Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy became our father again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Because of the resurrection of our Lord, every person scattered throughout all the region has a lively hope. This is the question before us: how can we have this hope? That question must have occurred to those Christians to whom Peter is writing. Living in a time of despair, in a time of death and destruction, hope was not the general feeling among them. Yet Peter tells them that hope is to be the motivating force of every Christian.