"But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you."
1 Peter 5:10
Part 1
Peter, before he closes his first book with his final greetings, gives a brief word of prayer to God for believers (1 Peter 5:10-11). In this prayer is an essential truth for us.
“But the God of all grace.”
How great is our God? He is the “God of all grace,” in other words, He is the source. All grace emanates from Him. This idea is not new to the New Testament alone. God shared this principle with Moses firsthand, up on the mountain,
“And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty…” (Exodus 34:6).
King David understood God’s grace, for he had experienced it often.
“For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee” (Psalm 86:5).
The grace principle is seen all through the New Testament.
“Who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.”
It is our gracious God that has called you dear believer, to “His eternal glory.” And He did this through the gospel. Christ came, lived a sinless life, was put to death on the cross for our sins, and in our place, He arose from the dead for our justification. He calls us to eternal life by faith in His work on the cross for us.
Note: He “hath called us.” What does this word called mean? Barnes helps us to understand the Greek term Paul used here (and in Ephesians 4:1 and many other places).
“This word properly means ‘a call,’ or ‘an invitation’ – as to a banquet. Hence, it means that divine invitation or calling by which Christians are introduced into the privileges of the gospel”[1] (Barnes).
Imagine that, He has graciously called us by the gospel to “His eternal glory,” praise Him from whom all blessings flow!
But here is something critically important that you do not want to miss. Sharing in “His eternal glory,” only begins for us – “After that, ye have suffered a while.” This is where some believers like to skip on to the next verse as they read the text because suffering sounds hard and painful.
What does it mean that we have to suffer a while? Come back tomorrow and let us see what this means for us as believers.
[1] Albert Barnes, Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, the electronic version in eSword.