
It’s not clear from Peter’s introduction (2P 1.1-2) that he’s writing to the same group of believers identified at the beginning of the earlier epistle, but as we noted in the previous post, most interpreters assume that when Peter calls this letter “this second epistle” (2P 3.1), he’s referencing 1 Peter as the “first” one.
Peter’s first statement in the body of the epistle is truly astonishing. God, he says, “has given [perfect tense] unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2P 1.3). Everything you need to live as a believer, and to grow in that spiritual life, is already in your hands; he’s given it to you.
How? “Through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.” In the New Testament, “calling” is attributed simply to “God” or to “the Lord”; it’s not said to be done by any particular person of the Godhead. So I’d suggest that the key to spiritual growth is simply knowledge of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How do we develop that? That’s for the next post.
God has not merely set us up for success with his initial gift of “all things that pertain unto life and godliness”; he is in this for the long run, and he is going to see us through to successful completion. Peter says he has “given unto us exceeding great and precious promises” (2P 1.4), by which we “might be partakers of the divine nature.” I must confess that this is beyond my comprehension. We are, of course, in the image of God and have been from the beginning (Ge 1.26-27), but this is clearly deeper than that, being limited to those whom God has called. In any case, that nature empowers us to “escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
So. We’re now in a position, by God’s grace, to win the battle against our ongoing sinful nature. We don’t have to sin.
Peter now lists character qualities that we are responsible to steward (2P 1.5-7). There is much here, more than a blog post can even begin to plumb. For this passage I strongly suggest my colleague Jim Berg’s Essential Virtues, a careful and thorough discussion.
To summarize, what Peter lists here is not so much a ladder to climb, one character quality at a time, but a panoply of virtues, all to be developed coordinately, just as a soldier gains skill in multiple weapons at once.
Note the importance of our role in this process. This isn’t about doing good works to achieve salvation; it’s about those who have spiritual life, by the regenerating work of the Spirit, drawing on the grace of God to develop spiritual muscles for a lifetime of (successful) battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil. If you do that, Peter says, you will bear spiritual fruit (2P 1.8).
By contrast, he adds, there are those who do not steward these graces well (2P 1.9).
Who are these people? Are they “carnal Christians”? Are they pretenders who hang out in churches but do not have spiritual life? Are they genuine believers but in danger of losing their salvation?
The passage gives us some clues. Peter begins by saying that such a person has “forgotten that he was purged from his old sins” (2P 1.9). That seems to say that he has indeed undergone forgiveness at some point.
So is he a “carnal Christian” or someone in danger of losing his salvation? Again, Peter helps us with the answer. If you “give diligence to make your calling and election sure,” he says, you will never fall.
Now, I have Arminian friends, and I count them my brothers. I think of particular cases where their visible devotion to God and his ways exceeds my own, in spite of all I can do. But I do believe Peter rules out here the possibility of a genuine believer’s ending up in perdition.
But Peter is also not contemplating a believer who, over the long haul, bears little to no fruit. Jesus himself rules that out in his illustration of the vine and the branches (Jn 15.1-10). Living things grow, and spiritual growth is expected of those with spiritual life.
And what a life it is!—culminating in “an entrance … into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2P 1.11).
Oh, wonderful and bountiful supply!
Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash