1 Peter 5:10 “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore . . . you.”
One the many wonderful promises that God has promised every believer is the following one from Philippians 1:6: “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” It’s a promise that God is at work in every Christian’s life to make them more and more like the One they are following, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is coming a day when we will be just like Him, for another promise we’ve been given is this one from 1 John 3:2: “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.” But until that day, we are in a refining process that God sovereignly and surely oversees. So, how does He do this? Surely one of the ways is by way of suffering. It’s often by suffering that our weaknesses are exposed and with that exposure, repairs can begin.
That’s what the word “restore” means in the verse above from 1 Peter 5. It is the same word that is used sometimes in the Scriptures to describe the mending of a fishing net. As a net endures the wear and tear for which it has been created, there are weaknesses that are encountered, and the net experiences tears. The weaknesses may have always been there, but until the net is put under strain, the fisherman is unaware of them. But when that tear occurs, he can go about mending that tear, and the net becomes stronger with the application of new twine than it had been before the tear occurred.
And so it is with every believer. There isn’t a one of us who is where God ultimately wants us to be. Paul, one of the greatest saints that the Church has ever known, put it this way: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. NOT THAT I HAVE ALREADY OBTAINED THIS OR AM ALREADY PERFECT, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:8-14).
Paul learned that the very areas in which he had personally believed himself to be strongest were, in truth, his areas of greatest weakness. He once had viewed himself as righteous. It was an attitude of self-righteousness, i.e., “a righteousness of (his) own.” But that wasn’t the kind of righteousness God had for him. Rather, God was working in Paul’s life to provide a righteousness that comes from Christ by faith. Paul’s lack of such Christlikeness was exposed by suffering, and it is because of this fact that Paul welcomed it, the suffering, that is. Paul longed for his faith to be tested, its weaknesses exposed, and God’s restoration process to begin. He had the attitude of the man who once cried out to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). And you know what? All of us, no matter how strong our faith, have weaknesses in it. We have unbelief. But that unbelief won’t be fully realized by us until it is tested. That testing may come in many forms. When we are in its throes, it may seem like it will last forever. But if you are a true believer, it won’t. God Himself has promised that He will come to you and restore you. He may do it through a person who has just the right words at just the right time. He may do it by way of His Word, as it suddenly goes from something that you knew in your mind to that which you truly believe with all your heart. How ever it comes, it is surely the Lord Who is doing it, as He moves you increasingly towards the perfect eternal glory of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. For as Peter prayed for his readers at the very beginning of his letter, “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).
Praise the Lord, Who continually and patiently works to strengthen our faith.
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