About this sermon
Peter closes his letter by commending Silvanus as a faithful brother and declaring that what he has written is the true grace of God; his readers are to stand firm in it. Faithfulness is rare and precious in the church and the world. Believers who have trusted Christ alone already stand in grace and rejoice in hope of the glory of God, a hope that is certain though still future, and Peter calls them to remain firm in that grace.
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. We are once again in 1 Peter. As we begin to wrap up our time in 1 Peter, we are tonight going to consider 1 Peter chapter five, verses 12 through 14. Again, you’ll find that on page 1206 in your Pew Bible. 1 Peter five, verses 12 through 14. Dear friends, this is the word of God. Hear it with reverence and awe. By Sylvainus, a faithful brother, as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. Greet one another with the kiss of love. Peace to all of you who are in Christ. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s seek the Lord’s blessing once again upon the preaching of his word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you that in Jesus Christ, your son, our savior, your word to us is a word of grace and a word of peace. We pray, heavenly Father, that as we turn our attention to the grace and peace that are communicated to us in this portion of Holy Scripture, we ask that your Holy Spirit would make us sensitive and open, give our hearts tenderness that we might receive your word with a teachable spirit, Lord. And we pray that by the illuminating work of your spirit, that you would cause your word to be understood and to bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives and in our congregation. And Lord, we pray that you would once again set a guard over my lips, that I, your unworthy servant, may only speak forth that which is faithful to your Scriptures, faithful to this portion of your word.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is Christian Greetings. This is the first part of a two-part series or considering this passage. And there are three key words to listen for this evening in my sermon, the words, greetings, faithful, and grace. Well, dear ones, this Lord’s Day evening, we begin to wrap up our study of 1 Peter. This epistle both begins as it ends on a note of peace. Remember, friends, back in chapter one, verse two, Peter wrote in his opening salutation, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. And here in the very last verse of chapter five, Peter closes his letter by writing, peace to all of you who are in Christ. Now, you might say, okay, well, that makes sense, I guess, but so what?
Well, think about it. When we consider the circumstances of those to whom Peter wrote this letter, his stress on the theme of peace is really quite remarkable when you think about it. As I’ve tried to stress time and time again throughout this sermon series on 1 Peter, this epistle was written to first century Christians and Christian churches that were facing a fiery trial of serious persecution for their faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Peter wrote this epistle to encourage and to exhort and to guide these believers to continue steadfast in their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to continue steadfast no matter what they might have to face in the way of persecution and opposition directed at them from those who were hostile to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, doesn’t it encourage you to know that God’s peace is multiplied and abides with those of us who are in Christ and how encouraging to know as well that we as Christ’s followers can know and experience his peace, can be assured of his peace, that peace which passes all understanding, even if God in his wise providence should call upon us to face the turmoil of tribulations and distresses and persecutions. As the hymn writer puts it, oh Jesus is a rock in a weary land, a shelter in the time of storm. Beloved, as we prepare to consider these closing verses of this powerful epistle, it’s important to understand that Peter is here following the common writing customs of his day and I think that Dr. I. Howard Marshall helpfully displays or speaks of these customs in the following quote.
He says, just as there was an accepted pattern for the beginning of a letter in New Testament times, so too there was a customary way of concluding once the body of the letter was complete. Christian writers often followed the general pattern but gave it a fresh Christian character. Naturally this included greetings to the writer’s friends and also from other persons associated with him. A mention of anybody who had particularly helped in writing and transmitting the letter was usual. Indeed, a letter often functioned as a commendation for the person carrying it. Now friends, since this is the case, since it is the case that Peter is simply following the accepted custom of his day by concluding his epistle with these greetings, you may be wondering what we Christians here living in the year 2024 can learn from these verses of Christian greetings to a group of first century Christians.
After all, at a superficial glance, it may seem that there isn’t much that we can learn from passages of the Bible like this one which contain these kinds of personal greetings. At this point, you may be tempted to feel that you’re reading someone else’s mail. You may be thinking, well, you know, this is interesting but I’ve never met Silvanus or Mark or she who is at Babylon, whoever he or they may be. Who are these people? And what do I have to learn from them? Well, dear ones, whenever we are tempted to think these kinds of thoughts about any passage from God’s word, whenever we start to imagine that certain portions of the Bible are irrelevant or that there’s nothing in those passages from which we could gain spiritual profit, at that point, we need to once again open up our Bibles and remind ourselves of what God tells us in his word about the relevance of his word and the fact that his word, that all portions of scripture are indeed authoritative and instructive.
Consider, for example, that very familiar passage in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. You know the passage where the apostle Paul says, all scripture, not just some scripture, not just the scriptures that you personally find interesting or personally relevant to your own circumstances. No, he says, all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Oh, beloved in Christ, if the Bible is the word of God, which indeed it is, it is there for you and for me to profit by spiritually. And this is true of every section of the Bible and every kind of literature found within the Bible, including the personal greetings that we read of in the Bible. And so, friends, I hope to demonstrate to you in my sermon this evening that there is indeed much for us to learn from this portion of God’s word.
And as we focus in on our passage for this evening tonight, we’re gonna be focusing especially on verse 12. And I want you, first of all, to consider Silvanus a faithful brother. Let us consider this man, Silvanus, who is described by Peter as a faithful brother. Look at verse 12. Peter writes, by Silvanus, a faithful brother, as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. Who is Silvanus? Now, we cannot be with absolute certainty prove who this man Silvanus was, but most Bible scholars agree that he was most likely the Silas or Silvanus who is mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament scriptures. And if Silas and Silvanus are one in the same person, then he was either a man who had two names or Silas was perhaps the Greek spelling of his name and Silvanus was the Latin spelling of his name.
In any case, if we assume that this is correct, that Silas and Silvanus, that this is one in the same individual, well, if that is correct, then he was a man who accompanied Paul, the apostle, on his missionary journeys or some of his missionary journeys. Silvanus or Silas seems to have been a very active and significant person in the leadership of the early Christian church. From verse 12, it appears that Peter had possibly used Silvanus as his secretary to assist him in composing this epistle. And that’s why he says by Silvanus, I have written briefly to you. And although the text does not explicitly say it, it’s also quite possible that Silvanus was assigned with the task of delivering and reading the letter to its original recipients. And we always need to remember friends that in those days in the first century, the world then was not the kind of interconnected world that we live in today with the internet or the postal service or what have you.
I mean, there was no internet back then. There was pretty much no ancient equivalent to the modern postal service even. If you wanted to send a letter to someone, you had to arrange for someone to actually hand deliver that letter. And perhaps this is why Peter stresses that Silvanus is a faithful brother. Peter seems to be saying to his readers, look guys, Silvanus is a trustworthy man. He can be trusted to faithfully represent what I have said to you in this letter. And if you have any questions about this letter, then ask Silvanus. He can be relied upon to accurately represent the truths that I’m trying to teach you and convey to you in this epistle. Well, dear ones, if there is one thing that we can know with certainty about Silvanus, it is that he was regarded by the great apostle Peter as a faithful brother in Christ.
And he was regarded, we get the impression generally, as a faithful brother in Christ. He was faithful not simply because he possessed saving faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, though no doubt that was true of him. And sometimes that term faithful can be used in scripture to be another term for one who possesses true saving faith. That certainly seems to have been the case, of course, with Silvanus. But he was also faithful in the sense of being reliable, being trustworthy, being loyal, being dependable. That is the sense of faithful that Peter seems to be using here when he speaks of Silvanus. This implies that Silvanus was a man of integrity. He was a man who kept his word. He was a man who was loyal, consistent, stable. You could rely upon him. Even though relatively little is said about this Christian brother of the first century, Silvanus or Silas, we get the impression from the little that is written about him that he was a solid example of a godly man.
He was the kind of Christian that Christian parents would want their sons and their daughters to emulate. Well, dear ones, it’s very difficult today to find a faithful man or woman. It’s very difficult to find men and women who actually keep their word, who fulfill their commitments, who are characterized by consistency, dependability, trustworthiness, loyalty, and squeaky clean honesty. Oh, how rare those character qualities are today within our broader culture, and even in some ways within Christ’s professing church. These are qualities and virtues that are certainly not held up in our broader culture as things to emulate or follow after. Oh, there are plenty who profess faith within the church, plenty who claim to believe, plenty who claim to adhere to sound doctrine, but a faithful man or woman, a faithful boy or girl or young person, who can find?
I’m sure many of you can think of times when you’ve experienced the frustration of having to put up with broken promises, having to deal with people simply not keeping their word. You need some repair work done on your home, and in setting up those services, you were promised certain services at a certain time on a certain day. But that day and time would come and go, and the services you were promised would go unfulfilled until you had to make an absolute pest of yourself to finally get the work completed. You ever had a situation like that? It’s very frustrating, isn’t it? The plumber promises to show up on a Tuesday, but he doesn’t actually come until Friday, if he comes at all. You’re promised over the phone that an important document is going to be sent to you right away, but it ends up sitting on someone’s desk or in someone’s email draft file for a week before it finally gets sent.
Beloved in Christ, as those who claim to trust and serve and follow a faithful Savior, our faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who always keeps His word, by the grace of God, let us imitate the faithfulness of godly men like Silvanus as Silvanus imitated the faithfulness of our covenant God and Savior. Of all people, we believers should have a reputation for being a people who keep their promises even when it is not convenient or easy. We should be characterized and known as people who honor their commitments, who show up on time, who keep their word even when doing so involves personal sacrifice. After all, through our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father has been faithful to keep His promises of salvation to us believers, and Christ kept His word even unto death. Christ was faithful to His calling even faithful unto death upon the cross for our salvation.
God’s promises are yay and amen in Christ our Savior. So dear Christian, do you strive to be faithful like your Savior, and do you seek to emulate and imitate godly examples such as Silvanus? Like Silvanus, do you have a reputation for being reliable, dependable, trustworthy, loyal, faithful? None of us is these things perfectly, of course. And even those of us who are in Christ, we struggle with unfaithfulness. We struggle with disloyalty. We do not always consistently, we’re not always consistently reliable or dependable. And that’s why we need a perfect faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. And as we recited earlier in the service today, our only comfort in life and in death is that we belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. By the grace of God, as He who saved us has been faithful to us, let us out of gratitude for His gift of salvation seek to be a faithful people, like Silvanus was a faithful brother in the Lord.
But we also have in this passage a testimony to the true grace of God. As Peter wraps up this epistle, giving his customary final greetings. Again, he mentions Silvanus, a faithful brother. As I regard him by him, I’ve written briefly to you. Notice it’s five chapters in length, but Peter says it’s a brief writing, but it is a writing that is jam-packed full of gospel truth. And that’s why he can remind his readers that he has throughout this epistle been exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. In this verse, Peter explains that he wrote to these believers for the purpose of exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. And then as the ESV translates it, Peter gives an exhortation to stand firm in it, meaning stand firm in this true grace of God, that he has been writing about and expounding throughout this marvelous epistle.
Dear ones, Peter was not only a great apostle of Jesus Christ, Peter was also a man with the heart of a caring pastor. And again, I bring us back to remembering the life circumstances, the situation that these first century believers that he wrote this epistle to were facing. They were facing the fiery trials of persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They were facing suffering. They were facing discouragement. And so he’s seeking to encourage them. He’s seeking to guide them to living godly lives in the midst of a godless world. And in the midst of seeking to encourage and exhort and testify to them and build them up in their faith, what does he focus on? What does he bring them back to? He brings them back to the grace of God, the grace of God that had saved them, the grace of God that would indeed preserve them.
Peter was a man who knew the challenges that these believers faced. And that is why he’s been so concerned throughout this epistle to offer so much in the way of encouragement. And to that encouragement, Peter now adds, in a sense, his own personal testimony. We need to remember the history of Peter. Peter is, what we read about Peter in the New Testament, it’s actually very encouraging to me to read about Peter because when the scriptures write about the great heroes of the faith, like Peter and others, it doesn’t just give the good side. It doesn’t just give the side of them that God’s grace had formed and shaped. It also shows their faults, their warts, their flaws, their sins. And that was certainly true of Peter. Peter certainly was not a great apostle by his own merits or worthiness or works, or as if he had some special virtue in and of himself.
No, Peter was a sinner saved by sovereign grace just like you and me, dear brother, sister in Christ. Remember that Peter had experienced the wonderful grace of God, the grace that he has so eloquently written of in this epistle. He had experienced that grace on a deep and very personal level in his own life. Remember, he’s the one who had denied his savior three times after swearing to Almighty God, the Lord, even if the others abandon you, I will never abandon you. And that very night, he denied Christ three times. And he was crushed by his own moral failure. But after the resurrection, what does Jesus do? Jesus says to Peter, Peter, do you love me? Of course I love you. Feed my sheep. The Lord Jesus restores this man who had fallen so grievously and fallen so far.
The Lord restores this man. When Peter writes of the true grace of God, he’s not writing of some abstract, intellectual, theological category. He’s writing of something that he has experienced personally at a deep level in his own life. Peter knew on a personal level that God’s amazing grace was sufficient to bring him through any trial. He could testify personally to God’s saving and sustaining grace in his own life. And he could testify with certainty and with conviction that this grace is indeed true. It’s not phony. It’s not deceptive. It’s not unreliable. It is indeed true. It is the true grace of God. Now, what is grace? What’s the basic definition of grace? I know many of you have probably heard the definition that God’s grace is his undeserved favor. And that’s true, but that’s only partly true.
God’s grace is actually his demerited favor. It’s his love and favor given to those who deserve the opposite of his love and favor. It is God’s mercy and favor and love toward those who deserve his wrath and judgment and rejection. Again, God’s grace is his undeserved love and favor to those who deserve his wrath and judgment. And it is by that grace of God, given to us in union with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, it is that grace that saves us and brings us into a right relationship with God. It is by grace and grace alone that we not only stand justified before God, declared righteous in his sight because of the righteousness of Christ, given to us as a gift, received by God-given faith alone, apart from works. And it is by grace that we are preserved and thus that we persevere in Christ.
Beloved, if you are a true believer, then you already stand in grace by faith. The apostle Paul highlights this in passages like, for example, Romans five, one and two, where Paul writes, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. I know that some suggest it could read, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But I think the ESV has it correct here, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. If you are in Christ, by the grace of God have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from sin, you right now, brother, sister in Christ, you stand in grace and you will experience the eschatological glory of God.
And so you rejoice in hope, meaning it’s still in the future, though it is certain. You rejoice in hope of the glory of God. By grace, we already stand in grace. Beloved in Christ, it is by God’s sovereign love and mercy that we have right now a standing in grace, not by our own merits, not by our own works, not by our own worthiness, not by our own seekings or strivings, but by his grace and grace alone. And just as his sovereign love and mercy enable us to stand in grace, so that same love and mercy will keep us safe in that grace even until the end. But you may say, well, wait a minute, if that’s the case, then why does Peter, after mentioning in verse 12, this true grace of God, this grace of God that the scriptures testify that we stand in, why does he then go on to exhort us and say, stand firm in it?
Well, my friends, we need to remember that God’s sure and certain promises to keep us in his grace do not cancel our responsibility to stand firm in his grace. We must rely on his grace alone and not on our own works or merits or strivings to save and to keep us. And we must stand fast and firm in that grace. This is not a call to get off of relying upon Christ and get back on the treadmill of works. When he says stand firm in it, we know he’s saying continue to cling to Christ, continue to rest upon Christ, continue to look to Christ and Christ alone for your eternal salvation. We must accept, beloved, the inspired apostles’ testimony and exhortation to the true grace of God. Just as God’s grace saved Peter and sustained him through a busy and difficult life of serving his master and sustained him even through martyrdom, and as it appears from the records of the early church that the apostle Peter died a violent martyr’s death.
So the true grace of God that saved and sustained Peter will save and sustain all of us who by grace through God-given faith are united to Jesus Christ with a true and living faith. May God grant to all of us the gift of his true grace. And so, friends, this is the true grace of God. Do you stand in it? Say, how do I know that I stand in it? Do you rest in Jesus? Do you believe that in Jesus Christ you have a merciful, forgiving God? That Christ’s death is sufficient to atone even for your sin? Look not to yourself, look to Jesus and heed his promise for Jesus says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Remember, Jesus is a faithful savior and he promises in his word that he will turn away none who come to him and call upon him.
So call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, receive and rest upon him, the God man who was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and raised from the dead so that whoever believes might not perish but have everlasting life. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And if you doubt your faith, pray that the Lord would grant you the grace of the spirit, that your faith might be firm and that it might be certain. Oh friends, be warned against preparationism, be warned against the idea that well, I gotta make myself better before Jesus will accept me. Come as you are. That was one of the things that kept me from the savior for a while when I was under conviction. I thought well, I’m not good enough for the savior. You know what, I was right.
And I never will be good enough in myself for the savior. But Jesus calls sinners to repentance. That’s the only qualification to have Jesus as your savior is to recognize that you’re a sinner and that your only hope of salvation is found in him. So receive and rest upon Christ and Christ alone. And then you too by the grace of God will be able to stand firm in that true grace of God. Amen, let us pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that by your spirit that you would give us the grace to recognize your true grace given to us in union with Christ and to stand firm in that true grace by continuing to cling to, to rely upon, to rest upon Christ and Christ alone. We thank you Jesus that you welcome us with open arms.
We thank you that you are a faithful savior. We ask that you would grant us the grace to be a faithful, trustworthy people because you have been faithful to us and out of gratitude for your amazing grace given to us. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our service this evening, let’s rise and we’ll sing as our closing hymn of commitment, number 540, Soldiers of Christ.
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