So at the end of September, the Vella family is going to England. This will be the second time in my life that I had travelled overseas and the first for the kids. And, as we get closer, there are lots of plans as to what we have to pack, as we can only carry so much. There is a fear, that if we don’t plan, we might not bring everything we need. It would be so much better if there was no weight restrictions and our arms were a lot stronger. This is a realistic worry, as in a usual week in the Vella household there are things forgotten. Like did we pack the viola on the right day? Do we have the right covered shoes, or the library bag or music sheets for the right day?
Not having the right thing can be annoying. One time, before we were married, Hannahs family was going overseas and one of her brothers forgot their passport. That’s kinda important. I had to go and collect it from their house and bring it to them at the airport as they didn’t have time to do the round trip before the plane was to leave.
Not having the right things for travel can be frustrating, but do you ever feel like in your Christian journey, you don’t have all that you need? Like if only you knew more things, or was back in the first century and had seen or met with Jesus. If only you were one of the five thousand fed, or saw Jesus ascend into heaven, then your faith might be stronger. (Ignoring the fact that when Jesus ascended, some there still doubted). You might look around or read about people in Church history and think you don’t have all that they have. That you lack something. If only you had more to help in your Christian walk.
Received a Precious faith
In the letter of 2 Peter, Peter is writing so that people will not fall for false teachings, but instead be confident in their knowledge of God and their own salvation. Today we are just looking at the first four verses of this letter, which tells us that we have the same precious faith as Peter and that in Christ we have everything we need for living as a Christian.We have the same precious faith, and we have everything we need.
The opening sentence starts with
Peter writes to those who have received a faith as precious as his.
Through Christ, we have righteousness, that is, we are deemed as being right with God because of Jesus. Let's not forget how much it cost God. Let's not forget how good that is.
Bernard of Clairvaux said
Not only is our faith given to us and of great value,e but it is also just as good as Peter's.
There is no extra level of being a servant or apostle of Jesus. Those who have been saved by God have the same faith as valuable as everyone else. You don’t graduate or level up higher in the faith. Jews or Gentiles, Apostles or laypeson, all have received the same faith from our righteous God.
Peter may have physically been with Jesus for a few years, but we are all saved the same way: through Jesus’ sacrifice. We have all received this through Christ, and so therefore our faith is just as precious a Peter's.
He says this in the second sentence
In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, along with Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Lion, goes to visit the Wizard because they lacked something. Scarecrow wants a brain, Tin Man wants a heart, Lion wants courage and Dorothy wants a way home. But in the end, when they visit the wizard for the second time, they find out, through the power of friendship, that they already had what they thought they lacked all along. (Dorothy gets the magical shoes right at the start, and no one tells her she could use them to get home, who does that?)
Now in the Wizard of Oz, they looked within and triumphed over evil themselves, but for us, we already have everything we need, not because we are self-sufficient, but because God provides. He has given us everything we need.
We have access to knowledge of Him, and so we can see His promises and trust them, for God is trustworthy. We don’t need the latest Christian living book to know how to live, as helpful as they may be. There is already a book where we can know God through. We are to know the real Jesus who is God and Saviour, and we can. It is possible to know the true things about Jesus, so that we will not be led astray by false teachers. We can and should seek Him through His word, not just to gain facts about God. Knowledge here isn’t passive intellectualism, but it is to know Him, to know who He really is, and how glorious and good He is.
And, all this knowing doesn’t mean we don’t do any doing. In the next weeks, we will see that there are things we are to make every effort in doing. For our knowledge of the personal God, is to change how we are.
There is work to be done, but we need to remember the order. That comes after we have been called, after we are already included in God’s family. We don’t make the effort to be adopted by; God does that initially. Only then do we learn what it is to live like in His family.
It's like when God rescued His people from slavery in the book of Exodus. It was only after He had saved them from the Egyptians, it was only after He had rescued them to be His people, that He gave them the law. They weren’t to keep the law to become His people; they were already His free people. They were now free to live how God intended them to live. Same with us.
We have everything we need; we have been called by God, but this isn’t a passive calling. There are things we are to do and we are to live in a certain way, but that is next week. For today, we see that our precious faith has been given to us because of Christ, and we have been given what we need now to live in a godly way. So, seek out what we already know.
This single fact was instrumental in Hannah becoming a Christian. God has made many promises, and we can trust that they will come true, because He is a good God.
Peter doesn’t mention what the promises are here, but what we know of God, when He speaks, it is valuable. We should listen to His precious promises.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven, His last words to His followers were
Not only that, God and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to help us. We have a new heart, one powered by the Spirit, enabling us to follow His good ways.
God has called us, forgiven us, empowered us and says He will be with us. These are precious promises we can trust. Do you believe this? Well, He said it, so we can tust them.
This turn of phrase of “participating in the divine nature” has caused some people great interest. What does it mean? This phrase may have been something the false teachers were talking about, as it does appear in other Greek writings of the time (Plato, Phaedrus 230A down to Epictetus, Disc. 2.19.26–27, including Josephus, C. Ap. 2.232, Philo, Leg. alleg. 1.38 & De decalogo 104, 4 Macc 18:3 and Pseudo-Phocylides (103–4) - all cited in: Davids, P. H. (2006). The letters of 2 Peter and Jude). Peter may have wanted to co-opt their words and reframe them in their Christian context.
The Mormons, their fifth president, Lorenzo Snow, famously said back in 1840, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”
They believe that God started as a man who worked his way up to become God. And also believe that we too, if we are good enough, if we follow the right path, we also can become gods ourselves.
That is heretical. God the Father has always been God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. God didn’t self-improve to become a deity, but are we also to become God? Is that what Peter is saying?
Are we like droplets that merge back into the ocean of the infinite divine, like some Hindus believe?
In our 2 Peter verse, notice that it contrasts participating in the divine nature with escaping the corruption in the world. This leaving the evil desires of the world, means we are to be separated from this world.
We are to be holy in this world, which just means to be “other than”, the world. We are to be Holy, for God is Holy. In 1 Peter, he said this idea a few times. God is Holy, and we are to be as well. We can participate in the divine by being separate from the evil desires ot this world.
Participating in the divine may also mean that in the end, we escape the corruption in the world as we are going to get new bodies that are incorruptible, that will last for eternity. We get immortality, which is a trait of God.
Holiness and incorruptibility are traits we can share with God, without becoming divine. We don’t become divine, we don’t take part in a process that will change our essence. It’s not like we are on a journey in a dark tunnel and over time as we approach the divine light we merge with it. That’s not the Christian hope. Our hope is that through Christ, we are made new, set apart, holy, and immortal, but God is still God, and we are still His redeemed people.
William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940,s said:
The batteries are included. We have been given everything we need from God. We have not been left alone. Let us rejoice in this good news of our precious faith that we have received.
Let me pray:
The opening sentence starts with
Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: (2 Peter 1:1 NIV)
At the start of this letter, Peter introduces himself as a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter was one of Jesus' closest followers, but he did have a bit of a bumpy track record. He was rebuked by Jesus and he did deny knowing Christ three times. But Peter was also restored. He was brought back in to help sheperd and encourage more Jesus followers. And here, Peter is writing at the end of his life, fulfilling that calling, by encouraging Christians to see that "we can possess a faith that will not fail… You can fall and yet still finish… you can have regrets and yet know what it is to be rescued by Christ" (1 & 2 Peter and Jude—Sharing Christ’s Sufferings One Experience)
Peter writes to those who have received a faith as precious as his.
The faith they have, they didn’t work for, they didn’t think their way up to enlightenment, they didn’t say the right holy prayers or visit the right holy spots; instead, they received this faith.
We see that it was through the righteousness of Jesus that they, and we, receive our faith. Jesus, the only truly right one, gave us our faith. It was only through Jesus’ right living that He kept the law for us, and only through His right sacrifice, dying in our place, that we can be saved. And we receive His accomplishment.
That is why this faith is described as being precious. “Precious” is a bit of a favourite word for Peter, we get this word twice in our four verses and he mentioned it four more times in his first letter.
Our faith is something of great value. We sometimes think, yes we are saved, all well and good, so are many other people, now what? And Peter wants to remind his readers right from the start, that their salvation was given to them and is something of great value. Don’t forget this, even if it seems common or basic, our faith is of great value. It cost Jesus His perfect life.
Salvation is like that quick little parable Jesus says in Matthew 13
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:45–46 NIV)This merchant finds what he is looking for and goes and sells everything he has, because in his mind, that fine pearl is worth more to him than everything else he has.
Through Christ, we have righteousness, that is, we are deemed as being right with God because of Jesus. Let's not forget how much it cost God. Let's not forget how good that is.
Bernard of Clairvaux said
Righteousness is incomparably better than money, because the one enriches and fills only the chest, but the other the soul. (300 Quotations for Preachers from the Medieval Church Righteousness Better than Money)(He means like a treasure chest, not the chest in our bodies.)
Not only is our faith given to us and of great value,e but it is also just as good as Peter's.
There is no extra level of being a servant or apostle of Jesus. Those who have been saved by God have the same faith as valuable as everyone else. You don’t graduate or level up higher in the faith. Jews or Gentiles, Apostles or laypeson, all have received the same faith from our righteous God.
Peter may have physically been with Jesus for a few years, but we are all saved the same way: through Jesus’ sacrifice. We have all received this through Christ, and so therefore our faith is just as precious a Peter's.
Jesus is God
And one last point, here, we see that Peter says faith was from “our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Jesus here is called our God and Saviour. Peter knew who he was talking about. Some people say Jesus was a good guy, that he might have been a prophet or a good moral teacher, but how well do they know Jesus? They didn’t spend at least three years with Him. Peter, who was there, says Jesus is God and Saviour. Peter has a right understanding of who Jesus is, and Peter wants to make sure we know the right Jesus, too.He says this in the second sentence
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Peter 1:2 NIV)
Knowledge is a big theme in 2 Peter; it is mentioned six times in three chapters. Peter wants people to have the right knowledge of our God and Saviour. He doesn’t want them led astray from false teachers. Most false teachers work this way, they say they have received some new insights, some new teaching and you have to come and believe and know their new message.
Instead, Peter is saying we need to know the right things, which we already have access to, which can grant us an abundance of peace, for if we know we are right with God, this could settle some of our biggest fears.
With this faith-gift that Christians receive, does it feel like it is enough? Or is this gift a little like a gift that comes with those dreaded words “Batteries not included”. These words are dreaded in our house when we receive a gift for we might not have any batteries, but even worse, if we did, the toy they are going into is bound to make noise.
Instead, Peter is saying we need to know the right things, which we already have access to, which can grant us an abundance of peace, for if we know we are right with God, this could settle some of our biggest fears.
Everything we need
Just this week, my sister bought me a heated vest from Amazon as I was saying how cold it has been. That didn’t come with batteries. I had to pay $30 to get it to work.
Do we feel like the gift of faith we have received is nice, it is a good idea, but it is a little powerless for us to live now? We need something added to help.
Peter writes these comforting words in sentence 3
God has called us out of darkness into light. He has acted on our behalf so that we can be redeemed and brought back to Him. Brought back into His family. He did the calling, He did the saving, and so He is going to do the keeping.
God is a completer finisher.
Paul says in Philippians
Do we feel like the gift of faith we have received is nice, it is a good idea, but it is a little powerless for us to live now? We need something added to help.
Peter writes these comforting words in sentence 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. (2 Peter 1:3 NIV)God has given us everything we need. This is almost too hard to believe. We haven’t been left alone to fend for ourselves. God has given us everything we need for a godly life. He hasn’t given us everything we desire or want. He hasn’t given us the knowledge to pass our exams or what stocks to invest in, but He has given us all we need to live as a Christian. He has done this through what we know of Him who called us.
God has called us out of darkness into light. He has acted on our behalf so that we can be redeemed and brought back to Him. Brought back into His family. He did the calling, He did the saving, and so He is going to do the keeping.
God is a completer finisher.
Paul says in Philippians
that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6 NIV)Our God doesn’t just leave us once we are saved and hopes for the best. What God begins, He will complete.
Now in the Wizard of Oz, they looked within and triumphed over evil themselves, but for us, we already have everything we need, not because we are self-sufficient, but because God provides. He has given us everything we need.
We have access to knowledge of Him, and so we can see His promises and trust them, for God is trustworthy. We don’t need the latest Christian living book to know how to live, as helpful as they may be. There is already a book where we can know God through. We are to know the real Jesus who is God and Saviour, and we can. It is possible to know the true things about Jesus, so that we will not be led astray by false teachers. We can and should seek Him through His word, not just to gain facts about God. Knowledge here isn’t passive intellectualism, but it is to know Him, to know who He really is, and how glorious and good He is.
And, all this knowing doesn’t mean we don’t do any doing. In the next weeks, we will see that there are things we are to make every effort in doing. For our knowledge of the personal God, is to change how we are.
Saved for Christian living
But note the order here. We have received salvation, and then we are to live in a way. There is a process in our character and growth, but not in our salvation.There is work to be done, but we need to remember the order. That comes after we have been called, after we are already included in God’s family. We don’t make the effort to be adopted by; God does that initially. Only then do we learn what it is to live like in His family.
It's like when God rescued His people from slavery in the book of Exodus. It was only after He had saved them from the Egyptians, it was only after He had rescued them to be His people, that He gave them the law. They weren’t to keep the law to become His people; they were already His free people. They were now free to live how God intended them to live. Same with us.
We have everything we need; we have been called by God, but this isn’t a passive calling. There are things we are to do and we are to live in a certain way, but that is next week. For today, we see that our precious faith has been given to us because of Christ, and we have been given what we need now to live in a godly way. So, seek out what we already know.
Precious promises
Then in sentence 4 we read: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. (2 Peter 1:4 NIV)It is through Jesus' glory and goodness that He has made precious promises to us. We can trust that we have everything we need, because we have a trustworthy God. Our God is glorious, and our God keeps His promises.
This single fact was instrumental in Hannah becoming a Christian. God has made many promises, and we can trust that they will come true, because He is a good God.
Peter doesn’t mention what the promises are here, but what we know of God, when He speaks, it is valuable. We should listen to His precious promises.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven, His last words to His followers were
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20 NIV)In Hebrews, we read
God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5–6 NIV)Jesus might have ascended to heaven, but He is still with us. We can take comfort in this precious promise. The Lord is my helper, we do not need to be afraid.
Not only that, God and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to help us. We have a new heart, one powered by the Spirit, enabling us to follow His good ways.
God has called us, forgiven us, empowered us and says He will be with us. These are precious promises we can trust. Do you believe this? Well, He said it, so we can tust them.
Participate in the divine nature
And Peter here says, through God’s promises, we can participate in the divine nature. This is a bit crazy if you think about it. This is saying that we humans take some part or share in the divine nature.This turn of phrase of “participating in the divine nature” has caused some people great interest. What does it mean? This phrase may have been something the false teachers were talking about, as it does appear in other Greek writings of the time (Plato, Phaedrus 230A down to Epictetus, Disc. 2.19.26–27, including Josephus, C. Ap. 2.232, Philo, Leg. alleg. 1.38 & De decalogo 104, 4 Macc 18:3 and Pseudo-Phocylides (103–4) - all cited in: Davids, P. H. (2006). The letters of 2 Peter and Jude). Peter may have wanted to co-opt their words and reframe them in their Christian context.
The Mormons, their fifth president, Lorenzo Snow, famously said back in 1840, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”
They believe that God started as a man who worked his way up to become God. And also believe that we too, if we are good enough, if we follow the right path, we also can become gods ourselves.
That is heretical. God the Father has always been God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. God didn’t self-improve to become a deity, but are we also to become God? Is that what Peter is saying?
Are we like droplets that merge back into the ocean of the infinite divine, like some Hindus believe?
In our 2 Peter verse, notice that it contrasts participating in the divine nature with escaping the corruption in the world. This leaving the evil desires of the world, means we are to be separated from this world.
We are to be holy in this world, which just means to be “other than”, the world. We are to be Holy, for God is Holy. In 1 Peter, he said this idea a few times. God is Holy, and we are to be as well. We can participate in the divine by being separate from the evil desires ot this world.
Participating in the divine may also mean that in the end, we escape the corruption in the world as we are going to get new bodies that are incorruptible, that will last for eternity. We get immortality, which is a trait of God.
Holiness and incorruptibility are traits we can share with God, without becoming divine. We don’t become divine, we don’t take part in a process that will change our essence. It’s not like we are on a journey in a dark tunnel and over time as we approach the divine light we merge with it. That’s not the Christian hope. Our hope is that through Christ, we are made new, set apart, holy, and immortal, but God is still God, and we are still His redeemed people.
Wrap up
So take heart. We have been given great and precious promises from God, we have been given a faith to follow Jesus, we have been given power through the Holy Spirit. We can now, through knowing the real risen Jesus, have everything we need for a godly life.William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940,s said:
It’s no use giving me a play like King Lear or Hamlet, and telling me to write plays like that. Shakespeare could do it; I can’t. And it’s no use giving me the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it; I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me; then I could write plays like that. And if the spirit of Jesus could come and live in me, then I could live a life like that.We have the spirit of Jesus in us. We have God's revelation and access to the true knowledge of Jesus in His word. We have the promises of God.
The batteries are included. We have been given everything we need from God. We have not been left alone. Let us rejoice in this good news of our precious faith that we have received.
Let me pray:
Heavenly Father, We thank you that through Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour, we have received a precious faith. Help us to increase in knowledge of our glorious and good God.
We thank you that you have given us everything we need to live a godly life. We thank you for your precious promises, help us to know and remember them, so that we can live holy lives, separate from the world's evil desires.
Amen.
Amen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment