Three Words for What We Can Never Lose

“to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” — 1 Peter 1:4

Into the Word

Peter wrote this letter to small churches scattered across Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. These believers were outsiders in their own towns. Their neighbors spoke against them and could not understand why they had changed (1 Pet. 4:4). If anyone had reason to count their losses, they did.

Peter starts somewhere else. Before he mentions a single trial, he praises God, who “has caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3). The hope is living because it rests on a living person. Jesus was dead, and God raised Him. Every other hope we hold depends on something that can still fail or die. This one depends on Someone who has already gone through death and come out the other side.

Then Peter tells them what that hope holds. He calls it an inheritance.

Three Ways We Lose What We’re Given

Peter describes this inheritance with three words: imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. In Greek, all three begin with the same small letter, a-, which means “not,” much like “un-” in English. Each word names something that eventually happens to everything we own and says it will never happen to this inheritance.

The first is aphthartos (ἄφθαρτος), imperishable. It does not wear out. A house left to children needs a new roof within a generation. Savings lose a little of their value every year as prices rise. What God has set aside for us does not age at all.

The second is amiantos (ἀμίαντος), undefiled. It cannot be stained. Many inheritances are spoiled by what happens around them: greed, quarrels, a will fought over in court. No one can corrupt this one.

The third, amarantos (ἀμάραντος), means unfading. It comes from a verb used for flowers that wither.

That last word reaches to the end of the chapter, where Peter quotes Isaiah: “The grass withers, and the flower falls” (1 Pet. 1:24). He is talking about human life and all its glory. Our strength, our reputation, and whatever we build will go the way of that flower. Set beside that verse, amarantos tells us our inheritance is the one thing that will never wither.

Under Guard

Peter adds that this inheritance is “kept in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:4). The verb describes something already set aside and still being held. Nobody is waiting to decide whether it will be ours.

Then he turns from the inheritance to the people who will receive it. We “by God’s power are being guarded through faith” (1 Pet. 1:5). The word for “guarded,” phroureō (φρουρέω), was used for soldiers posted to protect a city.

Most of us do not worry that heaven might be unsafe. We worry about ourselves. Will our faith hold? What if we drift? Peter answers both halves of that fear: God’s power holds the inheritance, and the same power holds on to us.

This does not make trouble disappear. In the next verse Peter admits these believers had been grieved by various trials, but he says those trials last “for a little while” (1 Pet. 1:6). Grass flattened by a strong wind is still rooted, and when the wind passes it stands up again. Trials can bend us low, but they cannot touch what God is keeping.

Before We Move On

We spend much of our energy guarding things that will not last: our plans, our savings, the way others see us. We look after our bodies, as we should, yet even the healthiest body is slowly wearing out. The health that matters most is the health of the soul, and the soul grows strong as it sets its hope on what God is keeping.

What might we hold a little more loosely if we really believed what is being kept for us?

The flower will fall. Our inheritance will not.

It is being kept, and so are we.

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Original source: Three Words for What We Can Never Lose — Bible Portal Insights

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