We need to set our hope perfectly on the grace being brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ; this grace refers to the salvation of the soul as the consummation of God’s full salvation.
It is amazing to see, explore, and realize the grace of God in the economy of God. Grace in its highest definition is the manifestation of the Triune God in His embodiment in three aspects – the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – coming to us to be dispensed into us for our enjoyment.
The embodiment of God is the incarnated Christ who became full of grace and reality. He was manifested to become the life-giving Spirit in our spirit.
Grace is not something given by God outwardly; grace is the lovely Christ Himself who is the embodiment of God and is realized as the Spirit to come to us for our enjoyment and experience.
We see the matter of grace throughout the New Testament, and in particular in the epistles of Peter.
We often say that today we are in the age of grace, and it is true, for in this age we enjoy the Triune God, and as believers in Christ, we are filled with the enjoyment of the Triune God.
Day by day, our Christian life depends upon the grace of God; we daily need the supply of grace, and unless the Lord gives us His grace, we cannot live the Christian life nor can we serve the Lord and labor for Him.
The epistles of Peter show us that grace is in our entire living, and our total living should be the experience of grace, the living of grace.
Even in our sufferings, grace is multiplied to us.
When we come to touch grace in 1 and 2 Peter we will see that, as Christians who live in the reality of the kingdom and are under the government of God, grace is everything to us.
We Christians who belong to God and who learn to live in the reality of the kingdom of God, we are under the judgment of God day by day, and we have a certain measure of sufferings that God has given to us.
In this world we have sufferings, and as Christians, we have certain sufferings.
But praise the Lord, in our sufferings, grace is being multiplied to us, and the more limitations and weaknesses we have, the more grace can be manifested and increased to us!
In such situations we can experience and enjoy Christ as our burden-bearer; He is in us to do everything in us, for us, through us, and with us, for He is grace with our spirit.
As we turn to the Lord and contact Him again and again, we will allow Him to do everything in us and live in us; He will be the One who will bear the burden in us, and we will simply enjoy Him as grace.
Set our Hope Perfectly on the Grace brought to us at the Revelation of Jesus Christ
In 1 Pet. 1:13 we are told to set our hope perfectly on the grace being brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
There is a certain grace on which we can set our hope perfectly.
What is this hope, and what is this grace? We need to pray every day that, at the Lord’s coming back, our soul would be saved.
We need to gird up the loins of our mind and be sober, and we need to set our hope perfectly on the grace being brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ; this grace is the salvation of our souls.
Our hope is the saving of our soul in the next age so that we may enter into the enjoyment of the Lord to feast with Him (Matt. 25:20-23).
This grace will come by the revelation of the Lord Jesus at His second coming.
God saved us was given to us in Christ Jesus before the times of the ages, and this grace has been now manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 1:9-10).
Grace has so many aspects, and grace was, is, and will be with us all throughout our Christian life, both in this age and in eternity.
Grace is God’s provision in life given to us so that we may live out His purpose; this grace was given to us in Christ, and it was bestowed on us even before the world began.
In eternity past, before we were born, God chose us, and He graced us (2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 2:11); this grace was manifested and applied to us through our Lord’s first coming, in which He nullified death and brought life to us (Heb. 9:26).
Though the Old Testament saints sought God and loved Him and His word, they could not partake of such grace, for this grace was manifested through the appearing of Christ.
This grace is not just a blessing – it is a person, the Triune God Himself given to us to be our enjoyment, salvation, and everything.
We need to set our hope perfectly on the grace brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We have a living hope, issuing from our regeneration (1 Pet. 1:3); when we were regenerated, we had a living hope that this life by which we were born again will completely make us the same as Christ, mature and glorified sons of God.
We need to set our living hope completely on the grace brought to us at the revelation, the unveiling, of Jesus Christ.
This grace refers to the salvation of our soul (vv. 5, 9-10), which will be the consummation of God’s full salvation.
God, who was in the beginning, became flesh in time as grace for us to receive Him, possess Him, and enjoy Him (John 1:1, 14, 16-17).
He then went through the process of human living, death, resurrection, and ascension, to be the processed and consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit; as such a One, He has become the Spirit of grace with our spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17; Heb. 10:29b; Gal. 6:18; Phil. 4:23).
Hallelujah, the processed Triune God as grace is with our spirit to be the indwelling Spirit of grace in us, constantly dispensing God as grace into us!
May we be open vessels to this One indwelling us, continually receiving grace and setting our hope wholly and perfectly on this grace (Rom. 5:17; 1 Pet. 1:13).
Lord Jesus, we set our hope perfectly on the grace being brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord, the grace given to us in Christ was bestowed on us before the world began! Thank You, dear Lord Jesus, for coming in incarnation to be grace to us; thank You for going through a process to be the Spirit of grace indwelling us. Hallelujah, grace is with our spirit, and today we can receive, enjoy, and possess grace! We want to be open vessels to Your divine dispensing today, Lord, so that we may enjoy and experience grace today. We set our hope perfectly on the grace brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, the salvation of our souls!
Enjoying the Lord Jesus as a Foretaste today with the Hope set on the Grace brought to us at the Unveiling of Jesus Christ
As believers in Christ, we love the Lord and His word, and we love to enjoy Him in His word; His word of grace contains His unsearchable riches and His precious promises, and through His word, we enjoy much grace.
We love to meet with the saints and enjoy the Lord together, both in small groups and in larger gatherings, for our Lord Jesus is so enjoyable!
We believe that God became a man and went through the process of incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension to be the life-giving Spirit coming into our spirit to indwell us.
He came into us as the Spirit of grace to supply us bountifully with all that we need for our enjoyment and experience so that we may have a total living of grace, the experience of grace for the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
However, what we enjoy of the Lord today is a small portion – it is just a foretaste; when the Lord comes back, we will enjoy the full taste.
The coming full taste will be the consummation of this unique grace, and we set our hope perfectly on the grace brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
At present, we enjoy Christ as a foretaste as under a veil, for Christ is not visibly seen or manifested among men; one day, however, He will be unveiled, and we will enjoy Him in full.
When others see us enjoying the Lord or they hear that we go to meetings, conferences, training, blending trips, etc, they may wonder what on earth we are doing.
We may tell them that we are enjoying Christ, but to them, this may not make sense, for our enjoyment is concealed, and those who don’t share the same experience cannot know anything about it.
Through our preaching of the gospel, we want to minister God as grace to others for their enjoyment so that they would be released from the power of sin and be brought into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love to enjoy all His riches with the saints.
One day, the Lord Jesus will be unveiled; at that time, all men will understand that we have been enjoying the Lord Jesus.
The unveiling of Jesus Christ will be the coming grace as the consummation of the full salvation of the Triune God.
Today we enjoy the Lord Jesus as a foretaste, and this foretaste will lead us to the full taste, the grace being brought to us at the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
The coming of Christ not only brought in grace but also Christ Himself as grace; through His processed and consummated He became the all-inclusive, life-giving indwelling Spirit, the Spirit of grace dwelling with our spirit for us to easily enjoy Him as our grace.
However, our enjoyment of this grace today is a kind of foretaste; when the Lord comes the second time, we will have the full enjoyment of this grace.
Although what we have today is a foretaste, a taste in a smaller measure, the nature, essence, and reality of the foretaste are exactly the same as those of the full enjoyment.
We are here today in the church life enjoying the foretaste of the processed and consummated Triune God in our spirit; one day, we will have a full taste of what He is to us.
The more we have a foretaste of the enjoyment of this grace, the more we will set our hope perfectly on the grace being brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ, for we hope to obtain the full enjoyment of this grace in the future.
We don’t just sit here idly setting our hope on grace and expecting it to be our sin in the future; rather, we are open vessels to Him, we enjoy the Lord in His word, we call on His name, we lay hold of God’s word as His promises to us, and we receive grace as a foretaste continually.
We want to daily let the grace be multiplied to us and we set our hope perfectly on the grace being brought to us at the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit today to enjoy and experience You as grace with our spirit. Though we don’t see You with our physical eyes and we can’t touch You with our hands, we love You, we open to You, and we enjoy You as grace with our spirit! Amen, Lord, keep us enjoying You as a foretaste today having our hope set perfectly on the grace to be unveiled at the revelation of Jesus Christ! We open our vessel to You, dear Lord; we call on Your name, we lay hold of Your word as Your promises to us, and we pray over Your word to be able to receive grace continually. May Your grace be multiplied to us in our daily life. We set our hope perfectly and wholly on the grace to be given to us at the unveiling of Jesus Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers, and portions from, Life-study of 1 Peter, msg. 11 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Grace of God in the Economy of God (2022 International Chinese-speaking Conference), week 4, entitled, Grace in Peter’s Epistles.
- Hymns on this topic:
– The grace which God bestows on us / Is just His Son in full; / The rich enjoyment of this Christ / Is plenteous, bountiful. / ’Tis far too great to comprehend, / Too wondrous to contain: / How we, once children of despair, / God’s masterpiece became. (Hymns #1321)
– He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater, / He sendeth more strength when the labors increase, / To added affliction He addeth His mercy, / To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace. (Hymns #723)
– Dear Lord, while we remember Thee, / Enjoying all Thou art, / We thus would hasten Thy return / And ne’er from Thee depart. / How sweet to have this foretaste here, / A taste so wonderful, / Yet still we fain would be with Thee, / And share Thyself in full. (Hymns #197)
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