Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

1 Peter 1:3

A remarkable quality of the Christian faith and doctrine is the focus on eternity, especially when viewed against the Old Testament scriptures. There is hardly an explicit mention of the afterlife or of the concept of persisting beyond death in the entirety of the Law and the Prophets. We can certainly see some passages which, in the light of what was revealed through Jesus and his apostles, were inspired and looked ahead to what was to be revealed.

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

1 Peter 1:23

So where does the new life come from? The same as the old promise. The word of God secures our second birth and the eternal life that follows it. We are not encountering a new God, just a new way to approach him, a closer and more complete connection. Our second birth is a renewal of life through power of death, the casting off of the old self to live with the One Everlasting.

Ethan Kirl