2 Peter 1:1–4

The reader of Jude and 2 Peter 2 can hardly fail to see the similarity between these two passages, a similarity that gives critics something to argue about. By-passing such misleading criticism, to consider what each of these parts of the New Testament say, we will find in both of them, in their similarities and differences, exactly the kind of guidance that today’s Christians and church need.

Need to Be Militant and Constructive

Jude, at the beginning of his letter, informs us that when he was intending to write a letter about “the common salvation,” he faced an emergency which made it necessary to write instead urging the readers “to contend for the faith that God has once for all entrusted to the saints.” Godless men had “secretly slipped in” to “change the grace of God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” Such a hostile invasion called for Christian soldiers, not for celebrators. When fire is destroying the house the work of fireman takes precedence over that of painter and decorator.

The second chapter of 2 Peter shows us that the Apostle was dealing with the same situation with the same urgency as did Jude. Instead of, like Jude, plunging immediately into “contending for the faith;” Peter first reminds us of what and how supremely valuable that faith is and how it is conveyed to us.

When the Christian faith is under attack, as it is in our time, which of these two approaches should we take, that of Jude or Peter? The Bible’s answer is that we must not choose between these two, but adopt both of them, for they do not disagree, but complement each other. When some are telling us today that a Christian must never be negative or militant, they are simply wrong. When the Christian faith is under attack, God orders us to “earnestly contend for” it. There is a temptation, however, that in having to persistently contend against errors, we may become so preoccupied with the ongoing struggle against what the enemy is trying to do that we lose our own perspective on the extent and riches of the faith we are seeking to defend. Harry Blamires in his splendid little book The Christian Mind has highlighted that danger. “We have accepted secularism’s challenge to fight on secularist ground, with secularist weapons and secularist umpire, before a secularist audience and according to the secularist book of rules. Having done so, we look around in dismay at the discovery that our followers are few, our predicament misunderstood, our cause misrepresented.” Instead of letting our efforts be “doctored to the secularist mentality” he urges that we “shift our ground” and “set about reconstituting the Christian mind.” We must begin “by taking for granted the authoritative, God-given nature of the Christian Faith, and re–establishing within ourselves an unfaltering sense of the objectivity of Christian truth” (p. 117). This is exactly what the Apostle Peter does in his introductory chapter. Let us see how he does this, and then, in a following article see how Jude after the “call to arms” of his letter, concludes it with the same kind of positive outline of how we must seek to be “constructive Christians in a collapsing world and church.”

Guarding Valuables

We observe first that the Apostle highlights the surpassing value of the Christian Faith. He speaks of a “precious faith” (v. 1), “whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises” (v. 4). Running through the whole Bible is a recurring stress on the values it reveals and conveys. “More to be desired are they than gold . . .than much fine gold” (Ps. 19:10).

Why do people who call themselves Christians and their churches lose their faith in our time? Isn’t it often because they no longer consider these things important?

Would you let someone casually walk away with your wallet or purse? Certainly not! You’d lose credit cards and driver’s license, as well as the money in it! If we are careful to protect even our wallets, why should we let anyone quietly deprive us of our infinitely more important faith? Let no one say that such a thing is imaginary. It is exactly what has been permitted to happen in most of the churches of our time. Some time ago a book described “the trivialization of the United Presbyterian Church,” as the Bible and its doctrines quietly slipped out of sight without the general membership realizing that it had lost anything. There are many indications that our churches, which traditionally share the same Biblical and doctrinal heritage, are undergoing the same kind of loss, although most church members are totally unaware of it. Peter’s letter calling attention to the values of our faith is like the travel guide’s alert to protect our wallets and handbags from pickpockets. It recalls our Lord’s similar warning to a church, “Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown” (Rev. 3:11).

The Cure for the Disease

Just what is so “precious” in this faith and in these promises that impels us to hold on to them more than to anything else? Consider what happens to us if we do not have them. Without them, we are victims of “the corruption that is in the world through lust” or, in more common words, the “rottenness” that is in the world by “lawless desire.” Throughout our experience in this world we encounter the problem of things rotting, rusting and breaking down. The Bible diagnoses our human plight as being, in a moral and spiritual sense, victims of a rot that is destroying everything human. That pervasive decay becomes increasingly evident in our current life and society in the breakdown of personalities, families and communities as honesty, decency and goodness seem to be rotting out of them. The cause of this pervasive rot the Bible identifies as “lust” or lawless desires. The revolt of human desires against God’s order which the Bible calls “sin” is our real problem. Even if we begin to see or sense this, we do not in ourselves have any means to “escape” from it. The only way to escape from it is through the “precious” gospel “promises.” They alone can free us from our enslavement to the pervasive “corruption.”*

Through the powerful gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ we completely escape from the “corruption that is in the world through lust.” That is only one side of our deliverance, however. Positively, we are given “everything that we need for life and godliness.” This is the familiar promise of Christ our Lord that “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16), but it says even more. Through the knowledge of Christ, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” The Apostle assures us that through the knowledge of Christ we are so completely equipped that we do not lack even one thing that is needed for life and godliness! One cannot imagine anything that could be added to this complete and wonderful work of God into which we are brought as active participants.

Becoming Like God

After seeing all this, we might think that we have exhausted the possible portrayal of the gospel riches. Peter points out that they have still another dimension. Through these gospel promises “you may participate in the divine nature!” This sounds incredible! Is he even saying, as some heretics arrogantly claimed, that by this religion men become gods? Indeed not! But by the gospel we are saved and called to become “like God” in the sense of “being renewed in knowledge” in His image (Col. 3:10), and “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). Thus from following, resembling and sharing the destiny of the devil, this amazing gospel changes and calls us to follow, become like and share the eternal fellowship of God as His children!

Introduced by the gospel to such amazing riches, we are urged to engross ourselves in acquiring them. We are assured that if we do that, they will not only provide a rich and productive life here (v. 8), but al so promise an exuberant royal reception (the Greek word suggests “provided with a choir!” v. 11) “into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Treasuring and Sharing God’s Gospel

How are we to acquire these fantastic gospel riches? They are, from first to last, the gift of God, given by “His divine power” (v. 3; cf. also Eph. 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God”). God grants us this gift by leading us to know Him through the gospel. That is why that gospel is all-important, worthy of every possible effort to spread it.

Considering its amazing claims, how may we be sure that they are true? That gospel is not composed of men’s “cleverly invented stories” (literally, “myths,” v. 16), but of the revelation of God, experienced by the apostles and attested by “a more sure word of prophecy” which never originated from men, but from the Holy Spirit (vv. 19–21).

This, in substance, is the way Peter prepares us for what we must do whenever the Faith and church are being wrecked by false teachers who replace God’s gospel with their own opinions (2:1–3). We have to expose and oppose the false teachings, but we can do that most effectively if we constantly stress, as He d1d, the unimaginable riches of God’s gospel. Entrusted with such treasures as these, how can one help but seize every opportunity to speak about and work with them? How can a church with such a trust squander a Sunday morning trying out liturgical trivialities (or dances!), or listening to a rehash of last week’s news and columnists’ opinions, or even to some budding scholar’s guesses about how a Bible story (or doctrine) ought to be rewritten? One has to be, as Peter said (1:9), “blind,” to be diverted into such nonsense. If brighter days are to come for us and our churches, we will have to wake up and realize anew “how vast the benefits divine which we in Christ possess” and devote ourselves “with all diligence” to them. “When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, what a glory He sheds on our way!”

PDJ

*A little reflection at this point shows us why present efforts to modernize, “contextualize” or popularize the gospel by skipping any talk of sin and simply appealing to people’s “felt needs” or natural desires, inevitably fail. How can a doctor successfully treat a disease if he will not admit that it exists? If the cause of all of our trouble is “lust” or “evil desires,” how could anyone who is himself still ruled by and encouraging such desires help anybody else escape from them? As Peter wrote (2:19). “While they promise . . . liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption . . . .”