"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."
Rom 1: 7b-…Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you ever noticed that Paul uses this salutation often when addressing the various churches? Why is that?
The word “Grace” was a very common greeting among the Greeks. When you passed someone on the street you would say to them “Grace to you” in the same way we might say “hello”, or ask “how are you?” The word “Peace” was a very common greeting among the Hebrews. If you were to travel to Israel today, many of the Jews there would greet you with the term “shalom”, which among other things means Peace. It was and still is a standard greeting.
The word grace in the Greek society spoke of beauty and favor. Grace takes on an even more significant meaning when you put it into the Christian context.
Grace and Peace. These two words are called the “Siamese twins” of the New Testament because they are almost always coupled together. The interesting thing is that they are always in the order in which we see them here. Never do you find them in the reverse order of peace and grace.
I do not believe that you can really know the peace of God until you have known and experienced and understood the Grace of God. There are a great deal of Christians today that do not fully understand the grace of God and because of that they truly do not have the peace of God in their daily walk with Him. Many people today are striving to somehow please God by their devotion to Him. We seek to gain the acceptance of God by working to stir up fervor, passion and zeal thus somehow proving our dedication to Him. The more devotion to Him we can gain, the more pleased by God we become, is the thinking of the day.
Fasting, spending great quantity of time in prayer (regardless of the quality), reading Gods word through yearly without fail, never missing a service, serving in and on everything we can squeeze into our already busy lives, keeping our list of rules that we feel are sin and striving in our own effort to be a good Christian will surly gain us Gods approval. The problem is, the more we strive to do, the more aware of our failures and shortcoming we become. We seem to always fall short of our goals. We’re always setting new ones. We’re always feeling guilty because we come up short in our attempts for zeal and dedication to our God. We fail to keep our list of rules. We make more vows then fall short again. Sound familiar? This type of life will rob us of any type of real peace of God. Why, because we do not understand the real grace of God.
We’re trying to gain His approval of the basis of our own goodness. We are trying to prove our worth to Him through our obedience, our dedication, our works and our own efforts. Do you see a pattern here? It is “our” commitment to Him, when we should be resting in His commitment to us.
The greatest day in our Christian walk with God is when somehow we grasp the GRACE of God. They day we are able to fully rest in the completed work of Jesus Christ in our life. The day that we can cease from our own labor, and our own effort and our own attempt with pleasing God and trying to become acceptable to Him and we can grasp the GRACE of God that He has given to us. His complete acceptance of us and the work in our lives that has been granted to us through the effort of what His Son, Jesus has done for us. The gift of GRACE! It is not what we can do for God; it is what He has already done for us.
You have to know His grace before you can have His peace. Grace and peace to you by God the Father and Christ Jesus. Not by works of righteousness that we have done. It’s Gods great work in me, not my feeble little effort for Him that counts.
Do we quit serving God? Do we stop praying, do we stop reading His Word? Absolutely not……God forbid! But we do it now out of a heart of love and gratitude of God. We rest in God’s grace and pleasure over our lives and we enjoy His love of us. My prayer for all of us today is that this greeting from Paul of grace and peace will become more than words on a page, but that they become the practical experience of our Christian life.
Rom. 1:3-4-Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Acts 20:28- Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.
We now completed two entries that have looked at the meanings behind what Paul says in Rom.1:3-4. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and His ancestry traces back to that of King David. Yet Paul also declares Him to “be the Son of God”. You have the flesh, the human nature of Jesus through the seed of David and born of Mary and yet you have as well, Deity; the “Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness”.
As you can see, I have added another verse to our discussion. I feel that it ties in nicely with the thought that I would like for us to think about today. Going back to my previous entry we discovered that when the female egg is fertilized, a complete cell structure is formed, totaling 46 chromosomes: 23 from the mother and 23 from the father. What I did not mention is that the father is the one who determines the baby’s blood. We know that God, the Father implanted His seed, His life, His 23 chromosomes and genetic code into the other half of Mary’s cell through the power of the Holy Spirit, thus determining Jesus blood.
That is what makes the blood of Jesus capable of providing atonement for all of mankind. If I were to be crucified, my blood would be nothing more than human blood. It would have nothing within it that could provide help or salvation even for me, let alone others. Yet the blood of Jesus is divine. It is the blood of God. One drop of His blood that spilt on Calvary is capable of providing salvation and the removal of sins of every last person that has been or will ever be born. .
Heb 9:12-13- He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.
The redemption of man was purchased with the sacrifice and the blood of Jesus. We have been bought with a price. Not a price of temporal things such as silver and gold, but the most treasured and valuable commodity in the universe. The blood of our blessed redeemer.
One last thought concerning the topic before us. Notice that Acts 20:28 informs us that the “church of God has been purchased with His own blood”. I would say that it was purchased with the blood of Jesus through the suffering of the cross as well as that of His Father who determined His blood through the seed implanted into the womb of Mary.
What can wash away my sins? What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Rom. 1:3-4-Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
In our last entry we used as our discussion verse 3 that was written by the Apostle Paul. We understand what Paul was saying when he mentions here that Jesus was “made of the seed of David according to the flesh”. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and His ancestry line traces back to that of King David.
Now we want to take a look at verse 4. We will discover that Paul makes it clear that Jesus is also declared to be the “Son of God”. In meditating on these two verses, we are going to see a dichotomy mentioned here. What do I mean by that? One of the definitions of dichotomy by Webster is “branching of an ancestral line into two equal diverging branches”. Paul declares Jesus to be of the flesh and yet he also declares Him to be the Son of God.
Jesus was “born of the flesh” and is fully human and yet He is fully God. Thus what we find is a man-God dichotomy when we look at Jesus. You have the flesh, the human nature of Jesus through the seed of David and born of Mary and yet you have as well, Deity; the “Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness”.
Mary questioned the angel and asks how it is that she could become the mother of this Messiah without knowing a man? The angel responded and said, “the Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the POWER of the most high will overshadow you so that HOLY thing that shall be born of you will be called the SON OF GOD!
He was completely human and completely divine. The God-man. The seed of David and the seed of God.
In our human body and our cell structure, we find 46 chromosomes. Within these chromosomes, there are these little genes with all of their pre-codes for life built into them. We are truly and wonderfully made. A full cell structure contains these 46 chromosomes. In the male sperm and the female ovum, you will find only 23 chromosomes in each cell. When the egg is fertilized, it will complete the cell structure again totaling 46 chromosomes: 23 from the mother and 23 from the father. Remember that within those chromosomes you have 23 genetic codes that come from the father and 23 genetic codes that come from the mother, and when they join together they recreate to form one complete cell structure.
Now because each cell has a different set of chromosomes from each parent, you can have brothers and sisters that are completely different in looks, eye color, and genetic make up. That is why even paternal twins (which are two eggs being fertilized at the same time) can be so very different from one other. In the case of identical twins, you’ll find a different situation. That is the same cell (not two eggs) that become divided, thus is identical to the other. I digress, let us move back to Verse four.
Mary conceived from the power of the Holy Spirit (the Spirit of holiness) coming upon her, enabling a virgin birth to bring forth this baby boy. There were 23 chromosomes supplied by Mary that made up half of the cell. But remember, God implanted His seed, His life, His 23 chromosomes and genetic code into the other half of the cell. Jesus is indeed fully man and fully God. Deity took on the form and likeness of a human body. That is why Paul can say with confidence within these two verses that “Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness….
By the way, I have decided to take one last look at another thought that needs to be brought out in our next entry. I believe, with the help of the Holy Spirit that it will be the most powerful of the three.
Romans 1: 3-4a- Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness...
We are going to look at these verses in two parts and in this first entry we will only discuss verse 3. Paul makes it clear in this verse that Jesus was born, or his heritage came from that of King David. God promises David on several occasions that he would have an heir that would sit on the “throne of David” forever. The scriptures also make it clear that the Messiah would come from the seed of David and that His rule as King was eternal.
When you look at the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, you will discover they both list the genealogy of Jesus. They both trace the lineage of Jesus all the way back to King David. His lineage actually traces all the way back to Abraham, but that is another discussion.
Why is it that the genealogy in Luke's gospel is different from the genealogy in Matthew, and yet they both trace back to David?
Very interesting, isn’t it? A closer examination will help us understand the reasoning of the Holy Spirit to list it differently. Luke gives us the genealogy of Mary, the mother of Jesus, while Matthew gives us the genealogy of Joseph. Why would Matthew do that since Joseph was not Jesus father? Let’s look back in Matthew and see if we can determine why.
Matthew 1:6- and Jesse begot David the king. David the king begot Solomon by her who had been the wife of Uriah.
Then we skip down to verse 11 and find something very interesting. (Matthew 1:11) Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers about the time they were carried away to Babylon. Keep this verse in mind as we travel on.
Matthew is following the Kingly linage from David through Solomon and all the way down the line to Joseph. Solomon was the son of David who God placed on the throne after the death of his father. Solomon had the “Actual” right to sit on the throne because he was chosen by God as David’s successor.
If you look back in the Book of Jeremiah though, God speaks prophetically through Jeremiah and He says something extremely significant.
Jeremiah 22: 30- "Thus says the LORD, Write this man down childless, A man who will not prosper in his days; For no man of his descendants will prosper
Sitting on the throne of David Or ruling again in Judah.”
Who was God speaking about? If you look back at verse 24, you will see that God looked down through time and was speaking about Jeconiah. The same Jeconiah that is listed in the lineage of Solomon in Matthew 1:11. God placed an eternal curse on him and declared that none of his descendents would ever sit on the throne of David. Joseph came from this line, thus eliminating any actual seed from Joseph to ever sit on the throne. Joseph was not the blood father of Jesus, he simply adopted Jesus as his own son, thus by-passing the curse placed on Jeconiah, enabling Jesus to sit on the throne, by way of Joseph.
With that in mind, look back to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 3:31) and you will again discover a different branch of heritage from King David listed.
...the son of Melea, the son of Menan, the son of Mattathah, the son of Nathan, the son of David,
Luke follows the line of Nathan who is the older brother of Solomon. As the older brother, Nathan actually had the legal right to the throne of David more than did his younger brother Solomon. God placed Solomon on the throne, but in legal terms, Nathan had the legal president.
Mary, the blood mother of Jesus comes from the line of Nathan, the elder son of David. Luke traces Jesus, being born from the virgin birth of Mary, back to David through the older brother Nathan. That is why God, by the Spirit, places both lines of heritage in the scriptures. To show you that Jesus had the "actual" right to sit on the throne of David through the Kingly line of Solomon, and the "legal" right to sit on the throne, through the legal line of the older brother Nathan.
God is so incredibly wise and sure……None of this was some haphazard plan, thrown together at the last minute. In the foreknowledge and wisdom of God, we have Jesus “born of the seed of David according to the flesh”.
