Preached Sunday, November 24, 2013 from 2 Peter 1:1-4
Theme: Through Christ, God has given us—as a present possession—all things that pertain to life and godliness.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
This morning, we begin a brand new study of the little New Testament book of 2 Peter. And Thanksgiving Sunday is a good day for us to begin our study of it; because—in just the first few verses—it gives us great reason for thanks to God!
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But let’s begin with a little overview of the letter itself.
The Holy Spirit had led the apostle Peter to write two letters that came to be included in the New Testament. The first one, of course, we finished studying just a few weeks ago. And as Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:1-2;
Beloved, I now write to you this second epistle (in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder), that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior . . . (2 Peter 3:1-2).
And in those words, I believe you have the key to this letter. It was written to God’s people to serve as a ‘reminder’ of things that they had already been taught. That’s one of our greatest needs in the Christian life—that is, to be reminded of what we have already been taught, and to be stirred up and encouraged to put what we have been taught into practice. Peter says essentially the same thing in 2 Peter 1:12-15;
For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease (1:12-15).
Peter wouldn’t be able to be a living reminder to them on earth of those things much longer. He would soon have to “put off” his “tent”—that is, the temporary dwelling that is his physical body—and would go to be with his Lord. And so, he wanted to leave these dear Christians with a written reminder of the things they had been taught.
And it was very important that they be reminded of the things that they had been taught; because, as a community of Christians, they were under certain threats. In 1 Peter, we read about the threats that the believers were under because of persecution from the unbelieving culture that surrounded them. In that respect, the pressures they felt were external. But in 2 Peter, the threats are presented as internal—that is, from within the assembly of believers. False teachers were creeping in and bringing deceitful teaching into the Christian communities; and some pretenders to the faith were having a destructive influence on genuine believers.
1 Peter, then, is about standing strong and faithful to the Lord while experiencing pressures from the outside; and 2 Peter is about staying true to the faith of the Lord Jesus while experiencing pressures from the inside. In Chapter 1 of 2 Peter, he deals with the nature of the Christian life. In Chapter 2, he deals with the nature of the false teachers who seek to disrupt and distort that Christian life. And in Chapter 3, he deals with the final outcome of all things—and how we should live that Christian life faithfully in the light of that outcome.
We very much need both exhortations from both of these wonderful letters. And today, we begin to study the second of them.
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Now; think with me about how false teachers within the church tend to operate. So often, they come with the claim of offering something to Christians that they don’t have—and that they can only have through whatever it may be that those false teachers alone can give them. False teachers often target those who are young and growing in the faith; and convince them that even though they have received Jesus Christ by faith, a relationship with Jesus alone is not enough. They need “something more”.
The apostle Paul dealt with a similar issue in the New Testament letter to the Colossians. In the case of the Colossian believers, false teachers were trying to convince the Christians that they needed something more than what they could have in Christ alone. It was proposed as something that the believers could only obtain through those false teachers—which would have given those false teachers power over those Christians. And so, Paul wrote to his fellow believers and said;
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Colossians 2:6-10).
And can you see what Paul does to solve this problem? To combat the false teachers who were plaguing his fellow Colossian believers, Paul began his letter to them by establishing that, if they have Jesus Christ, they already have—in the truest possible sense—everything that they will ever need. There was nothing that anyone could have added to what they already had in Christ alone. A relationship with Jesus Christ is all-sufficient; because all the fullness of the Godhead is found in Him. If they have Him, they already have everything! It’s as Paul also said at the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3).
And in 2 Peter—in the letter we are beginning to study this morning—the apostle Peter deals with the problem of false teachers in exactly the same way. He fortifies his brothers and sisters against false teaching by establishing to them that they already have everything they need in Christ; and if there was really anything at all that they actually needed, it was to remember what they had already been taught and to build faithfully on what they already possessed.
In the introduction to his letter, Peter tells his brothers and sisters;
Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 2:1-4).
Look carefully at those words in verse three. What a wonderful truth they present to us! They affirm to us that our God, by His divine power, “has given to us”—as a completed act—”all things that pertain to life and godliness” through our relationship by faith with Jesus Christ. All things that we could ever need—all things that pertain to life and godliness—are now already ours through Christ!
I have a confession to make about this passage. When I was meditating on it the other night, I caught myself limiting it in my thinking. Previously, I had thought that it was only speaking of “spiritual life”. But that’s not what it says. It doesn’t speak of any limitation at all. It says that we now have all things that pertain, not only to godliness, and not only to spiritual life, but also to all of life itself!—living, breathing, walking, working life! Didn’t Jesus tell us not to worry at all about even such mundane things as food or clothing? “For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:32-33). And not only do we have all we need for this physical life, but also all that we need for living in a way that is fully pleasing to God. For as long as God calls you and me to live upon this earth in His service, dear brothers and sisters, we will have everything that we will need to do everything He calls us to do and to be everything He calls us to be! We can rest assured that “all things” means “all things”!
Now; we’re about to celebrate Thanksgiving. And in this passage, we have something very wonderful to thank God for! Think of it! In Jesus Christ, you now have ‘all things that pertain to life and godliness’! You can stop searching around for ‘something more’. And you shouldn’t ever let anyone deceive you and try to make you into their victims by telling you that you need something that only they can give you. You already have it all—right now—in the Person of Jesus Christ. And your great need is to simply learn to remember your sufficiency in Christ, claim the promises of God, and faithfully build upon that which you already have in Him!
It’s impossible to think of a greater blessing to give thanks to God for than what we find in these opening verses of 2 Peter!
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Now; with that great blessing in mind, let’s go through this brief ‘introduction’ to his letter and see how Peter reinforces it to our thinking.
First, we might wonder how we can know that such a great blessing is truly ours. Can it really be true that we have—right now—all that we need for life and godliness? Can we really dare to believe it?
Yes we can; because, in verse 1, we see . . .
1. THE AUTHORITATIVE MESSENGER OF THIS BLESSING (v. 1a).
He begins by introducing himself as, “Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ . . .”
I love it that he introduced himself in that way. First, he used the name that he was known by in his early days—before he met the Lord Jesus. Sometimes, when he behaved in the way that he used to behave back in those old days, the Lord Jesus would call him, “Simon, Simon.” But from the very day that he first met the Lord Jesus, Jesus began to call him by a new name Peter—a name which means “Rock”. And I believe that, in order to show the all-sufficient, life-transforming power of the Lord Jesus in his life, Peter began by identifying himself as both Simon (the old man who was fallible) and Peter (the new man whom Jesus made into the Rock). He knew—from personal experience—the life-transforming sufficiency of Jesus Christ!
And notice how else it was that he introduced himself. He was “a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ.” Now; in relation to the Lord Jesus, he was nothing more than a “bondservant” or “slave”. There was nothing inherent in him that would allow him to boast before the Lord. He was made of flesh and blood; and was fallible like the rest of us. If he had any inherent claim to make at all, it was that he was honored to be called Jesus’ “bondservant”. But he was more than that to us. In relation to you and me, he was “an apostle”—that is, a commissioned and sent ambassador—of the Lord Jesus. The service he performed as the slave of Christ was that he was to bear—along with all the other apostles—an authoritative message from Jesus Christ to you and me.
And this means that the message of Jesus’ full sufficiency for us—the message that, right now, we have all things that pertain to life and godliness—is a message that comes to us with the highest authority possible, and that we can fully trust. It comes from someone who is a humble slave of Jesus; who ate with Jesus, and walked with Jesus, and ministered alongside Jesus, and who heard the teaching of the Lord Jesus with his own ears, and who saw the glory of Jesus with his own eyes. But it also comes with someone clothed with authority by Jesus Christ to proclaim Jesus’ teaching to you and me.
We can take it as fact, then, that we truly do have “all things pertaining to life and godliness”; because we’re told that this is so from Simon Peter—the bondservant and apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ!
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And then, consider . . .
2. THE HUMBLE FELLOWSHIP OF THIS BLESSING (v. 1b).
We of course think of Peter as the great apostle. But Peter doesn’t write this letter as some ‘super saint’ who holds a position of greatness over all the rest of us. He doesn’t write as if his faith is superior, and as if ours was—somehow—inferior. Instead, he writes, “To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ . . .”
Notice that he calls their faith in Jesus Christ a “like precious faith” with that of himself and the other apostles—a faith that is, as the NIV translates it, “as precious as ours”. Whenever anyone places their trust in Jesus Christ and believes on him, that faith is of immeasurable value. As he said in the beginning of his first letter, the faith of any true believer is “more precious than gold”. This faith is ‘precious’ or ‘highly valued’ because, through it, we have “all things that pertain to life and godliness”.
But you and I didn’t work our way up to so precious a faith. It’s a gift of God’s grace—as freely available to you and to me as it was to Peter and to Paul. This is because it wasn’t a result of our own righteousness; but—just as Peter said—”by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ”.
The sufficiency that is our present possession—that is, that we now have “all things pertaining to life and godliness”—is not something that is only available to the few ‘super saints’ who can work hard enough to earn it and become worthy of it. It is a gift of God’s grace—equally available to all who are of the humble fellowship of faith in Jesus Christ.
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Now; I don’t know whether or not you noticed the remarkable thing that Peter just said about Jesus in verse 1. He called Jesus both “our God and Savior Jesus Christ”. The reason we have the blessing of all sufficiency in Jesus Christ is because of who He is. He is God in human flesh; and all the fullness of the Godhead is in Him bodily.
And that leads us, next, to consider . . .
3. THE NECESSARY RELATIONSHIP FOR THIS BLESSING (vv. 2-3a).
Peter writes, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness . . .” To have “the knowledge” of God and of Jesus our Lord means to be in a deep, personal relationship of love with them by faith. We can only come to the Father through Jesus His Son; it’s only through a relationship with Jesus Christ that we can have “all things that pertain to life and godliness”. To the degree that we know Jesus, to that degree we have “grace and peace” multiplied to us.
Do you notice that it is by Jesus’ “divine power” that all things are given to us that we will ever need? This is because as God in human flesh, He is the Creator. If you were to go back to Romans 1:20, you’d read that “since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead . . .” The creation itself reveals His divine power; and it is by that same divine power—the power of the Creator God Himself; Jesus Christ, the second Person of the eternal Godhead—that we are ensured that we now have “all things that pertain to life and godliness”.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; it is my firm belief that if we are in a relationship of love with the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists, then there is now no sinful habit you and I cannot conquer, no challenge that you and I cannot overcome, and no task from God that you and I cannot fulfill—if we will but trust in the Person of Jesus Christ and in His unlimited resources and power. All of that is now ours in the full, because of our relationship with Him by faith.
Truly, then, His divine power has given us “all things that pertain to life and godliness”!
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Notice also . . .
4. THE DIVINE SUPPORT FOR THIS BLESSING (vv. 3b-4a).
Peter goes on to say that this great blessing is ours “through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises . . .”
First, we have the support of having been “called” by God. The blessing of “all things pertaining to life and godliness” is not something that we have taken upon ourselves. Rather, God the Father, through the Lord Jesus Christ, has sovereignly and graciously “called” us to it “by glory and virtue”. He is glorious and He is good; and He calls us, through Christ, to partake of and participate in His own glory and goodness. And so, we can be confident that He who called us is able to provide for us everything that we need—and indeed, already has provided for us everything we need—to live a life and to walk a walk of godliness that pleases Him.
And to make it even more sure to us, we’re also told that it is by God’s own glory and virtue that “exceedingly great and precious promises” have been given to us. Where do you find those promises? I believe 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us when it says;
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
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And finally, notice . . .
5. THE PRACTICAL RESULT OF THIS BLESSING (4b-5).
Peter writes, “that through these”—that is, through the great and precious promises God gives us in His word—”you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
The more you deepen your dependency upon Jesus Christ, and the more you rely on the unlimited resources of His grace toward you, and the more you cling to and rely on the promises He has made in His word, the more you will be made a ‘partaker of the divine nature.’ In other words, you will become more and more like Jesus Himself! As Paul once put it;
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).
And along with growing closer and closer to the image of Jesus, we also move further and further from the sins of this world. Peter said that we become partakers of the divine nature, “having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
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I believe that the blessing that Peter describes for us in the opening of his letter—that is, that we now have “all things that pertain to life and godliness” through Christ—is meant to be put into action. We are to remember that this is a reality, and are to build upon it for daily growth in Christ. It’s a precious doctrinal truth that is to be put to use in our lives.
Peter goes on to say;
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance willbe supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:5-11).
So, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; let’s make sure that, this Thanksgiving, we thank God for the greatest blessing of all. Through Jesus Christ, we now have all that we need for life and godliness! Let’s live in the confidence of that truth; and never let anyone take it away.
And more than that, let’s show our thanks to God for it by building faithfully upon what He has already given us!