By Silvanus, the faithful brother, as I suppose, I have written to you briefly; exhorting and testifying that this is [the] true grace of God in which ye stand.
Peter closes his letter by naming the man who carried it. He also names what he was doing in writing it, and the one thing he wants his scattered readers to be sure of: what they have received is the true grace of God. Some translations end with "the true grace of God in which you stand". The ESV makes the last phrase a command: "Stand firm in it."
Peter first names the man who put the letter into writing for him.
In closing Peter speaks of Silvanus as the man who wrote the letter for him. He was a brother known to his readers, though it seems Peter did not know him well enough to say more about his faithfulness. Peter calls his letter brief, and says it stresses exhortation and testimony rather than teaching.
The choice of messenger carries weight, because of Peter's own past.
Once Peter himself had been far from faithful to the Christian truth that liberty belongs to the Gentile as much as to the Jew who believed the good news, and Paul opposed him to his face... Now Peter writes without fear. With his own apostolic testimony he confirms the even bolder and deeper witness that Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, had given in Asia Minor. He sends it through a man whom he, like Paul, counted a faithful brother, a fitting link between them.
Peter describes his own letter in two words, and they divide it between them.
Notice what he says: "I have written briefly, exhorting". You can see for yourselves how much exhortation there is in the later part of the letter. Then he adds, "and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand". His testimony to this grace comes in the earlier part of the letter.
Grace is not God overlooking sin.
People sometimes think that grace means God passes over sin. But no. Grace assumes that sin is such a terrible thing that God cannot tolerate it. If a man, after being unrighteous and evil, could patch up his ways and mend himself enough to stand before God, there would be no need of grace.
This is why Peter calls it the true grace of God.
No teaching of Scripture meets so much opposition in the human mind as the truth of divine grace. This opposition is not found in unconverted people only. If you look closely, the same attitude works in the minds of those who have been renewed by that grace, while they still oppose and deny it in part. People do not deny the need of grace altogether. They admit a certain amount of it as necessary for God to accept them. Even the Pharisee could allow that much; he thanked God for the difference between himself and others. But its absolute completeness — that is, its real and divine character — is what the heart is unwilling to receive.
Peter's readers were Jewish believers. The change of ground is the point of the word "stand".
The Apostle Peter reminds the converted Jews to whom he wrote that they now stood in the grace of God. In the past their relationship with God was based on the law. On that basis they did not stand at all. They fell.
But there is a line between the place God gives and a believer's own hold on it.
And in that grace we stand. We are there by an act of God. He has set us in that grace beyond recall and for ever, since what He does He does for ever... Yet Paul rebuked the Galatians for not continuing in the grace of Christ... God held them safely in the place where He had set them. Even so, in their own thoughts and inner awareness they could still fall from that place.
The closing command assumes a real responsibility on the reader's side.
Nothing gives us the right to assume that this standing fits with not caring about sin, with giving in to selfishness, and with a life of practical unrighteousness. The justified believer must gather up his renewed energies and make sure his life and conduct match the privileged position God has given him.
And staying there is harder than arriving there.
Nothing is so hard for our hearts as staying in the sense of grace, keeping a real awareness that we are not under law but under grace... The abiding in the sense of grace, in the presence of God, is the secret of all holiness, peace, and quietness of spirit.
- Carried — Silvanus, a worker linked to Paul, brings the letter. Peter's own authority confirms the message of grace his readers had already heard.
- True — grace is true because it treats sin as beyond human repair. A half-grace that leaves room for self-repair is not the grace of God.
- Resisted — the human heart fights this teaching hardest. It admits a little grace and refuses the whole.
- Standing — under law they fell. In grace God has set them, and what He does He does for ever. A believer can still lose the sense of it.
- Firm — the position is God's gift, but the command stands. Match your conduct to it, and stay in the sense of it. That is where holiness and peace come from.
She that is elected with [you] in Babylon salutes you, and Marcus my son.
Peter ends his letter with greetings from Babylon — from a woman he never names, and from Mark. Who is she, which Babylon did he mean, and in what sense is Mark his son?
Commentators say the greeting comes from a person, not a church:
Whatever may be found in hymns, or sermons, or theology, Scripture knows no such thing as an elect church. There is the appearance of it in the last chapter of this very letter, but that is only the meddling hand of man. All agree that the translators put in the words "the church that is": they have no authority whatever. It was an individual, not a church, that was meant… The very point of Christianity is this: as to election it is personal — strictly individual.
Another writer tests this against the New Testament's own use of the word:
The election of God in the New Testament however always refers to the believers and never to the church as a whole (compare Rom. 8:33; 16:13; Eph. 1:4; Col. 3:12; 1 Thess. 1:4; 2 Thess. 2:13; Titus 1:1; 1 Peter 1:2; 2 Peter 1:10).
Without those words, the greeting comes from a woman Peter never names. Writers disagree about who she is. Some say she is his wife, who travelled with him:
There, it appears, Peter travelled with a believing wife, like the other apostles and the brothers of our Lord (1 Cor. 9:5-6); Scripture does not fail to tell us this, and so exposes the false and corrupting tradition that Rome prefers to the plain and holy word of God. For this seems the real sense of "the co-elect [sister] in Babylon" who greets those addressed, as Mark his son does too.
Others keep the older reading of a company of believers, while admitting the limits of the evidence:
The universal opinion for eighteen centuries was that the apostle here meant the congregation of the elect at Babylon. A few modern writers have suggested that he meant his wife. Others think "the co-elect one in Babylon" was some local lady of position. But these are mere guesses. Who Marcus was is also unsettled. Was he a real son of Peter's, or his son in a spiritual sense — the well known Mark, the Evangelist? My own thought — not as if I were teaching it — is that "the co-elect in Babylon" means the brotherhood or company of the elect saints there, and that Marcus was Peter's son only in the faith.
Many read "Babylon" here as a code word for Rome. Two things weigh against that — the date of Revelation, and the plain style of a letter:
Peter wrote his letter some 25 or 30 years before Revelation. How then could he have used this symbolic name for Rome? A symbolic name is also out of place in a letter. No other letter disguises a place like this… It must therefore be the literal Babylon in Mesopotamia.
The order of places at the start of Peter's letter fits the same reading:
There is evidence in Josephus that there were many Jews in the district forty years after Christ… Suppose Peter was in the district of Babylon. Then, as he begins his letter, he puts Pontus first and passes on to Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. So there is no reason to doubt that Peter means the ancient district of Babylon, where, by God's grace, there were some of the "elect."
The letter's last greeting names Mark, whose early failure is on record:
One likes to think of Mark in happy and devoted service. He is none other than the man whose early failure is on record. In zeal beyond his faith at that time, he went with Barnabas and Saul on their first circuit among the Gentiles. Though he so soon grew weary or discouraged, later he became useful for ministry to the apostle of the nations (2 Tim. 4:11) — which was especially sweet to that apostle — and even before this he had won back his confidence (Col. 4:10).
Peter knew the way back from failure himself:
Who was better fitted than Peter to lead a failing servant back to the true path again? He could remind Mark of that terrible failure of his own (no doubt Mark knew about it already). And Peter could point out that Mark did not need to be set aside from his service: there is a way back. It was only a matter of days before Peter was restored; it was many years with Mark, but there is a way back.
- Chosen personally. Translators added "the church that is." The greeting comes from a person, and in the New Testament election is personal, never a whole church.
- Chosen together. She is "co-elect" — chosen along with the readers, though she is far away in Babylon.
- Chosen, unnamed. Commentators differ. Some say Peter's wife, some a lady of that city, some the believers there. None of them claims certainty.
- Chosen city. Commentators take Babylon as the real city in Mesopotamia. A code word for Rome fits neither the date nor the plain style of a letter.
- Chosen again. The greeting ends with Mark, who failed early, standing beside Peter, whose own failure and restoration took only days: there is a way back.