The precious dream

1 Peter 1:18-19 (NLT)

18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.

The Apostle Peter reminds us that we inherited a sinful nature due to the sins of Adam and Eve and it was God who paid the ransom to redeem us from those sins. The random was not of earthly materials such as gold or silver. Instead we were redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ who lived a holy and sin free life. It was Jesus who willingly became the sacrificial Lamb of God.

Tim Keller preached in his sermon, “Suffering”, saying: What does Paul mean when he says, "The Resurrection is going to swallow up the suffering and evil you're going through right now"? Here's a very imperfect illustration from my own life. Many years ago I had a horrible nightmare. I'm not sure if the dream came from something I ate or a movie I'd watched, but I usually don't retell this dream with many details because it was really an awful dream. I dreamt my entire family had been slaughtered. But then I woke up, and my entire family was right there. I really love my family, and when I went to sleep that night, before the nightmare, they were all around me. But when I woke up after the dream, the nightmare in which I thought I had lost them, I got them back again. I couldn't even look at them without crying—for sheer joy.

What had happened? Having gotten them back after losing them, made the experience of having them infinitely greater. It's almost like the experience of losing them had been swallowed up by the experience of having them, so that it was infinitely more precious.

That is a dim hint of what the resurrection of Christ means to us. If his resurrection happened—and it did—that means our resurrection's going to happen. And that means that everything sad and horrible is going to be brought up into our future glory and resurrection and make it infinitely better than it would have been if we had never had any of those experiences. And that's the final and ultimate defeat of suffering and death.

When we have something and loose it that can be devastating. Adam and Eve had the choice of living an eternal life free of sin, but instead they chose a life of sin, because of their desire to be like God. They listened to a lie from Satan and gave up the perfect life. However, God in his infinite love, mercy and grace restored to us Salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. What was a bad nightmare is now a glorious dream of redemption. Christ has defeated the suffering and death we knew and has given us something infinitely more precious – eternal life with Him in heaven.