1 Peter 5:12 “By Silvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose, I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand.”

In closing out his first epistle, the apostle Peter wrote “this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand”.

And at the end of 1 John, the apostle John wrote “This is the true God, and eternal life.”

Why do these guys end their epistles in such a way? … because quite honestly, we cannot get back to the Bible for a correct understanding of things fast enough! We must return “Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts”

So much of Christianity these days is choking to death on critically false doctrine which is leading many down the garden path, and setting them up for a fall on the broad road to destruction.

No, I don’t have an exclusive angle on the truth… but “yea, let God be true, but every man a liar” … we must make God’s word the authority on all things, as it truly is.

“Oh, you’re worshipping the Bible”… yeah! Our understanding, worship, praise and service to God must all be subject to scripture to be acceptable and pleasing to God, because “all his works are done in truth”.

The thing is, much of false doctrine is not obviously untrue, because Satan’s brushstrokes are most effective when subtle. Hence the need for the true balance of scripture which we must weigh all doctrine in.

And so Peter here specifies the “true” grace of God, because one of the most twisted, distorted and abused doctrines in the church today is the “grace of God”.

Peter testified of the “true” grace, because there are so many false graces, which aren’t grace at all, that’s just the fact.

Yes, false grace is nothing new, it was already circulating in the early church… but it had been around long before that too.

For instance, read Jeremiah 7 and you’ll find Judah (God’s people!) were up to their necks in false distortions of God’s grace, they were living in all sorts of sin and rebellion to God, and then would go to God’s house saying “We are delivered to do all these abominations”. That’s quite bold!

The grace of God these days is being used in just about every way other than how the Bible says it to be. And the world sees it, and then they see nothing in the grace of God that we claim to have that they would ever need.

Until God’s grace truly transforms us, how would someone else look at our lives as desirable when we muckrake in this world also? Do we have something that truly transcends this sin cursed existence?

… So what is God’s grace? Well the Bible says that God’s grace has appeared to everyone, it is unmerited, unearned and undeserved, it brings salvation, and it teaches us how to live, and gives us the desire and power to do so. Pretty good deal!

In picture form, this is what grace looks like… it is like in Luke 15, when Jesus spoke about a sheep that went astray in the wilderness, hopelessly lost and in great peril, whom the shepherd left all to go to rescue, and when he found it, he laid it on his own shoulders, and brought it home, and there was great rejoicing.

God’s grace certainly does find us all in sin, but it doesn’t leave us there, it delivers us from sin in such a marvellous way that all we can say is as Ruth said in response to Boaz’s goodness and kindness to her “Why have I found grace in thine eyes”?

When you receive God’s grace, you won’t be the person you were before. Noah released a dove out the ark one day, and she flew around checking out the dead things, and the Bible says she “found no rest for the sole of her foot” and returned to the ark… because there was nothing out there in that sin cursed world that gave her rest.

God’s grace causes us to rest on only one place, upon only one person. Because thousands of years after Noah’s ark, we see the dove again, this time at Jesus’ baptism, and as he came out the water, John wrote “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.”

… If you’ve received the grace of God, your resting and abiding place is in Christ alone. For all of us, our fighting and resistance and pride and entitlement will be gone.. the stiff neck and hard heart replaced by brokenness within and our face in the dirt.

… And there is so much more that could be said, but a whole lifetime won’t even begin to scratch the surface of God’s goodness and grace to us.

But the true grace of God is just as amazing as the old hymn says. God’s grace alone gives us the power to be saved and to live it, it is the energy source for the child of God and must be our total sufficiency for life’s otherwise impossible journey.

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