We finished 1 Peter last week, and so we’re starting the very short book of 2 Peter today. If you have your Bible and would like to follow along, we have a very long passage to read this morning. 2 Peter, verses 3-11.
And as you’re turning there, I would like to note what follows this passage.
In verses 16-18, Peter says, “16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.” Referring to the transfiguration when Jesus met with Moses and Elijah and was transformed into his glory.
This is where, as I said a week or two ago, Peter acts first and thinks later. “Uhm, hi guys. Can we get you anything?”
And you can picture James and John, who were with Peter, smacking him on the arm or something, telling him to be quiet.
But the idea here is that Jesus wanted Peter, James, and John to be eyewitnesses to this so that they could tell the story of it–and that there would be more than one witness to this event. And it’s just one more claim that the disciples had as to who Jesus was and what he did, and that they spread this gospel message of what they personally saw, heard, and did. It got them in a lot of trouble and persecution. But they said, “So what if it does? I’m going to go to my death telling the story of Jesus and spreading his gospel, even if it kills me.” And it did kill them, and not a single one of them recanted their story, no matter what happened. And that should strengthen our faith and resolve.
It should strengthen our faith in the validity of the Bible because those who wrote it and swore by their testimonies died for what they said they experienced firsthand; and because of that, think about how much more courageous we should be. What kind of fire do we have inside of us? What kind of strength do we have to stand up for the gospel? If they can endure all that they did–and others around the globe today enduring what they are–then what’s stopping us from simply saying, “Yes, I’m a Christian. And not just any Christian, I’m one of those Christians the devil warned you about.”
But regardless of the rejections you might get from some people, hopefully, by saying yes, I’m a Christian, others may open up to you, and it can be a great time to minister to someone through an encouraging word or prayer. I’ll stop there because that’s not my sermon. That’s a free bonus today.
Scripture: Okay, 2 Peter 1:3-11 says,
3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
10 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
This is one of those passages that I think we can easily sort of skip over a bit because it has that long list of items that sounds all nice and everything, but it’s easy to just skim over.
My point to you today is this: those things that Peter mentions that we tend to skim through really quickly are the very things we can’t skim through really quickly. We need to look at them, examine each word individually, and then examine ourselves. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, we need to make sure we are following those step by step.
Let’s look at verse 5 again. “5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge.”
This verse begins with “for this very reason.” So what did he mean by ‘this very reason’ Again, in verse 3, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
His divine power, meaning the Holy Spirit within us, working through us, equips us with the ability to live a godly life. We also have the Bible, which Peter’s audience did not have. Nor did Peter realize that what he was writing would end up being sacred texts for eternity.
But we have these sacred texts, inspired by the Holy Spirit; and that same Holy Spirit that inspired those texts is dwelling within us. Therefore, as we read the Bible, that same Holy Spirit enables us and strengthens us with that courage, fire, and love.
I could go on, yet again, with another sermon on that, but I won’t.
But you can see how verses three and four flow into verses 5 through 7. Verse 5 again says, “through our knowledge of him,” which is through the reading of the word, prayer, and through the power of the Holy Spirit.
“Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
For this very reason [verse 5] make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;”
So first, we have faith. That’s a given. We have faith. We live by faith. So Peter says, your Christian walk does not reside just with faith. If it did, the Bible would be a lot shorter, and we really wouldn’t need to be here today. And that’s probably why a lot of people aren’t in church like they used to be, because all they have and all they want is the bare minimum, which is just faith enough to believe and be a good person, and that’s it.
But there’s more to just saying, “Yes, I’m a Christian. I believe.” If you’re familiar with the Apostle’s Creed, you could recite it in its entirety, but it wouldn’t be enough because it doesn’t mean anything more than an understanding of the basics of Christian doctrine.
There’s more to it than that. Add to your faith. And by adding to your faith, you will be not just a believer but a doer of your faith. As Paul said to the Philippian church, “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his purpose.”
That is a very similar statement. He’s not saying that our salvation is by works, by the way.
Gotquestions.org says, “the Greek verb rendered “work out” means “to continually work to bring something to completion or fruition.” We do this by actively pursuing obedience in the process of sanctification…. The “trembling” he experiences is the attitude Christians are to have in pursuing this goal—a healthy fear of offending God through disobedience and an awe and respect for His majesty and holiness.
So similarly, Paul is saying to add to your faith. And what do we add to our faith? First goodness, and to goodness, then we add knowledge.
Some translations will say, “supply moral excellence” or “virtue” instead of goodness. The Greek word here is “ah-rhe-tay” which means a virtue that is displayed to enrich the lives of others. A quality of life that makes someone stand out as excellent.
Precept Austin says, Land that produces crops is “excellent” because it is fulfilling its purpose. The tool that works correctly is “excellent” because it is doing what a tool is supposed to do. A believer demonstrates moral excellence or virtue by living the way He now has the potential to live (possessing everything necessary for life and godliness, His precious and magnificent promises, partaker of His divine nature).
So, after goodness, Peter adds to his recipe knowledge. You would think it would be the other way around. You start with knowledge, so you know first, then develop faith and go from there. But what Peter is trying to get at is that you’re still adding knowledge to your faith, but you’re adding it to your goodness as well. This is because this particular type of knowledge (going to the Greek again) is derived from experience.
The Greek word here for knowledge is gnosis, which means, “understanding, correct insight, truth properly comprehended and applied. Gnosis is functional (“working”) knowledge gleaned from firsthand (personal) experience, thus connecting “theory” with “application.” Gnosis is “application knowledge” and thus it is not surprising that it grows best in the “field” of obedience.”
Remember earlier when I talked about having that fire and strength inside of us? What brings that about? Just faith? Just goodness? Quite often, it’s experience. Refraining from delving into another sermon yet again…
Charles Spurgeon said: Those who are never tried usually possess a poor, tottering faith. But trial, especially persecution, is like the rough March wind which goes howling through the forest, and while the young oaks are almost torn up by the roots at first, it loosens the soil for them, and they send out more rootlets, till they get such a firm grip that they defy the hurricane. That which shakes them at first strengthens them afterward.
Have you ever been strengthened by the shaking or refined by the fire? That refiner’s fire is a whole other sermon I have. Maybe I’ll dig it out again, but for now, let’s move on.
In verse 6, Peter says that we should add to knowledge, self-control; to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness.
Again, a long list of words here. It’s easy to agree, yet skip over at the same time. Nice words, a nice way to live, but how do we really apply it?
With the knowledge gained from experience, we can learn what not to do. And so, we can learn self-control. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago someone who is a passenger of mine, who is their own worst enemy. In other words, he is upset at everyone else but doesn’t realize he’s the one to blame. He needs to calm down and get a grip. And if he learns how to control himself, life would be a lot easier for him–and everyone else around him.
David Jeremiah said, “Most of us would agree that when it comes for the battle for the right kind of living, the biggest enemy is not ‘out there.’ The biggest enemy is right here–ourselves. That’s why the principle of self-control is so very vital. It is that quality that makes it possible to achieve the goals God has set before us.”
Let me read to you that last part once again. Self-control “is that quality that makes it possible to achieve the goals God has set before us.”
He goes on to say, using the Greek again, “In the Greek, the word used here is kratain. It means to ‘grab hold of, to grasp.’ I believe it’s the concept from which we get the idiom, ‘get a hold of yourself’…the battle of self-control is a battle of the mind. The mind controls the passions. The battle is fought in the world of thought. There is no conflict so severe as the conflict one goes through to subdue oneself.”
So, how does this relate to Peter’s message? Self-control is right in between knowledge and perseverance.
Last week, I used this quote from an ancient book that goes back about 2,500 years called The Art of War, and I would like to use it again in this context. Think of it not as Satan, our enemy, but as our own sinful nature within us. We are our own enemy.
It says, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
So knowledge, self-control, then perseverance, because as David Jeremiah so accurately pointed out, “There is no conflict so severe as the conflict one goes through to subdue oneself.”
In the Book of Romans, Paul said something similar when he equated perseverance as producing character. The writer of Hebrews said, “Because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
And a few minutes ago, I mentioned James being with Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration. Here’s what James had to say, “because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
You see then, how Peter adds to perseverance, godliness. We can’t become Godly without persevering in knowledge and self-control.
Going to verse 7, “and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.”
When I first spoke here, I gave a sermon on the meaning of love. You’ll see how love is the culmination of all of these things. You would think that it would stop at godliness because godliness would include love. But in this sense, Peter is talking to a group of Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor, and his point is for them to live out their salvation. To live out their faith. What does living out their faith look like?
In verse 8, Peter says, “For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So, his point is to give them the tools they need to become productive and effective. Loving one another is certainly productive and effective, and that’s why the second greatest commandment is to love one another. If we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and then we love one another in the way that Paul describes in 1 Cor. 13 through the Holy Spirit as Paul describes in Galatians 5, then we have fulfilled the law.
Isn’t it amazing how Jesus summed up the entire Old Testament moral laws into two sentences? Of course, what it looks like to fulfill those two laws is why we have a rather large Bible. And like I said earlier, why I think a lot of people don’t bother with church anymore is because, to them, they’re like, oh, I got it.
But do they really? We need to understand godliness first because we need to understand the godly version of mutual affection and love. The world tells us that mutual affection and love are different than what God says it is.
The world so enticingly says that ‘love is love’ without defining love. So it sounds great. But if you were to ask any ordinary citizen what love is–like a ‘man on the street interview’–you’d probably get a different answer every time, and you’d probably even stump a lot of people because they wouldn’t know how to define love.
I would guess they would quote ‘the golden rule,’ which are the words of Jesus. Would they know it was the words of Jesus? I doubt it. But, even then, does love mean anything you want it to mean? Can you have a different definition of love? Can we, who are one worldwide body of Christ, have different definitions of what it means to have mutual affection and love?
How can we be united with one another, united with God, and how can we fulfill verse 3 if we aren’t on the same page as to what love is?
Verse 3 again, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”
I won’t go through it all again, but your homework assignment for this week is an essay on 1 Cor. 13 and Galatians 5. Five pages, double space, typed in 12-point Times Roman … just kidding.
But, it would be good to reread those two chapters and get them ingrained in our minds so that, through the help of the Holy Spirit, they become a practice and an everyday way of life.
And you’ll notice that the definition of love and the definition of the fruit (singular) of the Spirit both have long lists like this passage out of 2 Peter 1 does. So if and when you go through those again, please remember to stop at each word and meditate on it. Let each word stew in your mind for a moment. Don’t just rush through it. Study each word.
I’m going to close today by reading verses 8-11 and just letting those verses speak for themselves.
8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
10 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Featured Image by Sebbi Strauch from Pixabay
