Read with Me
1 Peter 1:8-9 (HCSB)
You love Him, though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Listen with Me
Peter is writing to an area where the Christians are predominantly gentile in background. That means, as Peter points out, that his readers never had the opportunity to see Jesus in the flesh. The Jewish Christians in the area may have seen Him, or heard Him speak, or even watched as He performed a miracle when they traveled to Jerusalem for one of the festivals. But the chances of the gentiles having ever seen or heard Jesus in the flesh were practically nil.
However, those gentile Christians had experienced Jesus’ presence when they heard the gospel, when they believed, and when they received Him as their Savior and Lord. And that encounter with Him, though he was unseen by their physical eyes, was transformative, absolutely life changing. And they fell in love with the one who loved them even to the death.
Now, though they still had never seen Jesus with their physical eyes as Peter had, they saw the changes He had made in their lives, and they watched that same transformation work in the lives of their family members, friends, neighbors, and coworkers with whom they had shared the good news. And that transformation deepened their belief in who Jesus was and what He had done and could do for a life.
As their relationship with Jesus deepened through relying on Him day by day, through working with Him to fulfill the Great Commission, and through hearing His voice guiding their steps each day, they experienced the profound joy of knowing that all they had been taught about Jesus was true. They had moved far beyond mere intellectual assent to a doctrine, or belief in a historical event. They lived out a genuine relationship with Jesus Himself. And they also knew, based on the reality of that relationship, that the salvation of their souls that had been promised was a living reality that was growing more real every day.
Pray with Me
Father, unless we open our hearts to truly receive Jesus as our Savior and our Lord, we must fall back to a faith that is simply belief, that falls far short of a true, saving relationship with the risen and exalted Jesus. Help me, Lord, to live every single day not just in faith or in belief, but in relationship, so that my faith can grow and so that I can be a powerful and effective witness of what I experience of Jesus each and every day. Amen.