So here we are at the end of 1 Peter. Peter, we’ve seen, is someone for whom reflection on the realities he presents in his letter turns into actual acts of worship; and so should we be. So now at its end, his teaching blossoms into an outbreak of praise to Jesus (5:11): `To him be the glory for ever and ever! Amen!’ It’s also striking to see how Peter closes this letter, oriented as it’s been to that side of our experience that is exile or wilderness, with a further such reference – to Babylon (v13), the old testament city of exile par excellence; presumably meaning Rome in this case. `She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings’: even in exile in Babylon, God’s church is chosen and loved by the Father. `And so does my son Mark’ – this beloved gospel-writer Mark being someone else who had experienced the process of wilderness, failure, and growth very personally, as we know from elsewhere (Acts 13:13, 15:37-39 – but also 2 Timothy 4:11).
But then, even as he signs off, Peter throws in one final, fascinating remark. `I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.’
If we want to grasp 1 Peter’s concerns, we should latch onto this apparently deliberate summary. Looking back over his letter, grace has been the point of it all, says Peter: to set out what grace is, and what it means to stand firm in it. So then: what has Peter told us about grace?
`Grace be yours in abundance’ was how he began his letter (1:2). But he didn’t mean this traditional greeting to be empty, unconsidered `Christianese’. Grace, God’s overwhelming, undeserved love for us, is what we must hold on to if we’re to survive the wilderness journey; and grace is the hallmark of God’s entire salvation-process (1:10). And Peter has given us at least three specific ways to respond: through sharing God’s gifts we pass on more of God’s kindness, `God’s grace in its various forms’ (4:9-11); by building Christlike relationships we act as fellow-sharers in the `gracious gift of (eternal) life’ (3:7); and thus we can stand in the place where that grace is flowing most freely (`God… gives grace to the humble’, 5:5). Grace is what the enormous kindness of Christ has meant and is meaning in our lives; grace is what his kindness will mean (1:13). In case his wilderness readers might be tempted to doubt that kindness (4:12), he points to its purest revelation at Calvary (1:18-19, the theme he returns to throughout chs 2 and 3), and also challenges them, `Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed’ (1:13). God is the `God of all grace’; his Fatherly love is the element in which we live, and that endless love will surely see us through (5:10, cf 5:7). This `grace-process’ was what the whole old testament had pointed to; grace, God’s unstinting, undeserved, astonishing kindness, is salvation (1:10-11). (Thankyou, loving Father! Please help me to trust you, and to share this vision…)
So this, above all, we need to hold on to. `I have written to you briefly, encouraging you’ – refreshing your vision of grace – `and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.’ The wilderness can be a tough place, and our calling there is to trust and obey, and having done all, as Ephesians 6:13 says, to stand. God’s unearned loving grace doesn’t mean (and this is a serious mistake which I’ve certainly encountered) that it doesn’t matter what we do, nor how we live; Peter says that he’s written setting out the `true grace of God`, and his (or God’s!) letter certainly contains plenty of instructions that we are called to shape our lives by. But we will be empowered to live by them, to `stand firm in` this grace, because indeed we have `tasted the kindness of the Lord’ (2:3 NASB), tasted just a little of the `goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the coming age’ (cf Heb 6:5); that foretaste of God’s grace and his kingdom in our hearts can take us through exile to glory.
Life that survives through the wilderness is God’s guaranteed consequence of his reign in our deepest being, the sure consequence of our new birth; ultimately it is the sure presence in us of his grace, and of his glorious kingdom…
