Like Grace: Proclaiming the Excellencies of God through Our Joyful Endurance of Suffering<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
By Ron Foster   
Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.  For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.  When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.  For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls - 1 Peter 2:18-25.
The other day, I had a conversation with a lady who was sitting at the same table at a teachers' conference.  We had already started talking about our common faith when she mentioned that she was working in a very difficult environment.  She had a cruel administrator who, from her account, was unethical and racist in his treatment of her.  Of course, I couldn't make an impartial judgment after hearing only one side of the story, but as I listened to her and tried to be encouraging, she said something that sounded very familiar:  "I try to be faithful, but I can't understand what God is doing through all this."  I too wonder about that sometimes.  And I didn't have a great answer to offer her at the moment.  But this morning, I was in 1 Peter 2 and God opened my eyes to some things quite relevant to that conversation.  And I prayed God would open her eyes to these things as well. 
The word "gracious" in verse 19 literally means "grace-like" or "like grace." It comes from the Greek phrase gar charis, meaning "for grace." It is translated in some places in the New Testament as "thankful" (see Rom. 7:25).  Verse 19 could be paraphrased, "When we, keeping God first and foremost on our minds, endure this unjust suffering, it is like grace." 
What does "like grace" mean?  That was the first question I jotted down while reading this passage.  The context provides more than an adequate answer.  In fact, it seems to me the remainder of the passage is there to answer that very question. 
It might help to first look at the meaning of grace.  After all, we can't know what "like grace" is until we know what grace is.  Recently I came across one of the best definitions of grace in one of John Piper's books:
Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.[i]
God's greatness is magnified in how He goes about bringing worthless sinners, spiritually dead in trespasses and sins (Eph 2:1), swiftly running away from God toward bloodshed, ruin and misery (Rom 3:10-18), into a loving relationship of joyful obedience to Himself.  The magnificence of this achievement is not merely that God pardons sins but that He justifies sinners without compromising His justice.  Sure, a judge could acquit a serial killer proven guilty beyond all question, but that judge wouldn't be a judge for very long.  He would be considered "unrighteous" in his judgments and dismissed, removed from his office, and rightly so.  The Bible, likewise, calls a judge who justifies the wicked an abomination (Pr. 17:15).  A judge must be just, never acquitting the guilty.  And yet God does this every hour of every day.  In God's sight, none are innocent.  All are guilty and deserve condemnation.  And God would be unjust to acquit any of us.  Yet that is exactly what He does and has done ever since humanity first sinned, ever since sin first entered into all humanity.  Every act of mercy is an acquittal of the guilty.  Let that sink in for a minute, because that's a huge problem!!
And that's where grace comes in.  Christ stooped down into our place to bear our sentence of death in His flesh (<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Rom. 8:3) – to suffer the greatest injustice of all.  And He endured this with joy (Heb. 12:2).  Joy!  What is this "joy" the author of Hebrews refers to?  Matthew Henry writes:
…He rejoiced to see that by his sufferings he should make satisfaction to the injured justice of God and give security to his honour and government, that he should make peace between God and man, that he should seal the covenant of grace and be the Mediator of it, that he should open a way of salvation to the chief of sinners, and that he should effectually save all those whom the Father had given him, and himself be the first-born among many brethren. This was the joy that was set before him.[ii]
Christ's joyful sufferings accomplished far more than we can fully comprehend, but the good name of His Father was at the top of the list.  Romans 3:25-26 says of Christ Jesus:
…whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Through Christ's joyful sufferings, He glorified God by willingly receiving God's judgment of our guilt upon Himself, thus exonerating God's righteousness for having overlooked for so long sins previously committed.[iii]
So that's grace – God's magnification of His own worth – His mighty power and infinite wisdom to uphold the honor of His name while justifying the guilty through Christ's works on the cross! 
Now, what's "like grace"?  It is like grace to keep God's good name first and foremost on our minds while we suffer unjustly at the hands of unkind, unfair or cruel people.  It is like grace to be joyfully trusting in God through our many difficulties.  Do you see the connection?  It was grace for Christ to joyfully exalt His Father's name through enduring unjust suffering.  And it is like grace for us to joyfully exalt Christ through enduring unjust suffering. 
We tend to think that we should merely tolerate tough times, doing our best until they pass.   Maintain a good attitude and do our best to give God the glory, and try to be thankful even when we are discouraged.  The common expression is, "Just deal with it."  But God's word requires so much more from us.  What example did Christ leave?  Joyful, God-glorifying endurance.  But how can we have joy in the midst of grief and injustice?  And how does this all bring glory to God?
Verse 21 says, "To this you were called."  Called by whom?  By God!  Whatever comes through the hands of man is first ordained by God who works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph 1:11).  Jesus, killed by cruel and wicked men, was delivered up by the foreordained will of God (Acts 2:23; 4:27-28).  We too are ordained to various trials and sufferings, though miniscule in comparison to His and certainly varying in intensity among His beloved throughout the world.[iv] 
The word "calling" in verse 21 refers to effectual calling.  God Himself has appointed us for these kinds of grief, injustice and suffering.  Why? 
Go back up to verse 9: 
But you are a chosen race, a holy priesthood, a holy nation, a people of His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." 
We have been chosen to proclaim the excellencies of God, i.e. to exalt His name.  How?  Verse 20.  By doing good in the midst of suffering and by suffering for doing good.  Why does suffering glorify God?  Because it illuminates the awesome grace of God in justifying sinners through the sufferings of Christ.  And Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example on how to suffer.  In other words, Christ wrote the book on suffering.  And what example did Christ set for us?  He suffered to magnify God's grace.  And this is what we are called to do as well.  Our joyful endurance in times of suffering is a proclamation of the excellencies of God's glory because they point to the excellencies of Christ's sufferings on the cross. Our faithful, joyful endurance as those called by His name shines the spotlight on Christ's own sufferings, and thus magnifies God's mighty power in bringing many sinners to faith.  We proclaim Christ when we joyfully endure hardships with God as our hope, entrusting every injustice to His righteous and merciful judgment.  And our good deeds, mixed with words of hope, will not go unnoticed by those who are now being called by God out of darkness into His marvelous light.  They too will glorify our Father in heaven.  God has been so kind to set before us a great joy in our sufferings, that we may magnify the worth of God and proclaim His most excellent name.  So we can rejoice in our sufferings as Christ rejoiced in His because we know that God is magnifying His grace through us, bringing great glory to His name as we proclaim Christ's excellencies through all the daily crosses we have been appoint

[i] John Piper, The Pleasure of God, (Multnomah Publishers: 1991, 2000), p. 11

[ii] Matthew Henry, Commentary of the Whole Bible, Volume 6, [Online] http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc6.Heb.xiii.html.

[iii] Grace extends both forward and backward in our time orientation, since God's counsel supersedes time, God having ordained Christ's sufferings before time began.  The cross remains the centerpiece of time and also exists outside the boundaries of time.  So just as Abraham was enabled to believe by faith and receive the benefits of Christ's sufferings at Calvary, which was only a mystery to him, I, on the other side of the timeline, have also been enabled to receive Christ by that same faith, in my case looking back to Calvary and seeing how that very mystery of God's grace was unfolded in Christ's death and resurrection.

[iv] Furthermore, our suffering, as opposed to Christ's offers nothing in regard to the atonement of sins or our own salvation.  Nor does it add in any way to Christ's already finished work of redemption on the cross.  Our sufferings in His name merely illuminate Christ's already finished work of redemption and God's mighty grace in saving sinners.