Jesus Is Coming with a Gracious Disposition toward His People
Peter’s two epistles are permeated with references to Christ’s second coming (1 Pet. 1:5, 7, 13; 2:12; 4:7, 12–13; 5:1, 4; 2 Pet. 1:16–19; 2:9; 3:1–13). He considered it a matter of great significance for the believers of his day, even though he reckoned with the strange possibility that it might be far in the future, since “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). One of his most sweeping and joyfully hope giving statements about the second coming is 1 Peter 1:13, which provides one of the deepest foundations for our love of Christ’s appearing: “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Context of Waiting, Not Seeing, and Loving
To put the command in context, Peter says in 1 Peter 1:5 that believers are now “being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” The “last time” is the time of Jesus’s coming. Peter makes this clear two verses later, when he tells the believers that their present sufferings are like purifying fire, which will refine them for the coming of Jesus. They are being tested so that the “genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:7). That revelation is the coming of Christ, the bringer of the “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Peter loves to describe the coming of Christ as the “revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:5, 13; 4:13; 5:1). It reminds his readers that for now they cannot “see” Jesus, but in the day of his coming he will be revealed. They will see him. Peter himself had seen Jesus. He makes a point of telling us so. He was a “witness of the sufferings of Christ” (1 Pet. 5:1). Nevertheless, he now shares in the necessary patience of ordinary Christians, who must wait for the one they love. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet. 1:8).
In this temporary condition of not seeing Jesus, Peter intends to stir up the hope of the believers so that their love for Jesus would also be a love for his appearing. He points to “the prophets who prophesied about the grace” of God that would come to God’s people through “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Pet. 1:10–11). Grace had come (in Christ’s sufferings). Grace was coming (in Christ’s glories). Even the angels long to look into God’s great works of grace (1 Pet. 1:12).
Deep Foundation for Love
Then Peter says this: “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being soberminded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13). This is the statement that I said provides one of the deepest foundations for our love of Christ’s appearing. That deep foundation is the grace of God. When Christ is revealed from heaven, his people will experience that event as grace. All that happens to them on that day will rest on this foundation: grace.
Glory of Grace
This word grace was so firmly established in Christian understanding that Peter did not define it in his letters. But we do well not to pass over its meaning too quickly, as if the glory of it were known and felt by all. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul makes the term clear and glorious. Of the 124 New Testament uses of the English word grace, eighty-four are in Paul.
The grace of God is essentially the disposition and act of God to give salvation to people who deserve his judgment. In other words, God’s grace is doing good not to those who don’t deserve it, but to those who deserve the opposite. All human beings have sinned (Rom. 3:9, 23). We are therefore not just undeserving. We are ill-deserving. We deserve God’s wrath. We are “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3). If God’s only attribute were strict justice, we all would perish. In our sin and guilt, we are liable to eternal punishment (Matt. 25:46; 2 Thess. 1:9). Any suffering short of hell is less than we deserve.
But God’s justice is not his only attribute. The hope of the human race is that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:20–21). “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people” (Titus 2:11). Grace made a way for God’s justice to be upheld while guilty sinners, amazingly, are justified, instead of condemned. “[We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). Being right with God is a free gift. That is what grace does.
This is possible because Christ became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). The record of our debt was nailed to his cross (Col. 2:14). God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Now, “those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17). That receiving is called faith. “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom. 5:1).
God’s grace is such a deep foundation for our hope that its roots go back into eternity. “[God] saved us . . . not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Tim. 1:9). The grace that saved us was given to us before creation. Paul describes this in Ephesians: “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace” (1:5–6, my translation). In other words, the eternal purpose of God’s predestining his people for adoption was that we would praise the glory of his grace. That was God’s plan for the ages before the ages began: the praise of the glory of God’s grace.
Since grace has its deepest foundations in eternity past, we may be sure that it will carry us joyfully to eternity future. “God . . . loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace” (2 Thess. 2:16). Eternal comfort. Through grace. Grace will see to it that our comfort and our hope never fail. “Being justified by his grace we . . . become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). That life will bring the endless unfolding of newly satisfying dimensions of grace: “In the coming ages he [will] show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kind ness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). It will take eternal ages to complete our joy because there are immeasurable riches of grace. Thus, the eternity of our never bored, ever refreshed life in Christ rests on the inexhaustible gift of God’s grace. Eternal grace. Grace from eternity past to eternity future.
Let Yourself Try to Imagine
Now we return to 1 Peter 1:13: “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Of all the dozens of realities Peter might have said are coming to us at the revelation of Christ, he says, “Grace is being brought to you.” This is very good news for stumblers and doubters and worriers like us.
Let yourself imagine just slightly what that hour will be like. We do not know with detail or precision what the moment of his coming will be like. But only the slightest effort to imagine it overwhelms us. Suddenly, absolutely all doubt about his reality will vanish. Stark certainty will replace it. There will be nothing—absolutely nothing—imaginary about it. It will be raw reality. For the first time in our lives, sight will replace belief in the unseen. The magnitude of it will be such as to make our hearts feel like exploding. In ourselves, we will have no capacities for fathoming this event. It will stagger us.
The infinite canyon between his perfection and holiness mingled with his galactic power, on the one hand, and our ridiculously small weakness and moral evil and banal lives of trifling, on the other hand, will be overwhelmingly plain and terrifying. He will be “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess. 1:7–8). There is nothing warm and cuddly about these hours. They will bring stark terror and reprisal for all who are outside Christ. They will mark the end of all divine patience for those who did not embrace the gospel.
If There Is Any Hope, It Will Be Grace, Personal Grace
At this point, we will have one hope: grace. We will have no thought of merit. No thought of deserving or being a little better than others. We will have only a sense of absolute vulnerability and utter speechlessness, as when finally caught red handed doing what you have gotten away with for years. No recourse. No escape. No plea. If there is any hope, it will be grace. So Peter puts into one word what is being brought to “you” at the revelation of Christ: grace.
You. Who are the “you” in verse 13? They are those whom God “caused . . . to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus” (1 Pet. 1:3), and who “are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1:5), and whose tested faith has been refined through suffering (1:7), and who love and trust the unseen Christ (1:8).
For them, the day of Christ will not be destructive. It will be gracious. Personally gracious. I say personally gracious because of Peter’s unusual expression that “grace is being brought to you.” He does not say grace “is coming to you,” but rather “is being brought to you” (τὴν φερομένην ὑμῖν χάριν). Someone is bringing it. It is not showing up impersonally as a kind of atmosphere or mood. It is coming in the hands of Jesus. Or, perhaps better, in the heart of Jesus. Jesus is coming with a gracious disposition toward his people.
That spectacular day will not be an impersonal event of shock and awe. It will be intensely personal. In ways we cannot fathom, the risen Godman will treat us personally. He knows our name. We will be dealt with as dear ones. “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18). If we slip into thinking that he is coming with a sword to slay us, Peter’s word is meant to correct our thinking: no, for us who are eagerly waiting, in his hand and in his heart, is grace. Grace is being brought to you.
Content taken from Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ by John Piper, ©2023. Used by permission of Crossway.
John Piper is founder and lead teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He served for thirty-three years as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than fifty books, including Desiring God; Don’t Waste Your Life; and Providence.