Thursday, March 26, 2015

Of Prophets Predicting Grace to be Ours


Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

It isn’t new.  Salvation is not new.  The prophets prophesied of the grace that was to come to the Jews of the Diaspora.  Note specifically what has been prophesied, “grace”.  Something to consider in personal bible study, the use of words by the biblical authors.  This grace for Peter’s audience has been prophesied about. 

What does Peter mean by grace?

“Grace” has only occurred one other time in Peter’s letter to date, at the very opening, “May grace and peace be yours in abundance.”  Go back over that last paragraph, the laying out of salvation and the gifts of God, and you will see the grace to which Peter refers.  So ‘grace’ is not something isolated in the prophets.  It is a whole package, “concerning salvation”.  It is all grace, grace from God, given, not earned, a gift from the Creator of the Universe.

Now, there isn’t the time in this blog to lay out the proofs of the Old Testament of the work, nature, and power of Jesus.  And this is not something Peter went and looked up for himself.  Searching out the prophets is a lesson from Jesus himself, before he went to heaven. 

From Luke 24: 44 Then he (Jesus) said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah* is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses* of these things.

And this is the thing that Peter is passing along in turn to the Jews of the Diaspora.

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