Eye catching hope

"always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you." 1 Peter 3.15

I know this verse very well, but when I came across it recently, I was hit by the word hope. Why doesn't Paul say faith or belief. I think that the answer can help us get better at obeying Jesus' command in 1 Peter 3.

I think that there are a couple of reasons we struggle to live this out. The first is that we don't know how to explain what we believe. The second is perhaps the bigger one - no one is asking! I fear that the reason that no one asks is because they don't think I am any different from anyone else. I'm like the person on a diet who never loses weight (and I've been there several times) - no-one's going to ask me for the details of the diet!

So how does my faith make a visible difference? Is it that I am a better person than other people - people notice that I swear less, and am more generous etc. Perhaps, perhaps not. On their own those things can make us look more distant to people, or even holier than thou. The answer is not to stop living godly lives, but to make sure that it flows from our hope.

If my hope in eternal life becomes so real to me that my priorities change, then people will notice the difference. Think what a life that deeply believed in a glorious future with Christ would look like: 

• I would be less desperate in this life to have everything and so I would be more generous with what I have; 
• I would handle the prospect of death differently; 
• I would sit more lightly to the judgments of others (real or imagined), because I know that there is a judgment day to come in front of the judge who gave his life for me; 
• I wouldn't hold grudges because I know that I will one day see face to face the one who has forgiven me all things; 
• self-control will be easier, because I have a hope of a bigger pleasure than that which temptation offers;
• I will no longer live for my work - my work life will no longer be based around things which will only last a short time (like building sandcastles on a wobble board), but on the things which will last forever.

Hope truly changes everything.

So if we yearn to live out 1 Peter 3.15, the answer is not to do more revision - or try to work harder at crowbarring the gospel into conversations - it is to spend more time working out our hope in our lives, allowing it to shape our priorities. Then, Peter suggests, people will start asking questions.