During these strange times in which we live, what do you find yourself wishing you had more of?
- Bandwidth, as distance-learning children drain your WIFI
- Influence, over government decisions impacting your life and livelihood
- Clarity, regarding what the future holds
How about more grace and peace amidst this ongoing pandemic and political firestorm?
In the introduction to his second epistle, Peter writes,
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”
Grace and peace come from knowledge of God and Jesus Christ. Knowledge in the New Testament is characterized by a personal knowledge, unlike philosophic speculation or mystical experience. As a result, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Timothy 1:12, “I know in whom I have believed” not “in what I have believed.”
William Barclay notes,
“When Peter speaks of grace and peace coming through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, he is not intellectualizing religion; he is saying that Christianity means an ever-deepening personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
And what, specifically, is this grace and peace, afforded to us by a deepening walk with Christ?
Kenneth Wuest clarifies that in this context God’s grace refers to His “sanctifying grace, the work of the Holy Spirit producing in the yielded believer His own fruit. This peace is sanctifying peace, the tranquility of heart that is the result of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer.”
God’s grace forms the foundation for peace, both peace with God (Rom. 5:1) and the peace of God (Phil. 4:6-7).
And there’s a multiplication principle at work in the life of the believer:
As we grow in our knowledge of God and Jesus, taught by His Spirit through the reading of His Word, and obedience to His Word (enabled by His grace and Spirit), grace and peace will be multiplied in our lives.
