Now, that is stated, in somewhat remarkable language, as 'the grace that
is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' We
generally use that word 'grace' with a restricted signification to the
gifts of God to men here on earth. It is the earnest of the inheritance,
rather than its fulness. But here it is quite obvious that by the
expression the Apostle means the very same thing as he has previously
designated in the preceding context by three different phrases--'an
inheritance incorruptible and undefiled,' 'praise and honour and glory
at the revelation of Jesus Christ,' and 'the end of your faith, even the
salvation of your souls.' The 'grace' is not contrasted with the
'glory,' but is another name for the glory. It is not the earnest of the
inheritance, but it is the inheritance itself. It is not the means
towards attaining the progressive and finally complete 'salvation of
your souls,' but it is that complete salvation in all its fulness.
Now, that is an unusual use of the word, but that it should be employed
here, as describing the future great object of the Christian hope,
suggests two or three thoughts. One is that that ultimate blessedness,
with all its dim, nebulous glories, which can only be resolved into
their separate stars, when we are millions of leagues nearer to its
lustre, is like the faintest glimmer of a new and better life in a soul
here on earth, purely and solely the result of the undeserved,
condescending love of God that stoops to sinful men, and instead of
retribution bestows upon them a heaven. The grace that saved us at
first, the grace that comes to us, filtered in drops during our earthly
experience, is poured upon us in a flood at last. And the brightest
glory of heaven is as much a manifestation of the Divine grace as the
first rudimentary germs of a better life now and here. The foundation,
the courses of the building, the glittering pinnacle on the summit,
with its golden spire reaching still higher into the blue, is all the
work of the same unmerited, stooping, pardoning love. Glory is grace,
and Heaven is the result of God's pardoning mercy.
There is another suggestion here to be made, springing from this
eloquent use of this term, and that is not merely the identity of the
source of the Christian experience upon earth and in the future, but the
identity of that Christian experience itself in regard of its essential
character. If I may so say, it is all of a piece, homogeneous, and of
one web. The robe is without seam, woven throughout of the same thread.
The life of the humblest Christian, the most imperfect Christian, the
most infantile Christian, the most ignorant Christian here on earth, has
for its essential characteristics the very same things as the lives of
the strong spirits that move in light around the Throne, and receive
into their expanding nature the ever-increasing fulness of the glory of
the Lord. Grace here is glory in the bud; glory yonder is grace in the
fruit.
But there is still further to be noticed another great thought that
comes out of this remarkable language. The words of my text, literally
rendered, are 'the grace that is being brought unto you.' Now, there
have been many explanations of that remarkable phrase, which I think is
not altogether exhausted by, nor quite equivalent to, that which
represents it in our version--viz. 'to be brought unto you.' That
relegates it all into the future; but in Peter's conception it is, in
some sense, in the present. It is 'being brought.' What does that mean?
There are far-off stars in the sky, the beams from which have set out
from their home of light millenniums since, and have been rushing
through the waste places of the universe since long before men were,
and they have not reached our eyes yet. But they are on the road. And so
in Peter's conception, the apocalypse of glory, which is the crowning
manifestation of grace, is rushing towards us through the ages, through
the spheres, and it will be here some day, and the beams will strike
upon our faces, and make them glow with its light. So certain is the
arrival of the grace that the Apostle deals with it as already on its
way. The great thing on which the Christian hope fastens is no
'peradventure,' but a good which has already begun to journey towards
us.
Again, there is another thought still to be suggested, and that is, the
revelation of Jesus Christ is the coming to His children of this grace
which is glory, of this glory which is grace. For mark how the Apostle
says, 'the grace which is being brought to you in the revelation of
Jesus Christ.' And that revelation to which he here refers is not the
past one, in His incarnate life upon earth, but it is the future one, to
which the hope of the faithful Church ought ever to be steadfastly
turned, the correlated truth to that other one on which its faith rests.
On these two great pillars, rising like columns on either side of the
gulf of Time, 'He has come,' 'He will come,' the bridge is suspended by
which we may safely pass over the foaming torrent that else would
swallow us up. The revelation in the past cries out for the revelation
in the future. The Cross demands the Throne. That He has come once, a
sacrifice for sin, stands incomplete, like some building left unfinished
with rugged stones protruding which prophesy an addition at a future
day; unless you can add 'unto them that look for Him will He appear the
second time without sin unto salvation.' In that revelation of Jesus
Christ His children shall find the glory-grace which is the object of
their hope.
So say all the New Testament writers. 'When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory' says Paul.
'The grace that is to be brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
Christ,' chimes in Peter. And John completes the trio with his 'We know
that when He shall appear we shall be like Him.' These three things,
brethren--with Christ, glory with Him, likeness to Him--are all that we
know, and blessed be God! all that we need to know, of that dim future.
And the more we confine ourselves to these triple great certainties, and
sweep aside all subordinate matters, which are concealed partly because
they could not be revealed, and partly because they would not help us if
we knew them, the better for the simplicity and the power and the
certainty of our hope. The object of Christian hope is Christ, in His
revelation, in His presence, in His communication to us for glory, in
His assimilating of us to Himself.
'It is enough that Christ knows all,
And we shall be with Him.'
'The grace that is being brought unto you in the revelation of Jesus
Christ.'