"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.
What a tremendous request made to God on our behalf by the Apostle Peter. While I would love to get into the idea that all of us as Christians must suffer at times and that by that suffering, if we allow God to, He is able to refine, shape and beautify our lives; I will refrain. Notice the request though of Peter. He asked God to do 4 things in our lives: Perfect us, establish us, strengthen us and settle us. We are going to break this down into 2 entries. We will look at the first two request of God by Peter and see what it is that He is praying for.
#1- Perfect us. The Apostle prays that God will make us perfect.
To "make us perfect" implies a progress towards perfection. Most of us would say that we are not there yet. The word perfect here has a meaning of: To put you in complete joint as the timbers of a building. Peter told us earlier in chapter 2 that we are "as living stones, being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." God's purpose in your life is to "perfect" you into the image of His beloved Son. He will use every means possible (Peter here mentions suffering) to hewn, sharpen, sand and bring your life into perfection. To fit you as it were as a perfectly formed timber into His Body and form you into the image of Jesus.
Spurgeon once said: "If there could be such a thing as a man in whom sanctification began but in whom God the Spirit ceased to work, if there could be a being so unhappy as to be called by grace and to be deserted before he was perfected"… "How bad would it be for God to give a man grace at all, if that grace did not carry him to the end?"
Have you ever seen an artist begin to paint a scene of grandeur on a canvas and stop in the middle? Have you seen a sculptor begin to chisel out of marble a form and then lay down his chisel before the completion? God has begun to work in us, perfecting us in His marvelous wisdom and He will not quit until we ultimately arrive at perfection even if it means some pain in the process.
#2- The Greek word: "stablish" means to set fast; to fix firmly; to render immovable.
The idea is to remove our inconsistencies. We are already as people of God safe and established in Gods arms of steadiness and in the hands of Christ. Our salvation is sure and we have an unchangeable covenant of grace made possible by Jesus. We are built on the rock of ages and are secure in our hope of Him. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus and yet so often we are unstable in our hearts, our devotion and our calling. We seem to be "tossed to and fro" in our walk with Him. We are in need of being "stablished" Our hearts can find themselves lukewarm and our faith wavering. May we claim the prayer made for us by Peter that God would make us strong, established, firm and immovable in our relationship with Him and that we would come to the full maturity in God. We need to be sure of our adoption and confident in our faith. Our hope is not in ourselves or our own strength, but our "steadfastness" needs to be in the person of Jesus Christ.
Adam Clarke made the observation in his commentary that "All these phrases used by Peter in this verse are architectural". What a great concept that Peter is trying to convey. That we are to be made evenly, firmly founded, complete, supported, and strengthened. He is praying for us. His request is that God will make us perfect and established. We need to lay a hold of that request and claim it as our own. We need to understand that God has our best interest at heart even though at times we may wonder what it is He is doing. He is about the business of doing a great work in our lives. Our part is simply to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and allow the Master of our souls to do His work.
We will look at the other two requests in our next entry. These first two should give us great assurance and confidence in our "God of all Grace."
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