" Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’ God had mercy upon us because he
saw us leading a life without hope. And therefore by a new birth he radically changed our world for us so as to make it a world of hope. The peculiar way in which the apostle
expresses this fact ought to be carefully noted. He might have said, ‘God gave us a new hope,’ or, ‘God brought us into a new hope.’ But what he says is, ‘God begat us again unto a living hope.’ Undoubtedly this representation is chosen in order to emphasize the comprehensiveness and persuasiveness of the hope which the Christian obtains. It means a change as great as the crisis of birth, a transition from not being to living, when the hope of the gospel breaks upon our vision. The change is not partial. It does not affect our life in merely one or the other of its aspects. It revolutionizes our whole life at every point. What this means is a total regeneration of our consciousness, a regeneration of our way of thinking, a reversal of our outlook upon things in their entirety. "

― Geerhardus Vos , Grace and Glory