(1 Peter 5:12-14)

I have written (Aorist Indicative) to you briefly in order to encourage (Present Participle) you and to testify that (Present Participle) this is the true grace of God. Stand firm (Aorist Imperative) in it!

I have written is saying the purpose of the letter, the whole point is two fold.

To continually encourage

To continually testify

Encourage… many things are going to happen… stand firm.

This is the true grace of God.

Peter has been talking about this grace through the whole letter…

What is out living Hope? The grace of God.

How can we live holy lives? By the Grace of God.

How can we do good? Through the grace of God.

How can we liv in submission and as Gospel lights to our rights as citizens, our careers, our spoused? By the Grace of God.

What about when we suffer… when things don’t go like we want… when we are in pain and there doesn’t seem to be an end, when we have done nothing wrong yet we still find ourselves in the pit in despair, struggling… How can we keep going them? by the Grace of God.

What about when we suffer and it’s earned… we wronged someone else we sinned against someone else and there is real consequences that come out what what do we do? Lean into the grace of God.

we stand firm in the true grace of God, but we do not stand alone.

We have gospel centered churches we join… we commit to, we serve in and with.

We humble ourselves together and put aside preferences for the Gospel.

We raise concerns in a loving way if they are more than preferences.

This is the true Grace of God.

In verse 10 Peter talks about this Grace.

1 Peter 5:10 CSB

10 The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little while.

Paul in his letters in the New Testament talks about grace about as much as anyone else… Pauls says this in 1 Corinthians 15:10.

1 Corinthians 15:10 CSB

10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Titus 2:11 CSB

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,

So what exactly is this grace of God?

It’s the unmerited Favor of God and the active outworking of that unmerited favor of God in the life of the church and believers.

Let’s unpack that…

Grace cannot be earned.

It can only be recieved, and the Grace that Peter is talking about here is received through Faith in Jesus Christ.

Grace is connected to our fallen sinfulness.

Because of our sinful nature, because of our rebellious hearts, we deserve the wrath and judgement of God.

Grace is God’s response to believes sin.

A loving God, all powerful, created everything that is and the creation that is He specifically and intentionally created to be made in His image rebells against his rule and reign. Yet because God is love, He desires to bring this rebellious creation back into communion, fellowship, relationship with Himself.

However He is also Holy, and His Holiness cannot simply allow their sin to pass without response, if God allows our unholy rejection of Him to stand, He is contradicting His nature, His Holy Nature.

Pull-ups in the color drawer.

So how then can God bring His rebellious creation back into fellowship with Him?

Grace. Action on God’s part, motivated by love and shaped by holiness, which takes account of the seriousness of sin yet brings sinners back into a relationship communion with him.

Grace is connected to God’s being and God’s action especially God’s action in Christ.

Grace is therefore costly and not to be treated in a light fashion as if it were something cheap.

Bonhoeffer- Cost of Grace.

pg 45 and then pg 44-45

In the Old Testament it is God who established and regulates the sacrificial system.

God takes the initiative, reveals how these fallen sinful humans can relate to Him.

He establishes the content, the terms, and the results of the sacrifices because his wrath needed to be satisfied in a particular way.

Do not be deceived, this is not humanity reaching up to God, but God reaching down to humanity an action completely founded in God’s unmerited favor (grace) towards His people.

He established BY GRACE the sacrifices which serve to satisfy His justice.

He provides the solution the to the sin problem.

We are rural and we understand life and death in animals probably better than many others around us, but I don’t think we fully grasp the ramification of the sacrificial system that God brought.

Just image on passover some 2 million people coming to the city of Jerusalem with the lamb in tow taking them to the temple for the priests to sacrifice…

The amount of blood that would fill the drainage ditches… the smell after a day or so… explain to your kids why this has to happen…

It’s one thing to understand the doctrinal significance of sacrifice… it’s another to witness it first hand.

Sin is violent, lethal rebellion against God; and biblical grace is God’s violent, raw, and bloody response.

This is where we miss understand Grace far to often… Our problem as fallen humanity is not a lack of self-fulfillment… it’s not a lack of personal affirmation.... it’s not needing a little help…

Our problem is that we are rebels against God at the very core of our being and need God to be gracious towards us.

Christianity have become a means to an end, something that helps us to realize out own goals or potential. It is a kind of self-help therapy dressed up in an orthodox religious idiom.

Yet this has nothing in common with biblical grace that understands the human condition, and knows that only God’s unmerited favor (grace) can solve the problem of a sinful human nature.

Listen to what to Prophet Isaiah says in Isaiah 53:4-6,

Isaiah 53:4–6 CSB

4 Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. 6 We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all.

The He in Isaiah 53 is the Suffering Servant.

So we see the culmination of God’s gracious action focused on this servant.

Our griefs and our sorrows have been borne by Him.

Our peace is bought as he is crushed and chastised.

Our sins and transgressions have been laid on Him by the Lord so that we might not have to bear their consequences ourselves.

god is the agent in this work on our behalf.

It’s not a response to ant good we have performed. It’s the opposite.

This is how God responds to our sinful rebellion. God’s graciousness finds fulfillment in the work of this Servant… This servant is Jesus Christ, the supreme manifestation of God’s grace in history.

We can look at the Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and learn about Jesus earthly life, and see that Jesus purchased this grace at a cost to which we cannot attach a price but at which we can only marvel in terrified awe.

The difference between Christ and the Old Testament priests and sacrifices is that Jesus Christ is both the sacrificer and the sacrifice, bother foundation for intercession and the one who intercedes.

Hebrews 4:14–16 CSB

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens—Jesus the Son of God—let us hold fast to our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. 16 Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.

The grace of God is not simply the fact that God set forth his own Son to be a sacrifice, although that is amazing in and of itself. It is that the incarnate Son even now continue to intercede for us on the basis of His sacrifice and does so in a manner that takes full account of His human nature and His incarnate life.

If grace is unmerited favor, then the advent of the Son of God in human flesh is the greatest act of God’s grace and the fulfillment of God’s gracious purpose.

So then we are saved by Grace, God’s free favor revealed and accomplished in Christ, not by an action we might take on our own behalf.

Romans 11:6 CSB

6 Now if by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.

Galatians 5:4 CSB

4 You who are trying to be justified by the law are alienated from Christ; you have fallen from grace.

Grace is not God giving wholesome advice or a helping hand.

It is God raising someone from the dead, first Christ and then those who are in Christ.

Grace is only grasped by faith…

Spurgeon and the Pipes

pg 54 & 55

A mere pep talk or a bit of life coaching won’t do.

We need resurrection and that have to come from outside of us.

God in the person of the Holy Spirit unites individuals to Christ by faith in His word as it is proclaimed; and this is His action, not a team effort between the living God and the human dead in sins.

Romans 8:10–11 CSB

10 Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.

God regenerates through the Word, applied by His Spirit, not human beings by their own efforts.

Those who have recieved this grace through faith in Christ, His grace towards them changes them, and now because of the word of God in loving and saving them, they should treat other differently.

Most of the time Paul’s letters begin with something like Grace and Peace to you, and they end in a similar way.

The reason Paul does that and Peter does that here… is to remind us that God’s grace is what saves us and it is what sustains us.

Grace is not a license to do as we please. Grace involves sacrifice and is violent and bloody. Grace is powerful, overwhelming, transformative. It shatters our notions of autonomy, it heals our deepest wounds, and it meets the deepest longings of the human heart.

So it’s that Grace of God that we stand firm… nothing more nothing less.

Grace and Gospel are synonyms.

Peter is saying in the midst of the trials the suffering all that is happening, I want to encourage you, I want to testify to you that what you need is not to find a way around these struggles, but to cling to the cross of Christ as the tornado of issues blows through.

You are not alone… God is with you and so are we.

13 She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends (Present Indicative) you greetings, as does Mark, my son.

She who is in Babylon is probably a reference to the church in Rome at the time. Peter is saying, we all need this grace… we are greeting you as a sister church! Churches are not in competition with one another… our enemy is not the Methodists, or Church of God… There is plenty of lost people, our enemy is Satan, the World, and our fallen flesh. Our hope is Jesus Christ.

14 Greet (Aorist Imperative) one another with a kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ.

Greet one another with a kiss of love descriptive of their culture not prescriptive of what we should do.

It’s Peter implying you are meeting together regularly and when you do have a warm love and hearty handshake for one another… be hospitable.

Peace to all of you who are in Christ… but what about those who are not in Christ?

There is no peace outside of Christ.

Conclusion

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