Resurrection: The Ground of our Hope

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,  1 Peter 1:3

The following excerpt is from the Puritan, Jeremiah Burroughs, on hope and the resurrection. However, the hope of which Burroughs writes is for more than just Easter Sunday. It is very practical and applicable 24/7. These are perilous times both near and far, and we need a hope that goes beyond this life. (1 Cor. 15:19) We also need a hope that will give us confidence for the day of judgment. (1 John 4: 17) And may God help us to be ready and eager to share this hope that the world so desperately needs. (1 Pet. 3:15)

Question: "How does the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead come to be a means of giving hope?"

Answer: The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the cause of true lively hope in the hearts of the saints. By the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, God has declared that He is fully satisfied for the sins of man, and that the work of redemption is fully wrought out; otherwise Christ must have been held in the prison of the grave forever. But when Jesus Christ is let out of the prison of the grave, and the bonds of death are taken from him, this declares to men and angels that the work of redemption is perfect; it holds this out to the soul upon which faith is grounded and hope is raised. So there is an efficacy in this to work hope in the soul...

I am as vile and wretched as you can make me, but it is not presumption for me to hope because that which I make the ground and bottom of my hope is not in myself but on the doctrine of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. The Lord Jesus Christ has come and taken my nature upon Himself, and being in the form of a servant has had the sins of the people of God laid to His charge. He has stood before the Father clad with their sins. He has satisfied the justice of God the Father and has wrought a perfect work of reconciliation and redemption. The Father has discharged Him, and He is raised now to the Heavens and sits at the right hand of God the Father, there making intercession for sinners - upon this I ground my hope. I am begotten to a lively hope through what Jesus Christ has done, and therefore, though I am never so poor, vile, and sinful, yet I have enough to raise a lively hope that I shall one day attain to such things are are written in the Book of God. Indeed the things that are written there appear to me sometimes as if they were too good to be true!

Hope by Jeremiah Burroughs, Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 2005, pp. 26-27. This book was originally published in 1654 as The Tenth Book of Mr. Jeremiah Burroughs, Being a Treatise of Hope.