As we continue on in our Church’s “Scripture Memorization Adventure”, this week I want to highlight I Peter 1:3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (NASB). 

Robert J. Morgan’s book, One Hundred Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart,focuses on this verse in chapter 29, which is located in the section of Morgan’s book entitled “Praise: Worship and Thanksgiving”. Here is Morgan’s account.

If you were a sentence, what mark of punctuation would follow you? 

Is your life a question mark because you are without answers? A comma, because you are in transition? A period, for everything is at a standstill? Or a dash, because you are in a continual rush?

This verse can put an exclamation point to our lives. It’s a verse of praise; it begins with Blessed be .... It’s a verse of worship, centered around the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a verse of joy, for He has caused us to be born again to a living hope. It’s a verse of victory because it’s based on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It’s easy to memorize because it unfolds by itself and automatically divides into five great exclamations. 

1. Praise God! In the Greek, Peter began with “Blessed be” and didn’t come up for air until the end of verse 12. It’s one long sentence. English translations chop this passage into a dozen or so sentences; but in the original you get a sense of Peter’s nonstop exuberance.

2. Great mercy! The reason for his excitement is God’s great mercy. Peter had a lot of “oops” in his past. He could have kept on beating himself up, but he knew all his sins had been washed away by a floodtide of mercy. 

3. New birth! That leads to the third exclamation: He has caused us to be born again. Jesus Himself used this analogy when He spoke to a Jewish leader in John 3, telling him, “You must be born again.” 

4. Living hope! The new birth leads to living hope. Peter wasn’t just speaking of an uplifting intangible. In the next verse he describes “an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted and unfading, kept in Heaven for you.” We have a yearning for eternal life in a real place with meaningful activity and worshipful living. Heaven! That’s what mercy provides. 

5. Risen Savior! It’s through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When Jesus died, He assumed the guilt that belongs to us. When He rose, He defeated sin, death, hell, and the grave.

No wonder Peter began his book with the praise word Blessed! He saw the risen Christ, and it instantly changed his gloom to joy. When he later wanted to write the letter of I Peter, he began with the excitement of Easter. Peter wrote this letter approximately three decades after Christ’s Resurrection, yet his excitement was unabated. He still felt the exuberance he had experienced years before as though it had happened yesterday. For Peter, every day was Easter. 

Morgan then ends his chapter with a quote from our good friend, John MacArthur: 

“The Resurrection is the pivot on which all of Christianity turns .... without the Resurrection, Christianity would be so much wishful thinking, taking its place alongside all other human philosophy and religious speculation.” 

Morgan’s account ends there. May our praise, worship, and thanksgiving to Almighty God as expressed by Peter in this wonderful verse of Scripture continue on for all eternity. Soli Deo Gloria!