Therefore it is the last; all dispensations have run their course,
but the present,--the last,--which is revealed to us.

Besides, the time hereafter is not long to the end of the world, as
St. Peter shows, II. Pet. iii., where he says: "One day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." And so he
would lead us by this reckoning of time, to conclude, after God's
method, that it is the last time, and that the end approaches, but
the time which still remains is nothing in the sight of God. The
salvation is already revealed and completed: God permits the world to
stand yet longer, merely that His name may be more widely honored and
praised, although He for Himself is now fully revealed.

V. 21. _For you, who through Him believe on God, who raised Him from
the dead, and hath given Him dominion that your faith and hope might
be in God._ For our sakes, he says, is the Gospel revealed. For God
and the Lord Christ have not needed it, but have done it for our
profit, that we might believe on them; and that, not through
ourselves, but through Christ, who intercedes for us with the Father,
whom He has raised from the dead, that He might be Lord over all
things; so that whoever believes on Him possesses all His good
things, and through Him has access to the Father. Thus we have faith
in God, and a hope through the same faith. Faith alone must save us,
but it must be a faith in God; for if God does not help us, then we
are not holpen; so that it is not enough, although you had all men's
friendship, but you must have the friendship of God, that you may
boast that He is YOUR Father, and that you are His child, and confide
in Him even more than in your beloved father and mother, that He will
help you in all your troubles, and this only through the one Mediator
and Saviour, the Lord Christ. Such faith comes not (he says) from
human power, but God creates it in us, because Christ has merited it
by His blood; to whom He has given glory, and whom He has seated at
His right hand, that He, by God's power, should produce faith in us.

Hitherto we have heard St. Peter admonishing us that we should gird
up the loins of our mind, that we may remain undefiled and live in
faith; then, also, that which meanwhile is so important, that we
should walk in fear and never forget that we are called Christians,
since God is a judge who respects none, but judges one like the
other, without distinction of persons.

V. 2