(A verse-by-verse study of First Peter from a NCT perspective.)
1 Peter 1:4 [Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who birthed us anew] into an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading which has been protected in the heavens for you.
Do you remember when Jesus taught about the new birth in John 3:1-10? On that occasion, our Lord asserted that regeneration was absoluetly essential to receiving something. In fact, He went so far as to say that without a new birth, a person cannot even see it. What was it? The kingdom of God. We who are born a second time are promised God's kingdom. The kingdom was the great hope of the Jews as they eagerly awaited the arrival of the Messiah-King who would establish the kingdom. When John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Christ, his message was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Jesus proclaimed the same message when He began His ministry; and He instructed the twelve apostles to follow suit. The Christian's inheritance, given by his gracious Father, is the kingdom of God.
In addition to kingdom, the Scripture uses other words to describe our inheritance: eternal life (Mt. 19:29); the earth (Mt. 5:5); salvation (Heb. 1:14). Each of these comes at the promised blessing from a different perspective, providing a rich tapestry of the inheritance that awaits us.
Peter tells us three things that our inheritance is not—corruptible, defiled, and fading—which ought to energize our faith and zeal. And for Jewish converts, these adjectives would provide great confidence and joy as they compared this New Covenant hope with the Old Covenant promises.
First, the inheritance awaiting us is incorruptible (Gr. a-phthartos). This word is twice used in the NT to describe God, once when Paul contrasts the mortal creatures with the immortal God (Rom. 1:23) and again in a list of divine attributes (1 Tim. 1:17). Just as God cannot undergo decay and become less than He is, so also our inheritance will suffer no atrophy, no deterioration, and no destruction.
The Jews were promised an inheritance in the land of Canaan, a bequeathment subject to drought, famine, fire, hail, and any number of other threats to its prosperity. It could be taken away from them and destroyed by enemy nations. And it was. Not so, with the heavenly inheritance promised to those who are in Christ. It cannot be corrupted by anyone at anytime.
Second, our inheritance is undefiled (Gr. a-miantos). When something becomes defiled, it is now marred, sullied, dirty, or spoiled. When speaking in terms of moral agents, defilement connotes impurity or profanity (vulgarities used to be called "dirty words"). Religion can be defiled (Jas. 1:27), so can priests (Heb. 7:26). When one party of a marriage covenant is unfaithful, it stains the marriage bed (Heb. 13:4). And land promised to the people of Israel became defiled by their idolatries (Jer. 2:1f., especially v. 7). But the inheritance that awaits those who have been born again is incapable of any such ruination. Its purity is impervious to every kind of ugliness or degradation. It will forever be unmixed, unadulterated, undiluted, uncontaminated. Its sterling, flawless, perfect quality will endure without end. When we've been there ten thousand years, the bright shining sun will display the same brilliance as when we first begun.
Third, it is unfading (Gr. a-marantos). When the author of Hebrews spoke of the covenant God made with Israel, he referred to it as "obsolete," "growing old," "and ready to disappear." It had served its purposes of arousing sin in the Jews (Rom. 5:20) and demonstrating their desperate need of a Redeemer (Rom. 3:19-20; 10:1-5). But with the termination of the covenant came the end of the temporal promises to the nation of Israel. No longer would they remain the divine heirs of land, descendants, and world-illumination. Their inheritance faded off like the sunset after the death and resurrection of Christ (and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 served as an exclamation point to its disappearance).
Those who are in Christ, however, are participants of the eternal covenant with God through the blood of Jesus Christ (Heb. 13:20). This covenant is the fulfillment of all which came before, the anti-type to all the types and shadows of the previous covenants of redemptive history. And this covenant will never drift off nor become obsolete.
Peter's optimism toward the certainty and perpetuity of our inheritance is because it has been protected in the heavens for you. Two grammatical aspects of this "protection" are profound. First, the tense of the verb is the perfect tense, which communicates an action that was begun in the past and its impact continues into the present and future. For example, if I say, "I have been married for fifteen years...," implied in whatever follows the ellipsis is that I am still married. ("I had been married," does not imply the current status.) My marriage began fifteen years ago and continues to the present day. Peter reveals that our inheritance has been protected from some point in the past and the protection remains true even to this day. Someone has been keeping watch over it. But who? That's where the other grammatical aspect comes in. 'Protected' is in the passive voice, meaning that someone other than his audience is doing the protecting. It's what theologians call a divine passive because the intended but unmentioned agent is God Himself (unmentioned, that is, until the next verse). God is the one who is protecting our inheritance; He is its guardian. Our heritage will remain pure and whole and be ours forever because it has been stored in heaven under the watchful eye of the almighty, unassailable, everlastingly alert King of Heaven. Our (new) birthright is, therefore, certain and secure (cp. Mt. 6:19-20; Luke 12:33).
To Ponder:
How often do you consider your heavenly home? Are you living your life today more as a citizen of earth or as a citizen of heaven?