Before coming to know Jesus, I remember feeling so heavy with guilt and shame for my past. It was all that I could see when I looked at myself. It was all-consuming. Before Jesus, I didn’t think there would ever be a way that I could feel free from the things that I had done. It became who I was, and I was left hopeless, depressed, and alone.
But then Jesus changed the narrative. In coming into a personal relationship with the Lord, he started to transform me inside and out. Those feelings of guilt and shame that I thought I would never be free from God went to work on. He rewrote my story and changed my identity. Slowly my identity shifted from guilty and unlovable to fully restored, forgiven, and made for a purpose. God showed me that he was the hope I had been searching for all along.
Peter is showing us in this passage that Jesus is the living hope. Not a hope that is once and done or fading, but a hope that is eternal and sustaining. This hope has new mercies for us every single day. It welcomes us into an inheritance of new life that will never fade.