Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Go ahead and find second Peter.
[00:00:05] We are beginning two Peter tonight, having completed one Peter last week.
[00:00:15] So as I was thinking about two Peter, especially the first 11 verses, I was thinking about how people really love truth.
[00:00:26] People love true things.
[00:00:28] Maybe you don't always say it that way, but we do. At least we think we do.
[00:00:34] Often, however, we're deceived into believing our own version of truths which are not actually true entirely or true at all. Sometimes there are a lot of falsehoods out there. And as I was thinking about falsehoods, I could not help but think of the most egregious to me, which is the conversation that refers to the thunder star player as somewhat of a free throw merchant.
[00:01:02] This slanderous, slanderous nickname given to him.
[00:01:07] And the worst false teacher of this false truth is of course Doris Burke, the commentator who called him this on air. Very unprofessional. But more importantly to my point, it's not truthful. Not truthful.
[00:01:23] Now, we can't really avoid falsehoods like these, or at least differences of opinion, but maybe it's a little more than an opinion, but we can avoid false teachers of the Bible. And this is a central theme of second Peter and also Jude, as we'll come to see that as well.
[00:01:39] Now, as for second Peter, it's maybe the single most debated book in the New Testament, maybe even in the entire Bible.
[00:01:50] That might be saying it a little too strongly though, but there's a lot of debates around it. And I want to be clear that it is clearly the word of God inspired by him and written by the Apostle Peter. That's what it claims and that's how it's been accepted through the ages.
[00:02:08] So nothing regarding, you know, who wrote this, these are sorts of questions people write on. It's all speculation.
[00:02:15] What we see when we take the word of God at face value, we can see plainly what it says.
[00:02:21] You see, a lot of times scholars and others like to take external things like ancient cultures, sciences and such, and interpret the Bible through those. But a faithful way to interpret the Bible is the opposite. We must read and search for the plain meaning of each biblical text and then interpret external things through that. Now that is the appropriate way. And that's how we're going to take two Peter as God's holy, inerrant, without error word. So assuming that we find a fascinating and yet somewhat odd letter in 2 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude follow closely the same subject matter, even borrowing words and phrases, at least apparently.
[00:03:05] And two Peter as a whole can be summarized in in this way. So here's my second Peter summary. It's longer than the first Peter one. False teachers are proven wrong by the Scriptures now and will be destroyed when the Lord comes.
[00:03:21] False teachers are proven wrong by the Scriptures now and will be destroyed when the Lord comes.
[00:03:30] So we see this theme of false teachers.
[00:03:33] They will be proven wrong now. They will be judged when the Lord comes. Now. The passage of Scripture we begin with is sort of like an introduction or a prologue to the book, to the letter. Peter speaks to those who have obtained faith and through that righteousness, through the righteousness of Christ. He then goes into some detail regarding how you can confirm this salvation. So because of that, the main idea of 2 Peter 1:1 through 11 is this confirm your calling and election.
[00:04:09] So confirm your calling and election by supplementing saving faith with virtue. I think we'll see a lot of that language used throughout. Confirm your calling and election by supplementing saving faith with virtue. Hopefully even these terms will be defined as we talk about the passage as well. But let's read it first. So second Peter 1:1 11 says Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
[00:04:49] His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious Granted. Sorry, I've lost my place.
[00:05:04] Granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
[00:05:17] For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self control and self control with steadfastness and steadfastness, with godliness and godliness, with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
[00:05:34] For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:05:43] For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
[00:05:52] Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall.
[00:06:00] For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
[00:06:10] So again, confirm your calling and election by supplementing saving faith with virtue.
[00:06:15] Now, one question that just always seems to come up in my experience, and maybe you've even struggled with this before or currently.
[00:06:24] Is this question simple? How do I know I'm saved?
[00:06:29] Or maybe a related one. What is the relation between faith and good works or virtuous works, the qualities he listed here?
[00:06:40] Now, I suspect a lot of you are at least somewhat able to answer those questions correctly. But there are kind of two levels upon which we need to answer them.
[00:06:48] One level is the brain. You can understand the answer.
[00:06:53] But another level is the level of the heart.
[00:06:56] It feels maybe like your heart and actions in life can't grasp onto the answers that you know in your head to be true.
[00:07:06] Well, I think this passage offers some help for those questions.
[00:07:10] So you should consider tonight, have you obtained this genuine faith? And if so, how can you confirm that faith?
[00:07:18] You'll see that we can help to confirm our faith through supplementing it, as Peter says. So let's go through our two points. The first one is obtaining faith.
[00:07:29] Obtaining faith.
[00:07:35] So to start the letter, Peter begins by introducing himself as Simeon.
[00:07:42] You guys know what his name is?
[00:07:44] Typically you read Simon Peter, right? Well, did Peter misspell his name here?
[00:07:49] That's kind of maybe what I thought at first. Not really. But he didn't misspell his name. It's a fun fact. Just a Greek ized version of his name. And it's also used in Acts to refer to him. So it's just kind of a different language adding in another sound. But he did write this. He does know how to spell his name, and he wrote this book. So Peter, as he introduces himself as the servant of Jesus and also an apostle. He wrote this, an apostle to remind you guys, is someone who witnessed the resurrected Lord Jesus and was commissioned by him for ministry. So that's what the apostles were.
[00:08:26] Now, the audience, the recipients of this letter, are a little bit less clear than in first Peter.
[00:08:34] Now, perhaps it is the same or at least a similar audience. I think that's a fair assumption. But I think what we should understand by the lack of information about them is that he wrote this just generically to those who have obtained saving faith. That is the audience.
[00:08:53] And here in verse one, he demonstrates that faith comes by not our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of Jesus. That's how he begins. So immediately in the greeting right up front, he wants to lay the foundation, a very foundational truth for the rest of the book, the righteousness that is needed for salvation does not bubble up within you.
[00:09:17] It was earned by and belongs to Jesus Christ. That's the righteousness we need. What he earned, what belongs to him, is what you need to be saved.
[00:09:28] That righteousness. You cannot earn it because of your sin, because even your best works are tainted by sin, and because no one can do works as purely as the Holy One, Jesus himself.
[00:09:40] And so Peter can then say that those who have faith in Christ and therefore share in his righteousness are of equal standing.
[00:09:50] Equal standing.
[00:09:52] I want us to think about that for a second. This means that through faith, through faith, these somewhat random unnamed Christians that we don't know have the exact same status before God as Peter. As Peter.
[00:10:11] When you consider that Peter was consistently set apart as a leader with James and John, and often the main leader himself of Jesus disciples and of the early church, it becomes interesting that you know some of these non Jewish believers from an unnamed place with no names have the same standing before God as He does.
[00:10:34] That is remarkable.
[00:10:36] So something we can imply and learn from this of what Peter writes is that no matter what your background, your looks, your social status, you are welcomed as an equal in the church through Christ, through faith in Him.
[00:10:56] That is amazing.
[00:10:58] I don't know what your outside reputations are, at least for the most part.
[00:11:03] Maybe in school you love to cheat.
[00:11:07] Maybe you love to do other maybe unethical things. Maybe you are sexually immoral in some way or another.
[00:11:14] Maybe you're just kind of a big phony at church and you live a completely different life when you're not here, but in Christ. If you are in Christ through faith, you too can be considered as holy as any other member of the church.
[00:11:30] If you love him and cherish him and come to him, you are welcomed in equal standing with all of other believers from all time. That, that is amazing. There is nowhere else, I promise you, in all the world where such forgiveness can be that radical and where righteousness can be equally credited to everyone.
[00:11:52] Except for in the church, that is the only place we can find that so a salvation so amazing and transforming, it is expected that your life be transformed as well.
[00:12:07] Verse 3. This verse tells us that God has given us everything we need to live in a transformed way. It says his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain or are relevant and useful to life and godliness.
[00:12:25] There is nothing you lack because God is gracious to give you everything you need to live in an honorable way.
[00:12:32] And because of what he has done on the cross, you are granted everything you need, you are.
[00:12:40] But what I find awesome is how God provides all we need. So we see here that he provides it through knowing Him.
[00:12:48] Knowing God is the key to receiving this. This means that we never have to think about studying the Bible, trying to learn more theology and such, as merely learning something for academics to do. It's not like math, geography, anatomy, chemistry, art, whatever subject you can imagine. It's not like any of those. Theology is the one learning discipline that is only properly done when you change, because knowing God changes you. It transforms you from the inside out when you truly come to know Him.
[00:13:28] The knowledge of God through Christ is the starting point of the transformed life.
[00:13:36] That is where we begin. And he has, verse three called us to his own glory and excellence.
[00:13:45] When he says us again, he's referring to these believers, those who have obtained faith.
[00:13:52] Knowledge of God. Which transforms is a result of being called by God. It's a result of being called by Him. God's calling brings those who are sinners by nature into his glory and his excellence, which we can understand as a moral sort of excellence, a moral purity.
[00:14:15] And by his calling, he has granted believers his precious promises.
[00:14:21] The moral excellence is his just as much as the promises are. Yet he guarantees them to you through faith.
[00:14:30] They belong to him, but he's happy to give them to you.
[00:14:35] And verse four says, and these precious promises result in this. You may become partakers of the divine nature.
[00:14:44] You can partake and share in God's nature. Think about what it means to become a partaker of divine nature.
[00:14:53] I think probably because I was thinking of the Oklahoma City Thunder earlier, I also thought of them here. I think this would be something like if the Thunder organization, maybe Sam Presti himself, called me so that I could join the team on their championship parade last summer to hoist the trophy on the bus, to give a speech to the fans, the last speech of all the players, and I would get to share in the glory and bliss of something that I'm utterly undeserving of.
[00:15:30] Not at all, you know, other than watch these games, I did nothing, which is technically not really doing anything anyway. I merely enjoyed it.
[00:15:40] Now in a far, far, far greater way. A sinful person, dirty and defiled, actually gets to share in glory with God the Creator Himself.
[00:15:51] I deserve a championship ring way more than any of us deserve that privilege. But it is yours through faith.
[00:16:00] It is in Christ. You can escape the defiled world and receive a privilege that you don't deserve. And thus you can obtain faith.
[00:16:11] Point number two, then, is Confirming faith.
[00:16:15] Confirming faith.
[00:16:19] So because God did not just print out get out of hell free tickets, but instead we read, he also granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Then we should make every effort. This is verse 5. Make every effort to supplement our faith.
[00:16:40] This, I think, reveals to us the answer to those important questions I raised at the beginning.
[00:16:46] How do I know if I'm saved?
[00:16:48] What's the relation between my faith and the good things that I do? My good works? Well, supplements is, of course, something that is added to another thing to improve or complete it. That's a supplement.
[00:17:02] You know, people take supplements. It's something added that can improve health, for example.
[00:17:09] So in a similar way, we ought to supplement faith with these good things to do, which Peter then lists out.
[00:17:17] But I want you all to consider good works as a supplement.
[00:17:22] They don't make you a Christian. In the same way, a supplement doesn't make a person a person.
[00:17:28] They prove you to be a healthy one.
[00:17:31] In fact, they even help to make you a healthy one. They serve to increase your faith, to prove your faith, to complete your faith, really.
[00:17:42] So this chain of virtues in verses five through seven offer a lot of application for us. Now, there's no hidden meaning behind the order of these virtues. You know, we do see, I think, interestingly, the three kind of cardinal virtues, Faith, hope, and love. We see faith first, love last, and then hope is possibly in the middle when we see steadfastness, which is the fruit of hope. If you remember from first Thessalonians, I'm sure you all do.
[00:18:12] 1, 3. He writes, Your work of faith and labor, of love and steadfastness of hope. This virtue is heavily tied to the idea of hope.
[00:18:21] But. But beyond that, what I want to first emphasize is that you must start with faith.
[00:18:28] That's where he starts.
[00:18:30] That's where we must start. Without faith, none of these matter in the eyes of God. They might matter at a societal level, because they're not. Generally, they just are good things to do and to be characterized. But they are not helpful in God's eyes without faith.
[00:18:49] So if you see that your life does not line up with these virtues, well, then you can use it as an opportunity to grow. Or you might realize that you need to trust in Christ the Savior, because they are the precious promises to those in Christ. They're not a separate thing. They are included in those precious promises to those in Christ, and they are yours in Him.
[00:19:17] So put your faith in the One who is perfect in all of these ways. Who embodied them perfectly.
[00:19:23] You cannot simply reach into the virtue cookie jar and grab out self control, for example. You need to go through Christ who is perfectly self controlled. And in so doing you'll be given self control through the Spirit.
[00:19:39] When we look away from our own actions and look to Christ and it all comes into line together, they all come into harmony when we're focused on him and not on each individual thing.
[00:19:51] That being said, we don't want to ignore them, so we want to look at them. As long as we remember we should look at them through Christ.
[00:19:58] So I'm just going to mention a few. We're not going to go through all of them.
[00:20:02] You can discuss more of them in your groups if you would like. I just picked a few I thought would be helpful. First, we see knowledge.
[00:20:11] Knowledge is a great reminder for those of us that are most influenced not by knowing things, but by feeling and experiencing them.
[00:20:21] And I'm not trying to say that's a bad thing.
[00:20:24] I don't mean that it's good to only care about knowing and knowing stuff and that feelings never matter. That's not true. The reality is we need both of these experiences. We need a full mind and a full heart.
[00:20:41] Shilin he says in a song of his, he says if theology, we can understand that as knowing. If theology or knowing doesn't lead to doxology or worship, I'll just use knowing and worship. So if knowing doesn't lead to worship, then we've actually missed the point of knowing God.
[00:21:00] So if you have this knowing without worship, you just have dead cold orthodoxy.
[00:21:06] But if we worship without knowing anything, we actually have idolatry because it's just a random expression of praise.
[00:21:15] But it's not actually informed by the truth of who God is.
[00:21:20] Our praise needs to be informed by who God is. We need to know God.
[00:21:25] So are you tempted to skip learning very many things because it's maybe boring or difficult or intimidating?
[00:21:34] Well, you actually to some extent need that stuff. You don't necessarily have to have every big word that I might mention at some point memorized. But you need to know these things because they can help you know the God that you worship. And you can know him fuller.
[00:21:49] And the God we worship, he knows you perfectly, completely, and in his knowing of you, you can truly come to know who Him.
[00:22:00] And knowing him is itself a blessed gift.
[00:22:06] It is a precious promise in and of itself to get to know God truly by him first knowing you.
[00:22:14] So that's knowledge. Second one I want to discuss is self control.
[00:22:19] So Self control is a gift that the Spirit works within believers that helps you to have control over your own body.
[00:22:26] Your lack of self control is a result of your own sin.
[00:22:30] But in a way, self control can only come if you give God control.
[00:22:38] So I know that's confusing. Paradoxically, we lack true control when we take it for ourselves and are driven by our passions, our flesh, our sin.
[00:22:50] But when we give it to God, then He truly grants you the ability to be self controlled.
[00:22:58] Therefore, I don't think you can't attain it on your own. You again must go through Christ, who will then richly supply it to you. And then finally, third, the last one in the list is love.
[00:23:11] Love is the capstone of it all.
[00:23:14] If you do not have love, you have nothing at all. Similar to faith. If you don't have love, you have none of it.
[00:23:23] I had some friends in high school.
[00:23:25] Some were friends that maybe mostly just goofed off with me, caused trouble with me, things of the sort.
[00:23:33] And that was kind of the extent of our friendship. I can't say it was very deep or personal, but we had a lot of fun together.
[00:23:41] Other friends that I had showed genuine interest in my life would encourage me, by their example, to do the right thing.
[00:23:49] Now, when I left high school, I graduated, moved on, went to college. Can you guess which of those friends I kept in touch with?
[00:23:58] It's not a hard question.
[00:24:00] Yeah, you want to guess?
[00:24:03] Do what? Katie. I did not know her yet, not until after college, but I would hopefully have kept in touch with her.
[00:24:11] That's my wife. Some of you may not know, but I kept up with the friends who were encouraging that actually had at least somewhat of a significant relationship with me.
[00:24:25] It was the supportive and loving friends that lasted.
[00:24:29] Love reflects the love of God.
[00:24:32] You must have faith in Christ because God is love. And we can only love because he loved first.
[00:24:39] So as you have been loved, so you must love others.
[00:24:44] We come then to verse 10, verse 10. And Peter states that believers in Christ ought to produce these virtues.
[00:24:55] Now, I think sometimes interpreters of this passage have made the mistake of thinking the way to do this is to kind of work through the list they build. So you must master one and then move on to the other. And when you have that, you focus on the next, and so on and so forth.
[00:25:14] But actually they're all interrelated.
[00:25:17] It's not exactly like that. So you should pursue them all gradually and over time.
[00:25:24] And more than that, they are all parts of God's holiness that he gives in whole to believers.
[00:25:32] They can't be chopped up like the fruit of the Spirit. We can't be completely loving and not be patient at all. These things are interrelated. We need to pursue them and they're given through Christ and whole. But if we ignore them, if we get hyper fixated on one thing and ignore the others.
[00:25:51] Peter calls us something.
[00:25:53] He says, you are near sighted.
[00:25:56] If you lose sight of some, some or all of these, you are nearsighted.
[00:26:01] Nearsightedness, as it sounds, is when you can see things clearly, close near to you, but in the distance they're blurry.
[00:26:11] This is what happened to my vision. I got really good at reading books that were a couple feet from my face. Really bad at reading road signs.
[00:26:19] That's not a good thing.
[00:26:22] Are you nearsighted?
[00:26:24] Not in your eyes, but in your heart? Are you nearsighted?
[00:26:28] Nearsightedness spiritually probably occurs most often when you have trusted in Jesus.
[00:26:35] Those of you who have trusted in Jesus have you start to get caught up in your daily life, which is something so obvious you might not realize it.
[00:26:45] So do you the questions ask yourself, do you find yourself more worried about school and grades than growing in Christ? Does that get the priority of time in your life?
[00:26:58] Do you find yourself planning your schedule around social time with friends rather than spiritual disciplines?
[00:27:06] Do you come to church because this is what you do?
[00:27:09] Or you get to see your friends rather than to hear the word of God or to worship and let it transform you the word.
[00:27:16] Well, sometimes your nearsightedness is so extreme, Peter says that you essentially become blind.
[00:27:23] You cannot see anything.
[00:27:26] You forget that even you are cleansed from your sins.
[00:27:29] How can a Christian forget they've been cleansed?
[00:27:33] When you're blind, your walk with the Lord becomes dark.
[00:27:38] I one time was able to do sort of like an amateur type cave dive in Mexico, which was really cool.
[00:27:45] We were guided through some caves and we were in this one big area with just a real. I mean, I think I could stand. Everyone had life vests. Some people were probably floating and there's maybe just a few feet above the water and the top of the cave. So it's pretty tight in there. And our guide had us turn off our headlamps all at the same time and also to try to be quiet, which my friends started getting giggling.
[00:28:14] But turn it off and it's pitch black. I've never experienced darkness like that in that moment.
[00:28:23] I mean, it's true. You really cannot see your hand right in front of your face.
[00:28:27] You can't see a thing.
[00:28:28] That is the blindness we're talking about. When we become spiritually nearsighted like this, we're in danger of becoming totally blind.
[00:28:38] If you can go a day, days, or longer without thinking about the fact that you've been cleansed and that that should transform your life. If you can go days without thinking of that, then it seems like the devil and this world are blinding you to what matters. They're blurring your vision.
[00:28:57] And that should cause you to consider, to turn on the lights, look into the distance. Because the Christian life looks to the future, that Christ is coming again. He did not just redeem and leave, but he will return.
[00:29:11] Not to worry about this return, that's not the point. But to realize that your whole life in Christ is one of growth and holiness until Jesus comes back to perfect you completely.
[00:29:24] Therefore, verse 10 tells us to be diligent to confirm your calling and election.
[00:29:31] Calling is often used regarding someone today, modernly someone called into ministry. But in the Bible and especially here, it's used differently. It's referring to God calling a sinner to repent and believe. That is God's calling. Here your calling is to turn from your sins and trust in Christ. And that calling is related to your election.
[00:29:55] If God has called you, then you have been chosen by him and you can believe in Christ and be saved.
[00:30:04] So the reason we want to confirm this is so that you don't maybe arrogantly pridefully assume that you were just once saved, always saved, but you actually live a transformed life, which the Bible really does explain.
[00:30:23] So again, have you ever wondered if you're truly saved?
[00:30:27] What do you think about that?
[00:30:29] You turn from your sins, trust in Jesus, and then you can truly verse 10, practice these qualities because they're yours in Christ.
[00:30:40] If you do this, then you will have fall proof faith.
[00:30:45] You will never fall from grace if you can confirm your calling and election in God. Genuine faith is fall proof. That's what he's saying. You will never fall, he says at the end of verse 10.
[00:31:00] And if you're able to do this, then there will be verse 11 richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom.
[00:31:08] So just in case you maybe missed the point somewhere along the way, that Christ's righteousness is the foundation, that faith in him is the entrance into the transformed life that he gives you freely through faith.
[00:31:22] We're reminded here in verse 11.
[00:31:26] And Peter is telling us that we are not responsible for getting ourselves to heaven. He clarifies that it is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that provides entrance into his kingdom. He provides the entrance. It is a gift given to those who believe.
[00:31:45] So if you're in Christ, confirm your calling and election by supplementing saving faith with virtue.
[00:31:52] Live like your life really does belong to Jesus, because life lived for Him, I promise, is truly way better than any other kind of life.
[00:32:05] Make sure you're not nearsighted or blind to the fact that you have been cleansed from sin through faith so that you can live life without falling from grace.
[00:32:16] Trust that Jesus does provide entrance into heaven through faith. He provides it, opens it, comes and gets you and brings you there.
[00:32:25] So also, if you find yourself far from him, if you realize now that you've not actually obtained faith, if you see that you are blind or nearsighted or that you have fallen, then turn from your sins and trust in the Lord and he will provide entrance into his kingdom for you. That is the truth.
[00:32:46] Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word and that through Christ we can obtain and confirm faith.
[00:32:54] Lord, we pray that you would convict us that we may live transformed lives through faith in you. Lord, help to see how we can grow in this way. Open our eyes if we've become blinded.
[00:33:07] Lord, we pray that you will call those to repentance that have not come to you. Thank you for your word and we pray this all in Jesus name, Amen.
