What does it mean to be kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:5)?

How blessed is it, beloved, to dwell on that "abundant mercy," that eternal love of our God, which has "called us unto His kingdom and glory," giving us a "lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ""to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away - reserved in heaven for us! How blessed, too, to consider our security, our eternal security - "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time!" The word "kept" is in the original a very strong word, and implies most clearly the situation of the church as engarrisoned, enclosed, guarded, protected by the power of God against all the powers of darkness. "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt. 16:18.)

But while many would take advantage of this precious truth - while many say they will be "kept" any how, we would reply, "Nay, we are kept through faith." It is only as we are living by faith, realizing the power of faith - faith which "overcometh the world" - that we realize what is that power of God by which we are "kept." (1 Peter 1:5; 1 John 5:4-5.)

The hope of such an inheritance reserved for them in the heavens was most cheering. But in thinking of themselves and the wilderness through which they pass, they needed and have another source of blessed comfort — you, says he, "that are being guarded by (or, in) God's power." What more suitable, what more precious and welcome, than such a divine assurance? The inheritance was kept or reserved for them in the heavens. This was just what was wanted, while they were on the earth waiting and learning self as well as God, and suffering for righteousness' sake or, still more blessed, for Christ's name. But, as proving their own weakness and men's hostility and Satan's active malice, they were constantly exposed to difficulties, trials, afflictions, and dangers. Hence their need to be meanwhile guarded all the way through. And so they are — garrisoned by God's power. And if God be for us, who against? Is He not immeasurably more than all?

Still God has His means; and this the apostle proceeds next to tell us. It is "through faith." Nor can any means for a saint on earth compare with faith. For it beyond all others honours God and the word of His grace, needing dependence on the good Shepherd by the Holy Spirit, Who is sent here and dwells in the Christian, to guide into all the truth, and thus glorify Him by receiving of His and announcing or reporting it to us. Thus is it "by God's power," but "through faith" which gives Him His due place, and keeps us in our place of confidence in Him according to His word. For we walk through faith, not through sight (2 Cor. 5:7). It was not so that Israel marched through the wilderness, but guided visibly by the cloud or the pillar of fire. The Christian now, whether a Jew or a Gentile, has to walk through faith, of which the Lord Himself was the blessed pattern and perfection.

But it is by moral means that this power preserves us (and it is in this way that Peter always speaks), by the operation in us of grace, which fixes the heart on objects that keep it in connection with God and with His promise (compare 2 Peter 1:4). We are kept by the power of God through faith. It is, God be praised, the power of God Himself; but it acts by sustaining faith in the heart, maintaining it in spite of all temptations above all the defilement of the world, and filling the affection with heavenly things. Peter, however, always occupied with the ways of God respecting this world, only looks at the share that believers will have in this salvation, this heavenly glory, when it shall be manifested; when God will, by this glory, establish His authority in blessing on the earth. It is indeed the heavenly glory, but the heavenly glory manifested as the means of the establishment of the supreme government of God on earth, for His own glory and for the blessing of the whole world.

It is salvation ready to be revealed in the last times. This word "ready" is important. Our apostle says also that the judgment is ready to be revealed. Christ is glorified personally, has conquered all His enemies, has accomplished redemption. He only waits for one thing, namely, that God should make His enemies His footstool. He has taken His seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high, because He has accomplished everything as to glorifying God where sin was. It is the actual salvation of souls — the gathering together of His own, which is not yet finished (2 Peter 3:9, 15); but when once all they who are to share it are brought in, there is nothing to wait for as regards the salvation, that is to say, the glory in which the redeemed will appear; nor consequently as regards the judgment of the wicked on earth, which will be consummated by the manifestation of Christ.** All is ready. This thought is sweet for us in our days of patience, but full of solemnity when we reflect upon the judgment.

Yes, as the apostle says, we rejoice greatly in this salvation, which is ready to be revealed in the last times. We are waiting for it. It is a time of rest, of the earth's blessing, of the full manifestation of His glory who is worthy of it, who was humbled and who suffered for us; the time when the light and the glory of God in Christ will illumine the world, and first bind and then chase away all its evil.

(V. 5). Not only is heaven reserved for us, but, as we pass along our way, we are kept guarded from all the dangers of the journey through this world. It is indeed the power of God that guards us, and yet the way that power works is “through faith”. The power of God sustains the faith of His people, who are thus kept waiting for the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. By faith we look on to the final deliverance by which we shall enter into the full enjoyment of the heavenly inheritance.

The power of God keeps us and not our fidelity, yet God's power works through faith. Faith is our side of the matter. God is sovereign in exercising His power, and we are responsible as to the exercise of faith. Many are puzzled as to how to put these two things, God's sovereignty and man's responsibility together, and regard them as quite incompatible and irreconcilable. Yet here, in this fifth verse, they are found going hand in hand, preserving the believer to the salvation that awaits him in the last time. The salvation mentioned here is future. It is the final deliverance that awaits the believer at the coming of the Lord. That final deliverance is a certainty before us; yet we cannot await it with self-confidence, for nothing short of the power of God is needed to keep us, nor can we await it with carelessness, for God's power is effective through faith, on our side. How then do we await it? Why, with exultation, yet tempered with the heaviness of many trials, as verse 6 declares. The coming glory shone brightly before the faith of these early Christians and filled them with great rejoicing, so that they were like ships with sails set and filled with heaven's breezes. On the other hand they had plenty of ballast in the shape of heavy trials. These trials are permitted in love, for they only come "if need be." In one way or another we all do need them. If we try to rejoice in the world and its pleasures we need trials to dislodge us from the world by stirring up the comfortable nest we would fain build below. If we are exulting in the coming glory we need them as sobering and steadying ballast, lest our exulting should overbalance us.

"Reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." "Revealed," that is not taking up with theories, but a positive thing from God; the inheritance is kept there for us, whilst we are kept down here by the power of God through faith. God's power keeps us, but it is by keeping our faith, unto a salvation ready to be revealed.

(1 Peter 1:5,) "Kept by the power of God." In Peter's Epistles you scarcely find a verse that has not a tacit, and at the same time touching allusion to his own pathway. He had not been kept, because of his own self-confidence; but God will keep you, he says, by His power through faith. I believe when he wrote that, his heart was turning back to the moment when the Lord told him, that He had prayed for him, that his faith might not fail — to the moment when, in self-confidence, he had thought that he could keep himself. Nor is it only that we are kept for a time, but "to salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time." Peter has always got his eye on the glory beyond, and salvation is, with him (save in verse 9), always the deliverance of the saint out of this scene entirely, spirit, soul, and body, to be with Christ in glory: and this salvation, he says, is "ready to be revealed."

Many of the passages we might look at in this connection have to do with our wilderness life rather than with our standing before God. Perhaps, as we have been dwelling upon the testimony in our life, some may feel the heart sinking, and say: "Who is sufficient for these things?" Let me ring out this precious assurance, then: "Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Peter 1:5); kept for the incorruptible inheritance reserved for us in heaven; kept not by our own strength but by His power; kept from yielding to temptation through the power of the enemy; kept through faith; laying hold of the silver hook and rod of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ; and we may be sure that He who has given us this word will perform it. May we be kept from dishonoring Him through unbelief.

We are apt to think, even as saints, that there is something of ourselves on which we can rely, something that makes us independent of any outward support. We are apt to think, if we are believers, if we are saints, if we are children of God, we are beyond the reach of destruction. And this may be true, but it is sometimes not the truth as it is in people's minds. God will keep His own; but it is He who keeps them. True there is a sense in which they keep themselves, but they keep themselves by walking in dependence upon God. There is no inherent power in man, no matter who the man is, that can make him independent of God. We are kept by the power of God through faith (1 Peter 1:5), and that brings us into dependence upon God.

In this case then we have the Christian by divine grace possessed of a new nature which loves to obey. He is sprinkled with Christ's blood, which gives him confidence and boldness in faith before God, because he knows the certainty of the love that has put away his sins by blood. But, besides this, what a spring is conveyed to the soul by the sense that his life is the life of Jesus in resurrection. So, he adds, there is a similar inheritance for the saints with Christ Himself — "an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven," where He has already gone. More than this, there is full security, spite of our passing through a world filled with hatred and peril, for the Christian above all. "For you," says he, "who are kept;" for Christian doctrine is not, as men so often say, that of saints persevering. In this I, for one, do not believe. One sees alas! too often saints going astray, comparatively seldom persevering as the rule, if we speak of their consistent fidelity and devotedness. But there is that which never fails, — "the power of God through faith," — by which the believer is kept to the end. This alone restores the balance; and thus we are taken out of all conceit of our own stability. We are thrown on mercy, as we ought to be; we look up in dependence on One who is incontestably above us, and withal infinitely near to us. This ought to be the spring of all our confidence, even in God Himself, with His own power preserving us. There is given to the soul of him who thus rests on God's power keeping him a wholly different tone from that of the man who thinks of his own perseverance as a saint. Far better is it, then, to be "kept by the power of God through faith." In this way it is not independent of our looking to Him.

But there is discipline also. God puts us to the proof; and, undoubtedly, if there be unbelief working, we must eat the bitter fruit of our own ways. It is good that we should feel that it is unbelief, and that unbelief can produce nothing but death. This may be in various measures, and therefore no more is meant than so far as want of faith is allowed to work. In the unbeliever, where it does work unhinderedly, the consequences are fatal and everlasting. In the believer the evil heart of unbelief is modified necessarily by the fact that, believing on Christ, he has everlasting life. But still, as far as unbelief does work, it is just so far death in effect. The saints, then, are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." And here it is well to observe, as an important fact to be recognised, that salvation in Peter's epistle looks onward to the future, where it is not otherwise qualified. Salvation is here viewed as not yet come. In the general sense of the word, salvation awaits the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It supposes that the believer is brought out of all that is natural even as to the body — that he is already changed into the likeness of Christ. "Salvation," says Peter, "ready to be revealed in the last time." This is the reason why he connects it with the appearing of Jesus Christ. It is not merely the work effected, but salvation revealed; and hence it necessarily awaits the revelation of Jesus Christ.