1 Peter 5:10 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 5:10

Comments

‘The God of all grace’ – every form of favour and kindness; that’s our God, the God of all grace. How does the favour of God come to us? This is addressed to Christians. How does grace come? It comes through the word, through answered prayer, through the great gift of assurance, which is strengthened when we worship him and express our love to him. It’s expressed through this providential care of us, and the way he works all things for our spiritual and eternal good. We take a spiritual view of everything that happens in life. We try our utmost not to be shaken and shocked, and walk around with drooping heads and hearts of sorrow. You are called to many things. But above them all, you are called to eternal glory. ‘But I'm young’, you may say. I’ve got life in front of me. Surely I am not be thinking all the time about heaven and glory.’ In some measure you are, because that is your calling. If we bear that in mind, it will enable us to see everything in perspective, and always to look for God's higher purpose in everything. Suffering comes in two parts. There is seasonal suffering. Every Christian will have some seasons of difficulty and hardship and suffering. God measures it. He is not the author of evil things and harsh things, but he permits it for our good. But then you could look at the words another way. The whole of this earthly life in a sense is trouble to Christians, without remission. We are always to some extent rejected by the world. We are always in trouble with ourselves: the great struggle against sin. We are always afflicted in some way, some shape or form. We are always surrounded by partings and death and sorrows, and understandable grief. But this life will only be a while, even the continuous pressures. What is this brief while by comparison with eternity? After you have suffered a spate of temptation or attack of any kind, the result will be these four advances: they will ‘make you perfect, stablish, strength, settle you.’ The word ‘perfect’ here translates a version of ‘being made whole’ or ‘complete’, in the sense of ‘being repaired’. The troubles have created for us in this world a certain amount of disorder. We have a new nature, a new life, but we have troubles and difficulties and weaknesses and faults and failings, so we are to some extent fractured and cracked. But in heaven we are completely repaired and made whole. ‘Stablish’ means you are fixed, but it is most used in the context of travel, and the idea of a direction. You are fixed in your direction of travel, fixed firmly on the road that leads to heaven and glory. It implies you cannot be greatly fixed without some troubles. Without troubles you don’t discover where the fracture lines in your character, in your spiritual make up. The ‘strengthen’ term here does not have in mind general strength. Somebody can be very strong, but lazy. This word is about energy or exercised strength. May you be given energy and resolution and determination to please the Lord, and to serve him: not only to be kind in disposition, but to be to be kind and full of good works in action. So we could translate it ‘invigorate’. The King James translators have chosen a nice word here: ‘settle’. We need to see a distinction between these words. It has to do with a building and a foundation. May the Lord make you foundational. If only we, by the help of God, could leave a church so ordered and settled and taught about its position and responsibilities, that it is a stable and sure foundation for the next generation of believers, if the Lord delays his coming.

Application

The world to come is so real to Peter that it is as if it is already present. He lives not for time but for eternity. Our present lot may be sufferings for Christ’s sake, but God is doing a glorious work through this earthly trial and building something permanent – a house that will stand for all eternity, the church of the living God.

‘Who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus’. Our God delights to share the good things that he enjoys with his people. It is his great pleasure that he will bring the church to heaven where she can be entirely delivered from the miseries, sorrows, disappointments, trials, and persecutions of this fallen world, and so thoroughly separated from them that the past record of them is unable to diminish in any way the enjoyment of that glory. To achieve this God will not simply remove his people from the realm of misery, but will fully answer all the causes of that misery, so that there is no shadow left to haunt them. Our past guilt will have been so completely removed that no fraction of it comes with us into heaven; our fallen natures will have been put to death and our new spiritual natures so perfectly created in us that we live entirely in the power of the new life; our resurrection bodies will have no trace of the weaknesses and sickness of the present life and the aging process, but will be suitably strengthened for eternal life in the presence of God; it will be clear that God so used all things, even our sins to bring glory to the name of Christ, so that we cannot doubt that everything has worked for the glory of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All this has been accomplished through the cross where Christ laid the foundation for all God’s good gifts to his creatures.

This suffering is only for ‘a while’ or ‘a little’, that is, a little time or a little degree, but the fruit of it is without end. We can surely put up with something uncomfortable for only a short time or to only a small degree, when we know it leads to permanent and unlimited blessing.

Questions

This verse is translated by the KJV as a petition, a prayer to God that the believer may be blessed, based on the Received Text reading where the first verb in the series is in the optative mood. The alternative reading has a future tense and expresses an assurance that it shall be so, however the two alternatives amount to the same thing, because every apostolic prayer must be answered. We too should pray for this blessing with confidence that God is willing to answer such a prayer.

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1 Peter 5:10 Commentary and Bible Study