For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. As the Scriptures say, “People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of the Lord remains forever.” And that word is the Good News that was preached to you.
1 Peter 1:23-25
Dear God, I wonder what Peter meant by your “word.” It obviously wasn’t the New Testament. It might have been what we call the Old Testament, but that doesn’t feel likely. I think calling what we consider to be the Bible “God’s Word” is a more recent phenomenon. So what did Peter mean here?
Well, John called Jesus your “Word.” It was a unique way for you to enter the world, and Jesus’s actual words are not only your “Word,” but his actions would be too. His entire life is you speaking to us through the generations. Of course, now we consider what these first apostles and disciples wrote and left for us as the New Testament to be you speaking to us, along with what they knew as your scripture. But again, I don’t necessarily think this is what Peter is talking about here. I think Peter’s usage of this term is pretty basic–Jesus came, Jesus died, and Jesus rose again so that we might be rightly related to you.
Father, thank you for this word…your word. Thank you that Jesus did this so that I might be rightly related to you. I’m a Gentile and I have no claim to be yours except that you chose to claim me. I am sorry for taking that for granted as much as I do.
In Jesus’s name I pray,
Amen
Emails to God 