Thursday

Related Verses
1 Pet. 1:3-4, 23
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 Unto an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavens for you,
23 Having been regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.

Titus 3:5-7
5 Not out of works in righteousness which we did but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,
6 Whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
7 In order that having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Col. 1:12-13
12 Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you for a share of the allotted portion of the saints in the light;
13 Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,

Acts 26:18
18 To open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.

Related Reading
We need to be impressed with the fact that our inheritance is the Triune God Himself…The pledge of our inheritance is the Holy Spirit…A material mansion would not need the divine person of the Spirit as a pledge, sample, foretaste, and guarantee. Since the pledge of our inheritance is a divine person, the inheritance must also be a divine person—the Triune God Himself. The Triune God is the inheritance God intends to give to us, and the Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the Triune God reaching us is the pledge of this inheritance. As the pledge of our inheritance, the Spirit guarantees that the Triune God will be our portion for our enjoyment. This is the Triune God as our inheritance. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 1086) 

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Ephesians 1:14 says that the Spirit is the pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of the acquired possession. We, God’s redeemed ones, the church, are God’s possession acquired by His purchase with the precious blood of Christ (Acts 20:28). In God’s economy God becomes our inheritance, and we become God’s possession. As God’s possession, we still need the redemption of our body, for our body is still in the old creation…On the one hand, the Triune God is our inheritance; on the other hand, we are His possession. The crucial matter in Ephesians 1:14 is that the Spirit is pledged into us as a guarantee that God will be our inheritance in full…In the glory, we shall enjoy God as our inheritance, and He will enjoy us as His possession. 

Our inheritance is not anything material. The Divine Trinity is our inheritance, and His consummated Spirit has been imparted into our being as a pledge. Now this pledge is working within us to redeem God’s possession until the day we enjoy Him as our portion and He enjoys us as His possession. 

First Peter 1:3 tells us that through the resurrection of Christ we have been regenerated unto a living hope. Then verse 4 goes on to say, “Unto an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in the heavens for you.” At the end of verse 3 there is a comma, and verse 4 begins with “unto.” This indicates that “unto an inheritance” in verse 4 is in apposition to “unto a living hope” in verse 3. This means that the living hope is the inheritance and that the inheritance is the living hope. A living hope, resulting from regeneration, is our expectation of the coming blessing; an inheritance is the fulfillment of our hope in the coming age and in eternity. A living hope is a hope of life. In particular, it is a hope of eternal life. Eternal life is our enjoyment and also our inheritance. All the riches of God’s being are involved in His life. These riches have become our inheritance…Our daily experience of eternal life is also an experience and enjoyment of the inheritance kept for us in the heavens. This indicates that the living hope and the inheritance are one. 

Through our second birth, regeneration, we have been born into a new inheritance. According to 1 Peter 1:4, this inheritance is not on earth; rather, it is kept in the heavens. Although this inheritance is kept for us in the heavens, we can enjoy it now on earth. Our heavenly, divine, spiritual inheritance is kept in the heavens; yet it is continually being transmitted into our spirit for our enjoyment. 

The Triune God Himself will be our basic inheritance. Related to Him as our inheritance we have five other matters: the coming salvation of our souls, the grace to be revealed at the Lord’s coming, the glory to be revealed to us, the unfading crown of glory, and the eternal glory. These five items, added together, are a subsidiary inheritance related to God Himself. Although these items are not the Triune God directly, they are related to the divine life, which is God Himself. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 1086-1087, 1089-1092) 

Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 101