The Land

It is common to ask people, “Where are you from?” The answer tells us a lot about the person. It gives insight into who they might be related to, what culture has influenced them, even some hints about what they might like (food, pastimes, etc.). Many good conversations begin with questions like this.

For Christians, however, where we are from is not nearly as important as where we are going. Though we may have something of an earthly identity, those earthly things are not what truly define us. In fact, the Bible often makes a point of asserting that those earthly identity markers are among the things that we often leave behind—things that formerly defined us—as our new, better, and heavenly identity in Christ becomes that which defines us. In this article, we will reflect on the promise of our heavenly inheritance and how it shapes our identity even while we live here in this present evil age.

As Peter writes to the church in his first epistle, he is addressing people with scattered geographic backgrounds. Their answers to the question “Where are you from?” would be quite diverse: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia (1 Peter 1:1). On the one hand, what they lack in common is their point of origin. They are scattered abroad as exiles. Wherever they may have been born, they have now been sown like seeds around the world. But their “dispersion” was not accidental or arbitrary; it was part of the plan of God. They are chosen or “elect” in Christ. God has sovereignly saved them by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They are sanctified in Christ, for obedience to Christ, and have been sprinkled with His blood (v. 2). God’s electing purposes are always unto a point, as Peter states in the next verse. We have been elected for the purpose of the new birth. God chose us before the foundation of the world, that we might be born again in Christ to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (v. 3). This is where the whole idea of land and inheritance comes in. In the Old Testament, Israel’s identity was, in many ways, attached to the question “Where are you from?” The people’s answer was “Canaan”—the land that God had promised to them and had given them. The land was what God had sworn to Abraham and to his descendants (Gen. 15; 17). The land was what the Israelites longed for and awaited while they were enslaved in Egypt. The land was what they were delivered to in the exodus by the saving acts of God. The land defined Israel’s relationship to God (it was a sign of His presence and favor) and showed the world that He was their God and they were His people.

Peter is certainly aware of this relationship when he writes to the scattered recipients of 1 Peter. The question “Where are you from?” would be potentially painful but no less descriptive of them and their God. Wherever they were from geographically, they had now been scattered abroad through persecution. Rome was very intolerant of Christians at this time. The Romans referred to Christians as “atheists” because they believed in only one God, and the government persecuted them in particular for denying that Caesar was a god. Thus, the people of the early church were persecuted and estranged from their earthly countries of origin. What Peter says to them, and how he describes them, was not just theologically true; it was pastorally comforting. Many of these pilgrim people had been estranged from their earthly homes and inheritances. In their day, land was everything, not just spiritually but economically. They were now dispossessed and impoverished. In a world before bank accounts, IRAs, and Social Security, they had very little to cling to except for Christ and one another. How does Peter, then, seek to comfort and encourage them?

He points them to Christ and to heaven. He tells them that in Christ they have something far better than the perishable, defilable, and losable land they had once known. In contrast, now, in Christ, they have a land that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Peter 1:4). The earthly is contrasted with the heavenly, the perishable with the imperishable, the defiled with the undefiled. What an amazing contrast. There was nothing wrong with the land that God had given His people Israel. It was a “good land” (Deut. 1:25), an “exceedingly good land” (Num. 14:7). But it was a land that could be taken (by enemies), defiled (by sin), and lost (by God’s people). Not so the land that Jesus gives His people. The land that we have received in Christ is as pure, holy, and eternal as the One who has created and secured it for us. It is heaven and heavenly. It is the place where Jesus came from and the place where Jesus ascended to. If asked the question “Where are you from?” Jesus could answer, “Heaven.” But if asked the question “Where are you going?” Jesus could also answer, “Heaven.” Jesus came from heaven and went back to heaven. And the door of His return was the cross. Through the cross, and its impending death, Jesus returned to heaven, not as One to suffer again or as One who could ever lose His inheritance (His people and His place) but as One who had secured His and our heavenly inheritance by triumphing over the death of the cross in His resurrection.

Many of us know what it means to be estranged from our earthly homes, from people and place. But what God gives us in Christ is as eternal, unfading, and glorious as the One who secures it for us. Scripture reminds that it is not so much where we are from that matters but where we are ultimately going. We are heaven-bound. That is our hope, and nothing in this world can separate us from what God has secured for us in Jesus Christ, who is Himself our ultimate inheritance.