Redeeming our inheritance
It's an interesting phrase - the empty (or futile) way of life handed down from your ancestors, although I've often heard the verse quoted without it. What does Peter mean? Probably he's talking about a Gentile culture, a worldview that has no understanding of the one true God. So the simple recipe of redemption through the blood of Jesus is not just about a new relationship with God involving forgiveness and adoption as heirs, amazing though that is. It's also about a new way of handling all the stuff that has been handed down to us - a redemption that reaches into every nook and cranny of our being.
I sat next to the CEO of a private healthcare company at a dinner and asked him what I should do to stay healthy. Inherit the right genes was his reply! So along with our culture, our worldview, our parenting, our nationality, our education, and our gender, we are also handed down any number of constraints and potentialities in the matrix of our DNA. We are confined even at conception within certain parameters that we cannot change.
So what do we do with it all? How does this redemption, bought with the precious blood of Christ, re-form all that has made us what we are? We begin a collaborative lifetime's adventure with the Holy Spirit, transforming our minds and redeeming our priorities. Some things can and should be changed, but some of our limitations and handicaps cannot. Here regret and lost hope can be turned into opportunity and challenge, for 'in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose' (Romans 8:28).
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