To Encourage You

1 Peter 1:8 “the outcome of your faith (is) the salvation of your souls”

In what or whom are you trusting?  Many years ago, I heard someone in my office building say, “you just have to have faith.”  When I asked this person who or what was the object of his faith, I got no answer.  I think he was placing his faith in faith – whatever that means.  Some people talk about the idea of “fate.”   Webster defines this word as “a power that is believed to control what happens in the future.” Notice that it calls fate “a power,” as if there is an impersonal force controlling our lives and inevitably what will happen to us.  So, when the Christian talks about “faith” is that the idea? Is it some impersonal force that we possess? Is it something that we can talk about as “my faith” and “your faith”?  To do so carries with it the idea that we, like my coworker, are putting our faith in faith.  Is that what the verse above is talking about? 

Well, to answer this question, we need to look a little closer.  As Peter leads up to the statement above, we find that he is talking about a very specific person.  He identifies the Christians to whom he writes as those who love, believe in, and rejoice in Christ.  He is the sole object of their faith and trust.  They aren’t trusting their future to “fate.” They aren’t trusting in some vague impersonal force.  They are trusting a person. They are trusting in what this person has told them. They are staking their entire future on what He has said to them and what He has done for them.  And what was it that He did?  It was that “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3-4).  Furthermore, they are trusting in God’s great power, through which they “are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).  It is because of this person, the Lord Jesus Christ, that they are confident about the future.  It is because Jesus said, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19), that they see eternal life as the inevitable outcome of their faith.  They are trusting in the words of Christ Who said, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3).

You see, that’s the inevitable outcome for those who will trust in Christ.  It’s a home in heaven. It’s eternal life.  It’s the salvation of their souls. These are all just different ways of telling Christians what is to be their “outcome.” It’s the hope that is the “sure and steadfast anchor of (their) soul(s)” (Hebrews 6:19).

So again, in whom or what are you trusting, and what will be the outcome of that trust?  Do you know where your life is headed?  If it’s someone or something other than the omnipotent Son of God in whom you are trusting, how can you really be sure?