Almost Home Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

Passage: 1 Peter 2:12-14 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: Thriving in ExileSeptember 10—seven months ago—we opened up the book of 1 Peter together and began to explore these chapters and verses together.



And I think it’s meaningful that we’re ending on grad Sunday, making this Sunday not just a wrap-up but a send-off. And we didn’t plan it that way. At first we thought we’d be done about nine weeks ago. But we all found Peter to be a lot richer and denser than we expected. And I don’t mean “dense” in a bad way. I mean “dense” like a thick piece of cheesecake. It’s so good, but it just takes you a bit longer to enjoy it than you planned on at first.



There’s just three verses left for us to hear from today as Peter concludes his letter, and they come in two halves. First, Peter gives us a summary purpose statement for his whole letter. Then, as letters in the ancient world often did, he ends with a series of greetings.



1. Purpose Statement (v. 12)



Let’s begin with the purpose statement, looking at verse 12: “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” (1 Peter 5:12).



Silvanus



There’s three points we want to note here. The first has to do with Silvanus, which is a different form of the name “Silas.” It’s very likely that this is the same Silas who travelled with the apostle Paul and who co-authored the Thessalonian letters with him.



Peter’s language here suggests that that Silvanus, or Silas, was his messenger, who brought the letter from Peter to these people. That’s how this phrase is used in the book of Acts, for example. And Peter commends him, describing him as a “faithful brother,” encouraging his readers to receive him and respect him when he comes to them with this letter. 



If this was the same Silas who travelled with Paul, then no doubt this was a faithful brother—a brother who for years had been putting into practice the truths Peter wrote about in his letter. A brother who had been beaten and thrown in jail with Paul and been by his side through many journeys and many sufferings.



He’s not just the mailman for this letter—he was a living example of what it looked like to live it out.



Summary



Peter next gives a summary of his entire letter. In case we were wondering what the goal is, here it is: “I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God.”



His comment that he wrote “briefly” is interesting, given that this letter is much longer than the typical letters that were exchanged in the Roman world. For some context, the shortest letters in the New Testament, like 2 and 3 John, were fairly average, if not a tiny bit longer, than typical Roman letters.



So 1 Petter is not brief by that standard. But it is brief in terms of everything Peter could have said. The true grace of God is so rich and deep he could have written something as long as Romans or 1 Corinthians, and even that would have seemed brief.



Note the two words Peter uses here: exhorting and declaring. “Declaring” has to do with speaking the truth, bearing witness to what is real. “Exhorting” means “strongly urging” and is about calling people to respond to that truth. In many ways, that’s what preachers should be doing every week. We declare the truth and then we strongly urge, or exhort, people to respond to that truth. And that’s what Peter has been doing here.



What he has been declaring is the “true grace of God.” Everything he’s written in his letter here is an accurate declaration of the grace of God. The grace that has appeared in Christ, is sustaining us in the present day, and will be manifested when our Lord returns.