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1 Peter 1:21
21 Who [ho] by [dia] him [autos] do believe [pisteuo] in [eis] God [theos], that raised [egeiro] him [autos] up [egeiro] from [ek] the dead [nekros], and [kai] gave [didomi] him [autos] glory [doxa]; that [hoste] your [humon] faith [pistis] and [kai] hope [elpis] might be [einai] in [eis] God [theos]. KJV-Interlinear
21 who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. NASB
Through Him, is a reference to Christ. By Christ only, we can have a belief in God.
The reference here is to the Father, and this is a technical distinction between those who reject Christ, but profess to believe in a deity or some higher form of power.
The higher form of power can be a god, in its many forms that man has invented, or a philosophy, or a belief in things such as a life force, etc. All religions adopt this avenue of approach to God or a higher force.
But in eternity past, the Father, Son, and Spirit, all agreed that since man would try to approach God (Them) by means of mans own design, that They would have to come up with a plan whereby the approach could only come in one way, namely through the work of the Son.
Since man was going to become a sinner, then man would not have the means of getting out of his sinful chains, on his own. He would need help in that effort. Only God can help in that effort, and thus the work of Christ on the Cross.
But, man nonetheless would try to invent his own path to God the Father, and so the rules were laid out. Man by mans effort was a worthless effort. If God accepted mans efforts, then mans good intentions, laced by his sin nature, would require God to lower Himself to mans standards. And mans standard at best is arrogance.
This, of course God cannot do. God is perfect.
So, belief in God (the Father) must come through belief in the Son, because that is the path of perfection. The Cross is the path of solution to the problem of sin and death. Death is a separation from something, and in this case, it is the separation from God, which is in view.
Since God cannot have anything to do with sin, God somehow had to come up with a plan whereby the Son would have to be equal with both God and man, assume the penalty of sin and die (separated for God), and then come back from that death in resurrection.
Jesus came to earth as a man. On earth as Jesus, He possessed all of the attributes of humanity. He was perfect man, and was no different from any of us, except for the lack of a sin nature. During His life, He set aside His divine power, and was sustained by the Holy Spirit only. In that, He became the pattern for our sustaining life during this dispensation.
Jesus went to the Cross, paid the price and died. God the Father, together with the Spirit, brought Him back from the dead, and in that remarkable work, bestowed the ultimate glory on the Son, which brought the whole plan of God to its victory completion with respect to mans salvation.
In this work, neither Satan, nor angel, nor any other human being has been able to duplicate, or replace, or do better than the work that God has done.
And the result is that your faith and confidence, in God, becomes valuable and effective and real. Unlike all other religions whose faith is not real, your faith has a real destiny.
