1 Peter 1:7-9 - You love Him

1:7

So why does life involve so many trials? It is our faith may be proved genuine. What does proved mean here? It is not that God is seeing if we really believe, He already knows all things. Rather He is refining our faith, and demonstrating to us and the world that it is real. And our faith is precious, it is precious to us and precious also to God Himself. It is worth far more than gold, and gold is refined in the fire. Even so, gold will perish, it is ultimately worthless. Faith is eternal. The trials remove the dross from our lives, and leave what is truly valuable. And we need to appreciate just how important faith is, how valuable it is. Moreover, it will result in praise, honour and glory when Christ is revealed. We need to appreciate that we will share in Christ’s glory.

1:8,9

In John 20:29 Jesus, after Thomas had finally believed on seeing the evidence, said that blessed are those who believe in Him yet have not seen Him. We have not seen Jesus, yet we love Him and believe in Him. Now given the misrepresentation often given by sceptics, this does not mean that we believe without evidence, or even against the evidence. The evidence for the resurrection is very strong, the New Testament has a wealth of documentary evidence supporting it, far more than any other historical document of similar antiquity. So what role does evidence play? If we believed but then there was either no evidence at all, or the evidence all pointed in the opposite direction then people would be right to question, even mock, our faith. Suppose it was discovered that the gospels had been written by a Russian monk in the eleventh century, then our faith would be proved to be nonsense. But precisely the opposite is the case.

But faith is not just an academic thing. It involves love for Jesus and belief in Him, it involves a relationship. Moreover, it brings joy to our hearts and minds. And we are receiving the fruits of faith now. Completeness will not occur until He returns, but we start receiving the fruit now. We are receiving the salvation of our souls, and that is the goal of our faith. Note that it is not healing or financial blessing. Now these things may and do occur, but the goal is the salvation of our souls. It is the transformation of our lives, making us people totally devoted to God, totally Christlike. In the process there will be times of trials.