"Now and Not-Yet Hope: Forgiveness, Resurrection, and Eternal Life" (1 John 3:1-3)

In our final sermon from the Apostle's Creed, we ending with a message of hope about what the God is doing right now, and has promised to do in the future. The last four phrases of the Apostles Creed ( the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins, the Resurrection of the Body and Life Everlasting)remind us that our hope does not rest in what we can do or accomplish. Our hope rests in what the Father has planned, the Son has accomplished, and the Spirit is bringing to fruition through his power at work in the world. As we look at 1 John 3 we see that we can live with an indestructible hope for the future, because of what the Spirit is doing right now in the present. “The resurrection was indeed a miraculous display of God’s power, but we should not see it as a suspension of the natural order of the world. Rather it was the beginning of the restoration of the natural order of the world, the world as God intended it to be . . . The resurrection means not merely that Christians have a hope for the future but that they have a hope that comes from the future. The Bible’s startling message is that when Jesus rose, he brought the future kingdom of God into the present … 
In the resurrection we have the presence of the future. The power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time has broken into history now and is available—partially but substantially—now. When we unite with the risen Christ by faith, that future power that is potent enough to remake the universe comes into us.”— Tim Keller "Grant, Almighty God, since we have already entered in hope upon the threshold of our eternal inheritance, and know that there is a certain mansion for us in heaven after Christ has been received there, who is our head, and the first-fruits of our salvation: Grant that we may proceed more and more in the course of thy holy calling until at length we reach the goal, and so enjoy that eternal glory of which you afford us a taste in this world, by the same Christ our Lord. Amen."—John Calvin