ACC ~ 1 Peter 1 v3c

THE BLESSINGS GOD GIVES. OECUMENIUS: What exactly are the blessings which God has given us in Christ? First, there is hope, not the kind of hope which he gave to Moses, that the people would inherit a promised land in Canaan, for that hope was temporal and corruptible. Rather God gives us a living hope, which has come from the resurrection of Christ. Because of that, he has given all those who believe in Jesus the same resurrection. This is a living hope and an incorruptible inheritance, not stored up here on earth but in heaven, which is much greater. COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER.

CHRIST RISES IN US. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: If God first generated us out of matter, the Father of our Lord later regenerated us into a better life. Christ rises again in us according to our faith, just as earlier he died in us because of our unbelief. It was furthermore said that no soul, whether it is righteous or evil, will ever return to a corruptible body in this life, lest by taking on flesh it should once more acquire the opportunity to sin, but rather that both good and evil souls will return in the resurrection body. For soul and body are joined together each according to its proper nature. They fit together rather like stuffing in food, or a construction of stones. ADUMBRATIONS.

RISING WITH HIM. BEDE: Peter offers praise to God the Father in such a way as to make it perfectly clear that our Lord and Savior is both God and man. He calls God the Father of our Lord precisely because he does not doubt that our Lord had always existed with him as his Son. It is right for us to bless God because although on the strength of our own merits we deserve nothing but death, he has regenerated us by his mercy to a new life. He has done this by the resurrection of his Son who loved our life so much that he gave himself up to death for our sake. When that death was overcome by his resurrection, he offered it to us as a model which might give us hope of rising again ourselves. For he died in order that we should no longer be afraid of death, and he rose again so that we might have a hope of rising again through him. ON 1 PETER.

1 Pet