The God of all Grace Perfects us through Sufferings and we Grow in Grace unto Glory

The God of all grace perfects, establishes, strengthens, and grounds us through sufferings – this all grace is the true grace of God in which we enter and in which we stand, and the riches of God’s grace saturate and constitute us until we experience the consummation of the grace of God in His economy! Hallelujah!

This word, grace, is very much misunderstood, misapplied, and misused today, for grace according to the Bible is nothing outward or even a feeling but God Himself in Christ coming to us to be our enjoyment and experience today.

Grace is Christ Himself as our enjoyment. Day by day we need to enjoy Christ as grace and we need to have grace multiplied in our daily life in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Grace is something that only we in the New Testament age can enjoy; the prophets in the Old Testament prophesied concerning the grace that was to come to us.

Today we have received Christ as grace, and we set our hope perfectly on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We are saved by grace through faith, and we stand in grace; also, we set our hope on the grace to be brought to us at the Lord’s coming, which grace is the salvation of our souls.

Furthermore, we see grace with God in 1 Pet. 2:19-20, which refers not to any outward material blessing but to the motivation of the divine life within us and its expression in our living, which becomes in our behaviour gracious and acceptable in the eyes of both God and man.

Praise the Lord, when we enjoy grace, take grace, have grace, possess grace, and apply grace in our daily living, we will not only be filled with grace but our living will express God as grace.

We will then become a duplication of Christ, a reproduction of the first God-man in our daily living. Amen!

In our daily life, we can enjoy the grace of life (3:7); especially in the married life, we can enjoy the grace of life.

We believers in Christ are heirs to inherit the grace of life and we are vessels to contain the grace of life.

Day by day we need to enjoy the grace of God, which is God in Christ as the life-giving Spirit giving Himself to us to be our life and life supply.

This grace is varied; in our daily experience, we can enjoy God in Christ as grace to inherit the riches of the grace of God in its varieties. Wow!

May we humble ourselves before God so that we may enjoy the grace of God; may we not be proud but rather, be humbled under the mighty hand of God to daily enjoy God in Christ as grace.

The God of All Grace Perfects, Establishes, Strengthens, and Grounds us through our Sufferings

1 Pet. 5:10 and 12 tells us that the God of all grace – who has called us believers in Christ into His eternal glory – perfects, establishes, strengthens, and grounds us through our sufferings.

Peter speaks of the all grace by which God perfects us, establishes us, strengthens us, and grounds us through our sufferings (v. 10). What a grace!

The God of all grace gives us all grace, and this grace is the perfecting grace, the establishing grace, the strengthening grace, and the grounding grace.

The channel by which all this takes place is suffering. God uses the channel of suffering in order to dispense grace to us and perfect us, establish us, strengthen us, and ground us.

Many times we have a weakness that we want to deal with but cannot; God uses that weakness or a particular suffering in order to give us all grace for us to be perfected, established, strengthened, and grounded.

Have we ever claimed all grace? We need to ask the Lord to give us all grace.

As we suffer and after we are suffering for a little while, we need to ask God to give us all grace.

He perfects us by restoring us. As we come to the Lord in His word and we open to fellowship with Him as we go through suffering, the Lord repairs us, mends us, and adjusts us; He restores our souls.

When Peter speaks in this way concerning the God of all grace, he is most likely reflecting on his own experience.

He realized that, though he failed the Lord to the uttermost, the Lord came to perfect him by restoring his soul, and then He established Peter, strengthened him, and grounded him.

This is how the Lord operates in us. He knows our failures, our weaknesses, and our mistakes, and He knows our sufferings.

Sometimes we go through certain things and we are offended or we make a big mistake, and we’re even ready to give up the Christian life.

We realize we cannot change ourselves, we cannot change the present, and we cannot change the past.

What we need is not to throw in the towel: we simply need more grace, even all grace.

We need to open to the Lord and He will perfect us, establish us, strengthen us, and ground us.

Just think of Peter and his situation. He denied the Lord three times, even to His face and in front of many others, and the Lord even looked at him when the rooster crowed.

He must have been very disappointed and discouraged, and his soul must have been down.

But the Lord told Mary, Go to My disciples and to Peter, and tell them…

When Peter heard this, his heart melted. The Lord remembered him.

Actually, the Lord remembered him to such an extent that the Lord met him on the seashore, after Peter took the brothers to go fishing.

The Lord comes in by His grace – He is the God of all grace – to perfect us, establish us, strengthen us, and ground us.

He uses suffering as the channel to dispense all grace into us.

The Lord Himself is involved with these four divine acts of grace in our lives.

May we not seek the so-called grace that others speak of, which grace many times relates to prosperity and material things.

In 1 Pet. 5:12 we are told of the true grace of God, which is the all grace of God in v. 10. In this grace we as believers in Christ should enter and in it, we should stand.

Lord Jesus, thank You for calling us as the God of all grace into Your eternal glory! Hallelujah, the God of all grace perfects us, establishes us, strengthens us, and grounds us through our sufferings. We open to You, Lord, and we come to You to enjoy You as grace. We are so short of grace. Oh Lord, You see our sufferings. You see our mistakes and our failures. We just come to You as we are. We cannot change ourselves nor can we change our past. We do not want to better ourselves – we just give ourselves to You to enjoy You as grace. Oh Lord, may we partake of Your riches in spirit even as we go through sufferings! Give us all grace! Oh, God of all grace, give us all grace as we go through suffering! We open to Your perfecting, establishing, strengthening, and grounding us through Your grace as we go through sufferings. May we enjoy all grace, the true grace of God, in our daily life! As we have entered into this grace, we want to stand in the grace!

The True Grace of God: we Grow in Grace unto His Glory until we Experience the Consummation of the Grace of God in His economy!

2 Peter 3:18 speaks of the true grace of God, the grace in which we should grow in our daily Christian life. We need to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The true grace of God is the grace in which, together with the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we believers in Christ should grow unto His glory both now and unto the day of eternity. Amen!

Grace is God Himself with divinity processed through incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, coming to us as the Spirit to be one with us and to supply us with everything we need to live the Christian life.

Grace is God in Christ as the Spirit coming to us to be our life so that He may be one with us, to make His home in us, and to be formed in us.

Grace is Christ coming to us to be our life and everything, and grace is Christ living in us, making His home in us, and being formed in us.

We need to grow in such a grace day by day for His glory – both today and unto the day of eternity!

What a conclusion this verse is to Peter’s writings!

This is the concluding word of the apostle Peter’s writings, indicating that whatever he has written is of, in, by and through the grace of God.

We are saved of God’s grace, we stand in God’s grace, we live by God’s grace, and we labour through His grace.

Everything is by grace – this is the true grace of God. This is the grace of God in the economy of God.

The product of the grace in God’s economy is the church as the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:6-8, 22-23).

We are produced to be the Body of Christ by Christ coming to shed His blood to redeem us back to Himself.

Christ as grace is the sphere and element of our salvation. He redeemed us back to Himself, and He brought us into Himself.

Eph. 1:22-23 shows us that the power that God caused to operate in Christ raised Him from the dead so that He might transcend the world and ascend to the heavenlies, being seated at the right hand of God, crushing the enemy, having all things subjected to His feet, and thus being the Head over all things – such a power is to the church!

We as believers in Christ are the receivers and beneficiaries of the fourfold power, the transmission of the fourfold power; this is how we are produced to be the church.

The product of the grace in God’s economy is the Body of Christ as God’s poem to be the New Jerusalem as the consummation of God’s righteousness in the new heavens and new earth (Eph. 2:7-10; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 22:21).

Even though God created the heavens and the earth with all things in them, these are not God’s poem, His masterpiece; rather, the church, the Body of Christ, is God’s poem (Eph. 2:10). Hallelujah!

We need to enjoy the grace of God, the varied grace of God, and the true grace of God, standing in grace, enjoying God in Christ as grace, and opening to the God of all grace, so that we may grow in the grace. His grace is rich, multiplying, abounding, and increasing.

May we remain in the rich enjoyment of God’s grace day by day.

As we enjoy the all grace of God, even the true grace of God, we become something: we become the exhibition of the rich grace of God, and we carry out something: we do the good works which God has foreordained.

These good works must be the doing of God’s will so that we may live the church life and bear the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul was a pattern to us in this. He realized that grace is God in Christ, and he counted all things as loss on account of Him.

He just wanted to enjoy Christ, experience Christ, and partake of the riches of Christ.

He laboured more abundantly than others, yet it was not him but the grace of God which was with him.

We need to also do the same thing today: we need to take the processed and consummated Triune God as grace in our living and work today.

As we labour for the Lord and as we live our Christian life, we need to remain in the enjoyment of Christ.

Our total living should be not just doing the right things, the proper things, and the good things; rather, it should be a living in the enjoyment of Christ as grace.

We take only life as the principle of our living: we choose Christ as life, enjoy Christ as life, we live Christ, and we reject anything that is not of Christ.

May the Lord be merciful to us and bless us so that we may live a life in the enjoyment of Christ as grace so that we may eventually experience the consummation of the grace of God in His economy.

The riches of God’s grace, the riches of God Himself for our enjoyment, surpass every limit and will be publicly displayed for eternity (Eph. 2:7). Hallelujah!

The very last verse of the entire Bible is Rev. 22:21, The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints.

It is all of grace, it is in grace, it is through grace, and grace is with us all today!

Lord Jesus, we want to grow in the grace unto Your glory both now and unto the day of eternity! Hallelujah, we have the true grace of God in which we stand and grow! Amen, Lord, may we see that it is all of Your grace, in Your grace, by Your grace, and through Your grace. Wow, Lord, thank You for making us the product of the grace in God’s economy – the church as the Body of Christ, the poem of God! Amen, Lord, we are Your masterpiece, created in Christ for the good works that were foreordained by God for us to walk in them! Keep us enjoying You as the all grace today and keep us growing in grace! May we live not according to the principle of right or wrong but according to the principle of the tree of life, eating Christ and partaking of His riches in the way of life! Amen, Lord, may we enjoy the riches of God’s grace – the riches of God Himself for our enjoyment until we become a rich exhibition of God’s grace which will be publicly displayed for eternity! Yes, Lord, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints until we become a rich exhibition of the riches of Your grace to the whole universe for eternity!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ricky Acosta in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991-1992, vol. 2, “The Law and Grace of God in His Economy,” chs 2 and 4, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Living a Christian Life and Church Life under the Government of God for the Economy of God (2024 Thanksgiving Blending Conference), week 5, Grace in Peter’s Epistles.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – The Crystallization – the economy of the grace of God, article via, Affirmation and Critique.
  – We are in New Jerusalem Based on Grace, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – The intention of God’s economy, a portion from, The Central Line of the Divine Revelation, Chapter 3, by Witness Lee.
  – “Let Your Speech Be Always with Grace, Seasoned with Salt”, via, Shepherding Words.
  – Message 2: The Entire Speaking of God in the New Testament concerning God’s New Testament Economy from the Incarnation of God to the Consummation of the New Jerusalem, video message via, LSM youtube.
  – The Highest Definition of Grace, via, Living to Him.
  – Based upon the grace of God given in Christ Jesus, a portion from, A Genuine Church, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee.
  – God’s Love for Us Is Unfathomable, via, Bibles for America blog.
  – 2 Peter (Program #3) – The Divine Provision (3), via, Bible study radio.
  – What is Grace? More via, Hearing of Faith.
  – The grace of God in the economy of God, article via, Affirmation and Critique.
  – What is God’s Economy in the Bible? More via, Holding to Truth in Love.
  – God’s economy and Paul’s ministry: summarized and demonstrated, via, Conversant faith.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Grace! ’tis a charming sound, / Harmonious to the ear; / Heav’n with the echo shall resound, / And all the earth shall hear. / All sufficient grace! / Never powerless! / It is Christ who lives in me, / In His exhaustlessness. (Hymns #312 stanza 1 and chorus)
  – Paul the Apostle counted all as dung, / ’Twas only God in Christ he counted grace; / ’Tis by this grace—the Lord experienced— / That he surpassed the others in the race. / It is this grace—Christ as our inward strength— / Which with His all-sufficiency doth fill; / It is this grace which in our spirit is, / There energizing, working out God’s will. (Hymns #497 stanzas 3-4)
  – God’s deepest work of grace goes on / Each day, though hidden, small, / Until that day, when manifest, / It is revealed to all. / By then God’s wrought His finished work: / Himself dispensed to us; / And all creation ’round admires / His product, glorious… / So shall we not delight to give / Ourselves in every way, / And let the Lord dispense Himself / Into us more each day; / The grace that we receive each day, / Though hidden oft, and small, / Is God Himself wrought into us, / That day to shine o’er all. (Hymns #1320 stanzas 4 and 6)