To Encourage You

1 Peter 1:8-9 “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Throughout the early part of the book of 1 Peter, we see repeated references to words about vision.  For example, in the passage above we see the words “seen” and “see.”  In other verses we see the words “reveal(ed)” (1:5,12), “revelation” (1:7,13), “look” (1:12) and “made manifest” (1:20).  Peter is talking about the importance of things that are seen, but seen in a spiritual rather than in a physical sense. Indeed, he makes mention that the recipients of his letter are those who have NOT seen, yet they have loved, believed, and rejoiced in spite of it. So, what is he talking about?  

How does one love, believe, and rejoice over something that he or she cannot see?  How does anyone love and believe in the God who is invisible, or the Son of God Whom they have never seen?  The Holy Spirit, speaking through Peter, would have us to know that it is this characteristic that described the believers to whom he was writing as well as all those who would believe thereafter up to this very day. Just before the statement above, Peter had mentioned the word “faith” (1:5).  It’s by faith that one comes to salvation, for that’s the means God has ordained. But how do we come to faith? How do we come to trust the unseen God?  Some people who are unbelievers claim that they would believe if they could see God.  What they fail to realize, however, is that the vast majority of people who saw Jesus when He walked on earth did NOT put their faith in Him.  Rather, despite His many miracles, they largely rejected Him and then put Him to death on a cross.  

Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. It’s about a rich man who never put his faith in God, and ended up in hell as a result. In his anguish, he saw Abraham and the poor beggar Lazarus in paradise and he cried out to him, “I beg you, father, to send (Lazarus) to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” In other words, he wanted Lazarus to rise from the grave.  “But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And (the rich man) said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’  He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”  

It is in this discourse that we see a truth that runs from one end of the Scriptures to the other, including in 1 Peter 1 above.  It is that faith does NOT come from SEEING, even seeing someone rise from the dead.  Rather, God has ordained that “faith comes from HEARING, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). That’s what Abraham was saying to the rich man when he said that his brothers, who were still alive, had “Moses and the Prophets,” i.e., the words of God that are recorded in the Bible. If they wouldn’t listen and believe what they heard from God’s Word, then they wouldn’t believe at all.  And that’s why those to whom Peter was writing could love, believe, and rejoice in Jesus, a person Whom they had never seen.  

But there is a sense in which they HAD seen him, although not with their physical eyes. You see, these believers and all believers since then have had eyes of faith that were opened spiritually to see awesome sights that they’d never before seen.  These are the eyes that see Jesus for Who He really is – the majestic Son of the Living God.  They are eyes to see the Bible as the eternally true treasure that it is, although before one believes, they see it as just another book. And they are eyes to see the people of God as the very body of Christ, although before one believes they wouldn’t have noticed this, for they had no eyes to see God.  

You see, the God Who is invisible has ordained that it is those that believe who will see, and not the other way around.  And we believe based on hearing the words of the gospel, the only thing that enters a life by the ears but has the power to open blind eyes.  

So, have you ever seen in this sense, or are you spiritually blind?  If so, do you really want to see?  Then listen to the words of the Bible, and ask God to open both your ears and your eyes.  Listen to His words to us from John 20:30-31: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;  but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  

Believe and then see, not the other way around.  It’s the way of salvation for anyone. It’s the only way that anyone can ever see.