In 1 Peter 1:3-5, Peter writes, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” (NIV)

When I read that the other day, two words jumped out at me: “living hope.” What is living hope, and what did Peter mean by that?

When I think about hope from a worldly standpoint, I’d define it as something we desire without a lot of confidence that it’s actually going to happen. (I hope the Cubs win the World Series this year, for example.) But that’s not how Peter’s using the term. He’s referring to something we desire with assurance that it’s going to come true, and he’s talking about our salvation.

But why did Peter describe hope as living? In thinking about that question, I asked myself what dead hope would look like. I was reminded of James 2:17: “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” In other words, dead faith is faith that is not fruitful or productive; faith that doesn’t display the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22). It seems to me—and I could be wrong—that if living faith is fruitful faith, then living hope is fruitful hope.

I know it’s nothing deep or profound, but it really got me thinking about hope, a word that gets tossed around a lot in Christian lingo. We have hope because we have assurance of what we desire—an eternity with Christ. With that assurance comes fruit. Not the kind of fruit that spoils; the kind that, like our inheritance, remains.