1 Peter 5:14

REFLECTIONS

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for this precious Epistle, among all the other divine revelation of covenant-love and mercy in Jesus Christ! What a review of the most out-refreshing truths, in looking back over this short, but comprehensive compendium of God's holy word, do we behold, concerning the great things of God? Surely, the Lord hath been most gracious to the Church, in the gift of this divine treasury. May the Almighty Giver add to it another blessing, and, make it forever profitable to every child of God, in every renewed perusal, as long as the Church continues on earth, until brought home to glory.

Dear Peter, thou wert an elder indeed, when as in this Chapter, thou didst exhort the elders. Blessedly called by Jesus, blessedly distinguished by Jesus, among the Apostles; no wonder Satan marked thee as an object to vent his hellish malice upon, with the most decided hatred. The Lord be praised for thy recovery from his infernal spoils. The Lord be praised, for having recorded both thy fall, and thy restoration. And the Lord be praised for every single instance, where both have been made blessed to the Church, in teaching, by so remarkable an example, the weakness of our poor nature in the greatest of men; and the strength of divine grace, in recovering the Lord's people in the most desperate cases. Oh! how fully doth both prove, that, as the Apostle himself could well certify, that they who are kept, are kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation.

Reader! let us not close our meditation on this blessed book of God, without taking one view more of the God of all grace, in this most precious account of his rich, free, and sovereign mercy. What, but grace, can call to his eternal glory? What, but grace, can prepare the soul of any one individual for the enjoyment of it? And, what, but a God of all grace, can bear up, and bear on, and bear home the tried and buffeted child of God, against the roaring lion Satan, and sometimes the more raging lusts of sin, which arise in our fallen nature? Blessed be the God of all grace, who hath called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus!