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you ²¹who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. ²²Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, ²³since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; ²⁴for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, ²⁵but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

When I read passages like this one, I am reminded that there is so much going on in our lives that that we cannot see, for it is lived out in the spiritual. Sometimes we are myopic in that we function as if this corporeal world is all there is to life. But that is just not true. It is in the spiritual world that our true lives are held.

In God’s grand design, we are created by the joining together of man and woman, leading to the new life that was once each one of us. But as we know, once we are formed, the countdown clock has begun. Our time here is limited to a few short years. These fleshly bodies come with an expiration date. Our spirits, on the other hand, are informed and transformed by God Himself and stretch on past our earthly existence.

Peter quotes the prophet Isaiah as he expands on our understanding of the difference between the flesh and the spirit.

Isaiah 40:6-8

⁶A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.

⁷The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass.

⁸The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Peter wants his readers to appreciate fully what God has been doing for them and in them and for what purpose. “You have been born again,” he says. All of us have fathers, whose seed at the time of our conception gave us life. But it is a short, fleeting life, soon over, for our earthly fathers made us mortal like them. Their seed was perishable. But God’s imperishable Word does what no earthly father could ever do—change us into immortal, imperishable beings.

Jeske, M. A. ©2002. James, Peter, John, Jude (p. 81). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

This is, as Peter puts it, all good news. Yes, these flesh and blood bodies will perish (unless Jesus should return again before our death) but because the Word of the Lord remains forever, so too shall we, for we are born again of the Spirit. Knowledge that we are eternal makes belief in Jesus as Lord and Savior imperative.