How Valuable is Faith?

1 Peter 1:3-7

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Praise to God for a Living Hope

3 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 of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 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. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
This letter is written to Christians who were dispersed throughout the Roman Empire in Asia Minor.  These were both Gentile and Jewish Christians.  The main context of the letter is that these Christians were beginning to be persecuted by the Roman Emperor Domitian during the end of his reign (81-96 A.D.). Some of his followers even went as far as to worship him as a god. 
For the new Christians scattered throughout the Roman Empire there was both the fear of persecution, and also the challenge to live a holy life in the midst of a secular atmosphere. Peter encourages the believers to keep their hope based on the inheritance they have as believers in Christ.   Though many times people get fixated on an earthly inheritance, no matter how large it is it will be gone at some point.  But Peter wants them to focus on an inheritance that will never spoil or fade away kept up for them in heaven.  
Though they are facing all these kinds of trials, they are shielded by faith.  By faith they can even have joy in the midst of these trials because they know the end of the story.  It is a lot easier to endure a painful trial, if you know there is a positive end to the story.  But suffering without hope produces hopelessness.  Peter encourages them not only to rejoice because they know where they are going to end up, but also because these trials will purify their faith.  Like all new believers there were temptations to compromise their new found faith by getting entangled in the world.  But by remaining faithful through these trials and persecutions their faith would even grow stronger.   
Finally, Peter says that one day their faithfulness in suffering will be worth it when Jesus returns. Like a precious metal that is purified with extreme heating, these believers were being purified by the fire of their suffering.  Maybe you have seen your faith grow stronger when it was under fire. Maybe you are undergoing a difficult trial right now either internally or externally.  Though we are probably not facing the same persecution these early Christians were facing, we should not minimize what we are going through.  If you are going through a trial be encouraged that one day you will be rewarded for staying faithful.  And the God who called you will keep you strong as you trust in Him.     

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