Ray’s faith struck chords of awe in me. He could pull faith stories left and right that made me marvel at God. When his contract as a CAD drawing operator ended, out of the blue the phone would ring. Another job. Another provision. It happened again and again. God’s timing seemed stitched into his life.
As a new believer, I gravitated to him. I’d come with questions and treasured his sage answers. I was experiencing God’s presence—His peace, His joy, His love—with daily regularity. It felt like waking up inside a warm sunrise every morning. I wondered if this was normal. I especially wanted to know if I could expect this for the rest of my life.
Ray was five or ten years ahead of me in age and many more years ahead of me in walking with the Lord. If anyone knew, he would. So I asked him.
I’ve never forgotten his answer.
“The presence of God,” Ray warned, “isn’t something you can just play around in.”
Those words hit me like a ton of bricks. A single sentence, and it was like a floorboard under my feet suddenly gave way. Suddenly, the confidence that God’s perceptible presence would always be with me began to crack.
Ray went on to speak of God’s holiness, but I barely heard the rest. My heart was rattling. I had come to enjoy so much of God’s gracious companionship every day. It wasn’t just head knowledge. It was tangible. Alive. And now, what I understood Ray to be telling me was that this season would expire. I worried that someday, without warning, God’s felt nearness might simply vanish. It opened a crisis in me in the early ‘90s that niggled at me for years to come.
We’ve been with Peter on the mount of transfiguration. We’ve seen how Peter had his own crisis—his murky heart dull to Jesus’ blazing glory all around him. If the murky heart is the crisis, what’s the cure? In his second letter, Peter announced a seismic shift: Scripture is the new mount of transfiguration. Just as he had gazed at Jesus all aglow, he says we do well to pay attention to the lamp of Scriptures. The same glory Peter saw shining through the flesh-and-blood Jesus on the mount now shines through the written word. But there’s a catch. Just reading the Bible is not the complete cure. Neither is simply praying and reading your Bible.
As you pay attention to the word of God, Jesus flickers like a lamp. Your heart might even burn like those two Emmaus road disciples. But when interpretation—your great need—comes, Jesus blazes like the sun.
“First of all, understand this: no prophecy of Scripture is to be interpreted by an individual on his own. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20-21 CJB)
Remember that very rare word Peter picked for interpreted? It means to unloose or to break open. The prophetic word is infused with glory—but it must be unloosed. And since man didn’t produce prophecy, the Holy Spirit—its true Author—must unlock it. Even your best studying cannot unloose it. The Spirit is not a nice‑to‑have. He’s indispensable. As the dawn “unlooses” the morning star, the Spirit who inspired Scripture also unlooses the glory of Jesus from it. That’s the “first of all” Peter wants us to understand. Depend completely on the Spirit to unloose glory from the word of God. Encounter, not education, is paramount. And encounter with the risen Christ is only by the Spirit.
But like the crisis Ray’s words produced in me, I found myself wondering: how much can we expect the Spirit to do this for us? Is it these limited mountaintop moments like Peter’s, or something far more generous? I didn’t yet realize that Peter’s letters were quietly carrying an answer—one that would settle my curiosity beyond all expectations.
Peter’s second letter is about reminders. Remember the Holy Spirit whenever you open the sacred pages. Scripture needs the Spirit, who runs circles around all your human decoding and analyzing. Remember that when the Spirit breaks open that lamp, that’s when the light of Christ blazes and melts away your fog.
Now, the Spirit’s essential ministry is more verbose in the first letter. The letter’s opener, “the sanctification of the Spirit,” blooms into a bountiful harvest later on. The Spirit transfigures us to be like Jesus. But how exactly does the Spirit do this? That’s where Peter—and we—are headed.
Amazing Grace on Its Way to You
Grace is a common Christian word. We sing “Amazing Grace.” We say grace before we eat. We hear grace defined as God’s unmerited favor. And it is. But what is grace, really? “Favor” still feels vague. Grace is like mercy—but not exactly. But more importantly, what does Peter mean by grace?
“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:13 ESV)
“Set your hope fully” means to utterly abandon hope in anything else. It’s emphatic. Fix your hope on this one thing: grace. Don’t allow persecutions or pleasures to distract you. This grace is brought to you— grace that is delivered, grace that arrives—“at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” As we’ll see, there’s nothing abstract or fuzzy about this grace.
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you investigated diligently and examined with care, trying to discover what time or manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that not to themselves, but to you, they were ministering these things that now have been announced to you through those who preached to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.” (1 Peter 1:10-12 Mounce)
Braided together with salvation—a rejoicing‑in‑Jesus soul—is “the grace that would come to you.” This grace—one of “the glories that would follow”—ignited a bonfire of curiosity within the prophets. They “investigated diligently and examined with care.” Whereas the prophets could only anticipate this new season, Peter’s audience actually experienced it.
To get a good handle on grace, we’ll need to get into the shoes of the original readers. The Greek construction of “the grace that would come to you” is elegant. Literally it reads, “the into [eis] you grace.” Eis is that energetic preposition picturing motion toward or movement into. Placing “into you” between “the” and “grace” puts the emphasis on what kind of grace it is. It is a moving‑toward‑and‑into‑you kind of grace. It’s grace on the way to you, a coming‑to‑you grace.
This grace braid then resurfaces in verse 13 as “the grace that will be brought to you.” But it is not future passive (“will be brought”), as the ESV renders it here. It is present passive—being brought. Why change it to future tense? If the translator assumes “revelation of Christ” refers to the future Second Coming, then “brought” must also be future—even though Peter used the present tense.
A literal translation makes for clunky English but is vitally important: “the being brought to you grace.” Brought is the common verb pherō, which usually means to bear or carry. It’s a present passive participle that invites you to imagine grace as being carried to you. And just as the coming‑to‑you grace happens in the here and now, so does the being‑brought‑to‑you grace—if we allow “revelation of Christ” to include His unveilings in the Scriptures. If grammar isn’t your thing, don’t worry. The main idea here is that the grammar and the context naturally point to the present moment. Grace is coming, grace is being brought, now.
The being‑brought‑to‑you grace suggests a bringer. What—or who—is that carrier? The preceding verse says the prophets “were ministering these things that now have been announced to you through those who preached to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven…” The Holy Spirit came to accompany human preaching. The Spirit came, but to do what?
This preaching braid reappears in verse 25: “And this is the word that was preached to you.” It was through this preached word of God—“by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven”—that new birth happened (verse 23) and the flesh withered like grass (verse 24). Peter even gives examples of what flesh‑withering looks like: “having put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander of every kind” (2:1). It goes without saying that new birth and the putting away of sinful behaviors are by the Holy Spirit. As people proclaimed the good news—a revelation of Jesus Christ, the Spirit came alongside to bring the good news to life.
And now the pattern becomes clear: the Bringer of grace is the Spirit. He comes from heaven, bearing grace with Him as He reveals the Lord Jesus.
There’s yet one more clue that Peter intended us to connect the dots between the being‑brought‑to‑you grace and the Holy Spirit. “Being-brought-to-you” is pherō in a rare present passive participle form—only three times in the New Testament. It appears a second time in the second letter as “borne along”:
“…for prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men borne along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (2 Peter 1:21 Mounce).
Here the Holy Spirit is carrying these men to communicate the very words of God.
Pause and let that settle — the Spirit Himself carries what no human heart can lift. He lifts people in His strength so they can bear what God gives. He brings grace to you and makes the good news live inside you.
The third use of this participle reinforces the pattern: on the day of Pentecost the Spirit’s arrival from heaven sounded like a mighty “rushing” (pherō) wind (Acts 2:2). What we hear as “rushing” is, literally, a mighty “borne‑along” wind. Once again, this rare verb form of pherō marks the Spirit as the One who carries heaven’s activity into the world. The good news for us is the Holy Spirit loves to retrieve grace from the Father’s storehouse and carry it straight into our hearts.
The Morning Star as a Now Revelation of Christ
Before we wade deeper into Peter’s first letter, let’s revisit how the revelation of Jesus Christ is recapped in his second letter.
Yes, we have the prophetic Word made very certain. You will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark, murky place, until the Day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts. (2 Peter 2:19 CJB)
The prophetic Word—the Scriptures—is like a shining lamp. The lamp is perfect but incomplete. It becomes complete when the Day—the Spirit—dawns and the Morning Star—Jesus—rises in our hearts. The Morning Star has risen when all Moseses and Elijahs sparkling across the night sky of the Scriptures fade and we see Jesus only. Let your heart breathe here — this is how Jesus becomes real again. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ as Peter paints it in his second letter.
How does Peter frame the “revelation of Jesus Christ” in his first letter? That’s what we want to observe.
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6-7 ESV)
Back in Part 4, we’d seen how Peter’s phrase “the revelation of Jesus Christ” is wide enough to embrace both the future revealing of Christ at His return and the present unveilings of Christ through Scripture. Context determines whether we interpret “revelation” as a specific revelation like the Second Coming or a more general class of revelations like the Morning Star ones of the Scriptures.
Supposing Peter intended revelation of Christ as the Second Coming, how then would the next verse read?
“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though not seeing him now, yet believing in him, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and filled with glory, because you are obtaining the goal of your faith—the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9 Mounce)
In the future you’ll see Jesus Christ with natural eyes. But now Peter begins talking about how you’re seeing Jesus Christ in the present—spiritually, with the eyes of the heart. You read this as a transition to a new, though closely related, topic.
But suppose Peter intended revelation of Christ as a Morning Star revelation, like he meant in his second letter. How should we read it? Trials have come now. You’ve seen a revelation of Jesus Christ from the Scriptures now. Because of this, you’re loving Him now and rejoicing in Him now—evidence that the Morning Star has risen in your hearts. So instead of switching topics, it’s one continuous flow: trials → revelation → rejoicing.
“Joy unspeakable” is a joy so deep and intense that it’s beyond words. While we don’t rely on feelings of joy, joy is a fruit of the Spirit. This inexpressible joy is also “filled with glory,” echoing Peter’s earlier phrase: “your faith…may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Our believing resulting in glory now will crescendo when Christ returns. And if Christ is being revealed now, then Peter is inviting us to recognize something far larger: the moment we are living in is not ordinary—it is a Spirit‑drenched season of revelation and grace, a season he calls “the last time.”
Now is the Season of Revelation and Grace
Peter treats the revelation of Christ as now and not yet. What happens if we interpret the revelation of Jesus Christ exclusively future? We’re likely to interpret Peter’s “be holy as God is holy” to happen due to our motivation fueled by Jesus’ Second Coming (1 Peter 1:15-16). And we should be motivated by Jesus’ return, as the apostle John affirms:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3 ESV)
So the question is not whether or not Jesus coming back again should motivate us. It’s whether or not Peter is preaching that truth in this letter. Is there more evidence that the revelation of Jesus that Peter had in mind was for the present time? There is. It’s tucked away in an easy to pass over phrase.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials…” (1 Peter 1:3-6 ESV)
Pause a moment to consider “in the last time.” Greek speaks of time mainly in two ways. Clock time is chronos. Kairos transcends clock time as a timely, strategic season. Kairos is Peter’s choice for “time” here. Each kairos is a unique season for its own happenings. Spring is for flowers blooming and autumn for leaves blazing with color.
I used to read “in this you rejoice” as rejoicing in “a salvation ready to be revealed.” Obviously, there’s much joy to be had in our salvation. But according to Greek grammar, this—being masculine—links with the masculine “the last time,” not the feminine “salvation.” In other words, in this—the last time—you rejoice.
Why does this matter? The readers of the letter were rejoicing because they understood they were in a season called the last time. This season is marked by something far better than flowers blossoming or leaves color-bombing. One peculiar mark of the last time is a salvation ready to be revealed. We’ll examine this familiar passage a second time to see this more clearly. “A salvation ready to be revealed” reappears as a braid—“Concerning this salvation”:
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” (1 Peter 1:10-12 ESV)
As the preceding verses show, this salvation is shorthand for an unveiling of Jesus Christ to faith—believing—that yields tangible results: loving Him and rejoicing in Him. This is what a saved soul looks like today. These are some of “the subsequent glories” the prophets predicted.
From the vantage point of the prophets of old, “grace” and “glories” belonged to a future season: “It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you.” They lived in a season of waiting. “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:9).
But now Jesus had fulfilled the predicted sufferings of Christ. The predicted “subsequent glories” had likewise been fulfilled. The wait was over. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached, “But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be…’”. Paul, too, acknowledged the days after Jesus’ death and resurrection as the last days—the last season. “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The prophets’ words once shut up and sealed are now opened. The time of the end has come.
Peter’s readers were rejoicing because they realized they were living in a new kairos of history—“the last time”—that the Father had fixed by His own authority. The apostles taught the churches to recognize the times and seasons they were in. This is why these believers were rejoicing “in this time.” The thought of being in this season of grace and glories thrilled their hearts.
Pause for a moment — Peter wants you to feel the wonder of this season. You’re living in it, too.
Because I’m two thousand years removed from Peter’s original audience, the magnitude of this new season hasn’t fully registered with me. They had waited centuries for Messiah to come. Now that He had finally come, they were ecstatic because the subsequent glories—like the Spirit poured out on all flesh at Pentecost—had begun. We’re in that season, too, so we should be rejoicing as well. Are we? If not, take it as a gentle prompt to trust the Spirit to kindle a fresh fire of joy in your heart.
Revelations of Jesus Christ Multiplied
We often think the benediction or blessing comes at the end of the sermon. Peter starts with one: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you” (1 Peter 1:2). We might gloss over this as simply how the apostles said hi. Nothing really happens because of it, right? No—its meaning has the capacity to profoundly shape our daily lives. This simple blessing surprised me about how much I can expect the Spirit to marvelously unveil Jesus in the Scriptures. This prayerful blessing settled my long-standing curiosity beyond my wildest expectations.
Grace and peace being added to you would be nice. We’d welcome more of that. But multiplication is far better than addition. Paul often opened his letters saying, “Grace to you and peace,” but only Peter includes multiplication. These are not empty words.
Interestingly, the first time plēthynō—“multiply”—appears in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is Genesis 1:22: “God blessed them: ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.’” Today’s oceans teeming with fish and skies alive with birds are the long‑term result of that ancient blessing to multiply. God’s words are powerful words. And these Spirit-breathed words of Peter’s are intended to bless with similarly powerful results.
Multiplied grace is an Eden‑style blessing of abundance—an overflow of God’s generosity. Peter’s “may grace…be multiplied to you” is a braid that reemerges as the coming‑to‑you grace and the being‑brought‑to‑you grace. Since this “be multiplied” is passive, it is God who multiplies this grace for us just as He multiplied fish and birds. And multiplication of grace is big on Peter’s heart. And we’ve seen how a revelation of Jesus Christ triggers the being‑brought‑to‑you grace.
And then it hit me—harder than Ray’s warning years before.
The crisis that gnawed at me for years centered on this: Is Ray right? Will God’s felt nearness someday be gone? Now, that crisis didn’t resolve itself by one moment, one verse, or one happening. God slowly and faithfully unfolded His tangible presence to me over days that became weeks that became months that became years. His mercy, not my merit. It dawned on me that God is more faithful to shine on me than the sun He created that rises every morning. The quieter question I had of encountering God, expressed differently but no less vital, was this: Is it normal to expect the Spirit to show me Jesus often and abundantly in the Bible?
And whereas God’s assurance to my heart of His tangible nearness solidified over years, here He did in a moment, with this verse, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” That assurance didn’t drift in gently. It broke open something in me.
Comes revelation, comes grace. For the end—grace—to multiply, so must the means—revelation!
That’s when my jaw dropped open. This isn’t just an apostle saying hello. This is a doorway into God’s extravagance.
Stop and let that settle.
This assurance from Peter in his parting letter cemented in me a solid, restful assurance that the Spirit is ever active and wanting to unveil Jesus. This is the Spirit’s delight — to make Jesus vivid again. More and more, not less and less. That’s what multiplication means. For God to multiply grace to you, He must also multiply the revelation of Christ that makes grace happen. And we can rejoice in the new season of grace—the last time—because it’s one in which we can expect abundant heart seeing of Jesus in the word of God. This aha moment lifted me from wishful thinking and my subjective experience to a rock-solid confidence in God’s unchanging word. He wants to multiply my seeing and enjoyment of Jesus Christ. And not only for myself, but for those I pray for.
The people Peter wrote to were in dire straits. They faced persecution, fiery trials. If we’d been in Peter’s shoes, we might have prayed for peace, comfort, and protection, which are all good things. Peter, though, is different. He portrays God as One whose heart is set on multiplying grace and peace. He’s not stingy or miserly. Look at the seas abundant with fish and the skies with birds—that’s how abundant‑hearted He is in revealing Jesus to you from the Bible. Peter encourages the suffering to lift up their eyes above their circumstances to the word of God where the abundant life of Jesus Christ is available to them.
God may seem silent. Your prayers seem to be unanswered. The Bible may feel dry and lifeless. But what Peter is saying is that God’s heart is overflowing towards you. The Father’s good pleasure is to bless His people with multiplied revelations of His Son! That’s you. That’s me. He delights to open our eyes to Jesus again and again in the Scriptures so that we may love Him and rejoice with inexpressible joy. This is normal Christianity.
For years I fretted over God’s perceptible nearness fading. Peter confirmed that inexpressible joy is my portion. I wondered if seeing lots of Jesus in the Bible was normal. Peter convinced me that the Spirit multiplies revelations of Jesus. But as reassuring as that discovery is, it prompts a bigger question. If the Spirit keeps unveiling Christ to us, why? What’s He trying to accomplish?
For that answer, we must follow Peter back to the mountain one final time. And this time, we’ll discover that the glory shining on Jesus was never meant to stop on the mountain.
