"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and for ever. Amen"
1 Peter 5: 10-11

HERE is the final assurance, and so blessing, pronounced by Peter on the general church of the New Testament scattered over the then known world. This assurance and blessing is expressed in the words 'will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast'. Peter gives us the strong and assured foundation of the certainty of this blessing in the words 'to him be the power for ever and ever. Amen'. God is omnipotent. He works his omnipotence to preserve all his chosen ones from falling away from him when assaulted by the world, the flesh and the devil. His omnipotence for his believing people will be active forever and forever, that is for all eternity. None and nothing is able to overpower or frustrate his omnipotence.

Perhaps we could say that this is all we need say in affirmation of this great blessing. However it is good to look more closely and particularly at this blessing as it is given us by Peter here, for in this way we become strong in the omnipotence of our God.

1. THE FOUNDATION OF GOD'S BLESSING.

a). God's nature towards us.

The great foundation of God's blessings to us his saints, saved through the faith given us in Christ as our sin-bearer, is this incredible nature of God towards us. He is the God of grace. Not just grace but all grace. His grace abounds around us, and covers every aspect of our life with this action and attitude of God toward us.

This wondrous truth is expressed so clearly and powerfully by Paul in Ephesians 2: 4-6. 'But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions -- it is by grace you have been saved.'

God's love towards us, his saints; God's mercy so rich beyond our imagination; God's power which raised us from the death of sin and brought us in the life of righteousness in his kingdom - made us alive with Christ. All this great and complete and eternal salvation was and is worked in us by God's grace. God is a God of grace towards all those he has chosen for life before the foundation of the world.

Paul goes on to affirm this attribute and character in God in Ephesians 2: 8-9. 'For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith -- and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so no-one can boast'.

This fact of grace as the reason and ground of our salvation is spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles. When Paul was summoned before the church at what is called the Council of Jerusalem to defend the salvation he had seen in the Gentiles believing and the evidence of their salvation proved by the Holy Spirit being given them, as the debate proceeded Peter spoke to defend the ministry of Paul and the receiving of the Gentiles into the church without is being necessary for the Gentiles to be bound by the customs taught by Moses. In Acts 15: 6-11 Peter affirms forthrightly that salvation and acceptance with God is by grace alone. In Acts 15: 11 Peter affirms this truth in the words 'No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus we are saved, just as they (the Gentiles) are.'

God is the God of all grace in Jesus Christ. Grace is seen and revealed in God that God reacted towards sin and sinners like us in a totally undeserved way. All we deserve from God is judgement, punishment and damnation, because we are sinners by nature as descendants of Adam. We have been born sinners, with a corrupt nature. From the moment we were conceived we have shown the corruption of our nature by our turning to self rather than God. Even when we sought to be good, we still failed to even begin to live as God's holiness required of us. Our works to be good and please God always failed, being tainted by selfish disobedience of God. There was nothing in us deserving of God's favour or consideration. Grace in God, and poured out from God, was and is the reason that we have been brought into his favour through Christ.

As we contemplate all this in us by nature it opens up to us the very nature of God's grace. It is seen as love, mercy and favour poured out to us who deserve no such blessings from God. Without this attitude and character of God towards us there would have been no hope for us, and we would be left with suffering the eternal punishment for our sins in an eternal hell. By grace we have been saved.

It was the grace of God that conceived, planned, this way he could save us from our sins, by coming into his world as a human being in the person of his only begotten Son, in order to meet all the demands of God's holiness in its precept and penalty. His grace faced the tremendous cost to himself of such an act. God in Christ did not shirk this cost, but accepted the incredible humiliation and painful suffering. God in grace accomplished this saving work and raised Jesus from the dead. In this victory of Christ, in grace, God is able to justly forgive and account righteous in his sight, and welcome into his eternal kingdom, all to whom he has granted repentance and faith in Jesus. Such is the truth of Peter's declaration of God that God is the God of all grace.

b. God's action towards us.

This wondrous grace, bestowed on those who believe in Jesus as sin-bearer and Saviour, is because of God's eternal election. Peter expresses this in the next words - 'who called you to his eternal glory'.

God's eternal glory is heaven. It is the new heaven and earth which God will create when Jesus returns to this world to judge the living and the dead, and separate the goats (those who are not saved) from his sheep (those who he has saved through the salvation worked by Christ). It is God's eternal glory where dwells only righteousness and holiness. It is where God will welcome his called ones to rejoice in his presence for all eternity. It is described in Revelation 21 and 22. It is the eternal dwelling of all those who have been granted faith in Jesus as their redeemer, and where only joy and happiness will exist, and all sorrow and pain and sin will be totally absent.

Those who will rejoice in this eternal glory of God will be only those he has called to be citizens of this kingdom of God. Paul speaks of this blessing in Ephesians 1: 4 where he says 'For he chose us in him (Christ) before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will -- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves'. Jesus speaks of this calling in John 6: 37-39 'All the Father gives me (those he has called) will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given, but raise them up at the last day'. This Jesus affirms in John 6: 44 'No-one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him'.

It is by the grace of God that we are called, and it is solely according to his good pleasure and will, and willed by God before the creation of the world.

Let it be understood that without this sovereign call no person would be saved, and all would be destined to everlasting punishment in hell. There is nothing in the fallen race of Adam, that is all humanity, that can merit this salvation, this eternal heaven. We are all born dead spiritual in transgressions and sin. We are born sinners and spiritual dead. From the moment we breathe we begin sinning revealing this corrupt nature inherited from Adam. Paul tells that all in Adam die, only in Christ can anyone be made alive (1 Corinthians 15: 21-22), and this resurrection is only possible by the grace and power of God, and on those he has called before this world was created.

Our natural sinful nature is repulsed by this truth. However without this gracious call of God according to his sovereign grace, no one is able to respond the the invitation to receive Christ as their Saviour, and as the one who has died on the cross to save us from our sins. We are sinners by birth (Romans 5: 12), we sin the moment we breathe and there is no merit we are able to perform which is able to atone for this sin, and there is no power in anyone who believes but by the grace and power of God, and so unless we are called there is no possibility that we are able to persevere in believing.

What is true is that no one is troubled by this sovereign gracious calling by God because the whole world is in prison to the god of this world, who is Satan. Only God's sovereign choice in this calling will deliver any fallen human being.

So this action of God towards us who have been saved is the greatest blessing of all. We can not but rejoice in the hope of glory, because God has called us to his eternal glory, and this call is purely by God's grace, we know that in spite of all our weakness and failings, that God who has begun this good working in us will continue unto the day of Jesus Christ, that is until he has brought us into his eternal glory.

c. God's gift to us.

The gift of God made known in this final benediction is Christ. Peter declares that it is in Christ that God calls us to his eternal glory, and that God is the God of all grace to us.

Christ is God's gift to the world, and specially to those who God has called to this blessing before the foundation of the world. Christ was sent and given to be the Saviour of sinners, and this he achieved by fulfilling all righteousness. It is our unrighteousness that shuts a soul out of heaven and from the eternal favour of God. We need righteousness, perfect righteousness, which is a copy of the holy righteousness of God, for God to welcome us into his favour and into his eternal glory. We are sinners, fallen and corrupt, and nothing we can do or work can work such a righteousness acceptable to God. God gave his only begotten Son into the world to provide this righteousness for all whom God called, and are granted saving faith in Jesus.

In Matthew 5: 17 Jesus submits to the baptism of John the baptist. Jesus makes clear to John that he had to do this to fulfil all righteousness (Matthew 4: 15). In Matthew 5: 17 Jesus in his sermon on the mount declares that he came, not to abolish the law of God, but to fulfil all of it. This was not for himself for he was already perfectly righteous, but vicariously for sinners, so that we who savingly believes in Jesus might have this perfect righteousness of Jesus imputed to us for our acceptance into the favour of God.

Paul in the opening of his great letter to the Romans makes this clear by declaring that it is this righteousness which he has come to make known in this letter. It is given to us in Romans 1: 16-17 -- He declares 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentiles. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: 'The righteous shall live by faith'.

Jesus worked this perfect righteousness in his perfectly holy and sinless life, and then as the lamb without blemish gave himself freely to cruel death on the cross, where, as in the words of Isaiah, our punishment for sin was what he suffered as God laid on him all our sins. So Christ was victorious as the second Adam where the first Adam failed so dismally, and fulfilled the whole law of God on our behalf in both precept and penalty. This righteousness is imputed to us who are granted this saving faith in Jesus. Jesus is our all. All God's blessings of salvation are provided in and through him.

2. THE BLESSING POURED OUT.

Peter finishes this benediction by reminding us that Satan will not allow us to persevere to heaven without a struggle to prevent us, if this were possible, but also to make our journey through this life to be a struggle. Peter tells us that suffering will be our experience. Suffering comes from the attacks and assaults of Satan, as he mobilizes all his forces and the army of his subjects to afflict us. Also there is the suffering allowed by God to prepare us for his glory, for through suffering we are trained for heaven. This is profoundly illustrated in the experience of Job. God allowed Satan to afflict Job in a massively savage way. Why did God allow this? We find the reason in the last chapter of Job where we read in Job 42: 4-6. In verse 4 God spoke to Job and Job acknowledges this in the words of verse 4, 'You said, "Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.'" (This what God said to Job from chapter 40). Job's testimony to the result of listening to God is recorded in verses 5-6 'My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.' Job confessed that his life good life before his suffering was because he had learnt about God by hearing. Now because of his experience in suffering and God's final words to him he had a deeper understanding of God's presence and holiness which Job describes as now seeing God in a deeper and more true way. The result was repentance altogether more real and deep than he had ever experienced before.

Just as in the case of Job, Peter makes the truth that after suffering has worked its perfect work God will restore his saved believing people, as he restored Job as told in Job 42: 7-16. Job's restoration is spoken of in temporal terms, but this is but a picture of the everlasting restoration given to us in God's eternal glory. We may have temporal restoration in part in this life, but this may be withheld by God if he sees it would not be for our good.

3. GIVE GOD ALL THE GLORY.