Participate in the divine nature [2 Peter 1a]*

2 Peter 1:1-11

Key verse ⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;

Introduction

Happy new year to you all! When we get a fresh and brand new year, we like to have something new. If we cannot expect anything new, it is depressing. But I have something new for you today. You can use it and make yourself a victor this year.  

What is that? It is the news that God has given us everything that we need for life and godliness. I want you to use everything that God has given in Jesus and make your life effective and productive.

Peter wrote this at the end of his life, possibly facing martyrdom. So we can say that this letter may reflect the sum of his life principles and admonitions.

Ch 1 is about God’s revelation and its’ effect on Christian life. The first part is about  what God did and how should Christians do with the work of God. The second part is about the effect of the work of God through his word. Since first and second part of the ch 1 deal with the work of God on the lives of Christians, what Christian life shall be or should be or how Christian must handle his life in and with these revelations. The ultimate goal of these teaching is concerning the sanctification of believers, so that they might fit to the kingdom of God. So the final chapter[ch 3] is about the day of the Lord, which deals with glory and judgment. In between these two[ch 2] sits a heavy discussion on false teachers. They hold heretic ideas within believing community.

The key issue of the book is about how to handle and to live the truth that God revealed in His Son Jesus. We, Christians, handle the truth first to discern the heretics and second to act upon the truth so that their lives may be fruitful and then be able to enter the kingdom of God, escaping the judgment of the day of the Lord.

To discern the heretic ideas, to live out the truth, we have to know the truth well. Simply to do both properly and effectively hinges on knowing the truth. “knowledge” is the key. This truth is revealed through Jesus completely and fully. The truth is about God, the Father and about His Son Jesus.
So there are three things that must be born in mind as we go through today’s passages: God’s truth, heretic ideas, and finally and most importantly how Christians can stand against false teachings and live out godly life.  Here godly life means to be holy and righteous in the eyes of God so that we may be acceptable to enter the kingdom of God.

1.    Greetings:[1-2]

1 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 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Vv1-2

This letter is from Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. It is written to the believers in Asia Minor, most of them were gentile in origin.

Since it is addressed to those who received faith, it is not about salvation but about sanctification of the believers [1 Peter is about salvation]. It is about how we can live victorious life on earth and enter the kingdom of God like a victor. [v11]

Peter prayed that Grace and peace be theirs in abundance.  The true character of Christians’ life on earth must be typified by two things: grace and peace.  This grace and peace is mentioned in almost all letters to believers.  Rom,1,2  Corinthians, Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, 1,2 The, Tit, 1,2 Peter, Rev. The writers prayed that grace and peace be with his recipients: Paul did. John did, Peter did say the same thing.

Why or what are they try to say by blessing them with these two things?

These are the two things for all Christians to have in this world as the final outcome of what we do now. If one does not have grace in his or her life, there must be something not right. If there is no peace in one’s mind, this also is a sign of something wrong in godly perspective.

Grace is the opposite word to the words that describe ungodly characters, such as selfish, abrasive, no mercy, unkind, wrong, evil,

What about peace? You have done everything that you know of to seek and to please God. Yet, still you have no peace in your mind. Isn’t this a problem?

Jesus is called the prince of peace. Also the peace that we have in Christ transcends all understanding. If you have this peace now, or if you can have this tomorrow because you will do this evening, then can we say that what you are going to do tonight is so good and effective?

Grace and peace is very important commodity that we cannot live without. The world is seeking these two in various ways. But these two things come only to those who seek God and His Son Jesus. In 13 letters, the writers wished and prayed that what they wrote may bring grace and peace to those who receive these letters. In some sense, we can even say that all these letters aimed at providing grace and peace to the believers.  This letter is the same. At the end of understanding of this writing, Peter wanted us to have grace and peace in abundance.

1.    God has given us all that we need now and then to the life in eternity with God. [3-4]

³ His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

a.    How would you feel if you have everything you need for life and godliness? It is wonderful and great! What we need for life and godliness: for life means that whatever we need now to maintain life on the earth and also eventually lead us to the life with God in eternity, the kingdom of God. What God has given us is already sufficient for us to live the life God wants from us. It is emphasized and more defined by ‘godliness’.   Has God done so in my life? Why then I am in need every day? It is about sufficiency of God’s provision in our lives, not just all the material that we need but also all necessary wisdom and knowledge and ‘power’ to meet the needs. Only thing that we need to do is to take and use it by faith.

Jesus is the final revelation for the human race and no more revelation is coming to add or to reveal something new. All have been revealed and given. We have to work with what we have; Jesus his suffering and death and resurrection.

³ His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

b.    It is divine power—not the power of men. It is not the kind of power that we can find and generate within ourselves. It is godly power—the power of God. Far stronger and better than we can imagine. Power of salvation, forgiveness, and power to overcome sin and death. In the past God provided men

c.    The divine power was given to us through our knowledge of him. Knowing Christ is a must for us to receive that power. Here knowing Christ must include all aspect of Jesus’ life. His teaching and his miracles as well as his suffering, death and resurrection.
We feel a great need for power to overcome all the problems of life. But when we know Christ and God, God’s power will be conveyed to us.

⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Through these, that is, Christ’s “glory and goodness” (v. 3), He has given believers His very great and precious promises.

Jesus’ glory and his goodness seal as a matter of fact that we will and we can also be a partaker of this glory and goodness in time. In other word, though Jesus suffered hardship on the cross and faced death in his goodness, contrary to our common knowledge and understanding, Jesus rose from the dead into glory.  This glory is a proof that we also by doing good can participate in God’s glory. This is the fact of proving God’s promise for salvation. In contrast to his suffering and death, the emblem of sin and its consequences,   JESUS demonstrated goodness on the cross and the glory of resurrection. These  are the warranties for us to be able to do good and to enter into such glory in the kingdom of God. This is in line with the promise given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Actually this is fulfillment of that promise. God is partaking this promise even to these ungodly gentiles and they are sharing this blessing along with God’s chosen Israel.

Here promises is to be ‘very great and precious’. This means the promises are particular and of great value that ordinary cannot get. The wisdom and knowledge  of Jesus and God’s blessing that came with it is more valuable than anything that we can obtain in this world. It is more precious than family, more precious than riches of this world, more precious than job we have, more precious than the wisdom and knowledge that we can get in this world. It pertains to having a life in eternity with God.  It is of eternal value.

Practically speaking, millions even billions of people in the world have not received this blessing: billions of people in India, Southeast Asia, and most of Arabs and Persians, this opportunity has been shut off. But this was given to you. It is God’s blessing. The fact that you are now sitting here and listening this blessings.  We must know the value and we must cherish this blessing of eternal significance.

I grew up post war-poverty in Korea. It had caused me so much pain and sorrow. But looking back, it was God’s amazing grace that gave me such great blessings in and through Jesus. The most precious one is the promise for eternal life with him in His glory.

So that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.[4b]

One thing that we cannot escape in this world is corruption of our being. What I mean is corruption in our morality as well as our own body. The finite nature of our being is sealed and set in stone as a fact whether one is willing to acknowledge or not. As long as we remain as we are born, we will surely follow the course of many who went ahead of us—corruption now and corruption eternally.

But God opened for us an opportunity not to succumb to this corruption. We can escape this corruption. It is through the call that Jesus made to us. It begins with faith in our Lord Jesus. It is the hope and promise that Jesus sealed through his glory and goodness and through participating in the divine nature that is everlasting. Also this is God’s ultimate goal for us. He wants us all to be with Him. This cannot happen and shall not happen until we participate in the divine nature. So when God gave the Law of Moses to Israel, God said similar thing: I am holy so you must be holy. If so, then you will be my treasured possession and I will be your God. God’s intention in choosing Israel was for them to join with God and be God’s people in His glory. So is true for us as well. God sent his son Jesus and let him suffer and die to pay for the sins of us. It was all for us to join in his divine nature—holiness and righteousness.

Then  what does it mean that we participate in the divine nature? When it says divines nature, it does not mean that we become like God in essence of his being. Here the word ‘participate’ means ‘share’. We share godly character in Christ. It is devoid of sin, evil. We become filled with godly holiness and righteousness.

God’s ultimate goal of this is for us to live to be holy, having a character that is acceptable to enter the kingdom of God.

Is it possible? Yes it is by divine power. Yes it is possible by the promise, Yes it is possible by the knowledge of God and Jesus.

2.    Make every effort to add your faith [5-6]

⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶ and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷ and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

So far we learned that we have everything we need for life and for goodness. It came to us through the knowledge of God and Jesus. The power that we received is divine and it enables us to do what God wanted for us. What God wanted for us is to participate in his divine nature , escaping corruption.

So it is quite clear about what we have to do! We know what we have—promise and divine power. We know what God wants: Divine nature and to enter the kingdom of God. So it is obvious what we have to do now! Make every effort!

Have you ever made every effort to achieve one of your goals in the past? There was a young man whose father was murdered by his boss. The boss did not know. But this young man knew every details of the evil of this man in killing his father. But he realized that unless he wins the hearts of his boss, he could not achieve his goal. So he killed his own pride and he curbed his hatred toward this man, he submitted to his boss. He did anything and everything his boss, the company owner, asked him to do. Eventually he took over the company, by taking away all the fortunes of his boss, the killer of his father. Truly he did everything for his goal! When we say everything, it includes our pride and even our comfort, or what we treasure most. What do your treasure most? Job? Family? Your career? Your enjoyment? Watching TV, all kinds of movies, internet surfing, and chatting? In order to do make every effort, we must be willing to risk everything! It includes my pride, my career, my comfort, job, family..

Also it must include doing: praying if it is needed, three times or hours not minutes, needed studying the words of God, then spending much time to study the words of God. If it takes more hours, then stay late into mid night hours or even early in the morning. If it need songs of praise, then singing… if it needs making  a visit to godly friend, then calling up that friend!

Then how can we make effort?

The effort is geared to add something in addition to faith. Here ‘add’ does not mean collecting one by one in order to increase my repertoire or to fill my repository with many good items.  It means adding one on top of another. It builds up one on top of the other. Of which faith is the foundation, on top of this foundation, build on top more and more to love. It is a process of growing and deepening in the depth of spiritual life.

Here list eight things: Faith, goodness, knowledge; self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love.

I like to observe these things and understand what this list is.

1.    It begins faith and ends in love. This means that faith must be applied to everything that comes after faith. It applied to goodness, then to knowledge, then to .. even to love.

2.    Faith is the basic and most fundamental.

3.    Since spiritual growth ends in love, love is the utmost expression of divine nature. It is very close to God, his righteousness and His holiness.
1 John 4:16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. This love is not the kind of love that world is talking about. It is life giving love, the kind of love that loves even enemies.

4.    The first three are to build within oneself. They are faith, goodness and knowledge. The highest item is knowledge. 80 years old lady who does not read and does not understand much about all things going on, she can have faith in Jesus and express her faith by choosing to do good things. But she may not have full knowledge. Faith must accompany with knowledge.

5.    Next two are self control, and perseverance. These two are the things that we need to meet the challenges from inside and outside. The inside challenges are clear: lust for many things-such as money, sex, power, and glory. None of these are evil by itself. Any measure beyond what God prescribed according to the law is evil and ungodly.  Self control is the key element to handle these inside challenges.
Perseverance is about how to handle hardship. This hard is generated mostly from outside, the world that does not care for good, but concerns only power, money and material good. We often wonder if what we do in our good will would bear any fruit for life. The world injects an idea to us that doing good is futile and meaningless. Good cannot overcome the evil.  This is very appealing. Actually our minds might be already operating in such heresy. It is deadly wrong and even evil. Good things only bear good fruit—Jesus said. The convincing proof is Jesus. He suffered a great deal in his goodness. Sin and evil seemed prevailed on the cross. But Jesus rose from the dead and won the victory over all evils. Perseverance is needed now in all we do in our good conscience and good will.
Remember that without faith and without knowledge, we cannot have self control, we cannot persevere.

6.    The next three things are godliness, brotherly kindness and love. All these are doing something good to others. It is all serving others in their weaknesses and sins. Utmost form of these is love as we discussed before. They are all godly characters that Jesus showed to us in saving us from our sins.
Again, we must pass through self control, perseverance so as to be able to be godly, to have brotherly kindness and love. Without learning and having self control and perseverance, we may try these but surely fail to do so.
Again the knowledge of God must be the source of all these as well.

Faith begins everything. It is basic and fundamental. But it must not stop here. Faith must grow and add on to.

To do so, we must make every effort to add and add and add until we become able to love other with life-giving love.

Then what would be the outcome of having these qualities?

V8

⁸ For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we possess these qualities in increasing measure… ; We can never grow to be perfect. But we have these qualities in increasing measure, then we will be effective and productive.

How do you feel about your life in Christ? Is it effective? Has your faith been productive?   When Jesus was crucified on the cross, it looked as if all the glory and power Jesus showed looked meaningless and ineffective. But what happened when Jesus resurrected and went to heaven? Three thousand came to believe in Jesus. The disciples dare to die for Jesus’ name.

Also here it says that you will be productive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. –the knowledge.

Like this the knowledge is mentioned in v 2; we become to have peace and grace in abundance through the knowledge of God and Jesus.

Also in V3 God has given to us everything we need through our knowledge of him

The same is at V6.  I mentioned that knowledge was the foundation of all growth.

We study the bible every week. We meditate on the words of God everyday and try to write testimony every week.  We pray and we offer and attend worship service. Yet what we do does not produce a tangible fruit, then there must be something wrong! 

Is our knowledge not sufficient? Or the knowledge we have, we do not live on it?

I cannot overemphasize the importance of the knowledge of God and His Son Jesus.

Did Pharaoh know God? Yes he did! But his knowledge of God was never enough. If what we need is just faith that Jesus forgave our sins on the cross, then why do we need 66 book? Knowing Jesus on the cross is only a beginning. It opens our eyes to the heavenly realm. It encompasses from the beginning of history to the end of history. It reveals heavenly truth.

So Paul says, he wanted to know the power of resurrection.

The reason for being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of God is because either we did not make all out efforts to build such characters in and among us. or we do not possess these qualities in increasing measure.

So we must add to our faith, we must add goodness, knowledge, add self control, perseverance, add godliness, brotherly kindness, and then love.

But why then some would not make such effort?

⁹ But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

They have three problems

1.    Near sighted—This man has concern on the things now. He doesn’t think about too much on what is yet to come. ‘Now’ is the first and most important priority. Also this man seldom gets out of the problem he is trapped in now.

2.    Blind—he has inability to see. He has inability to see what his true reality is. He has problem seeing God’s blessing and the power in the words of God.

3.    He forgot all the blessing from believing Jesus. He forgot Jesus’ grace and he forgot God’s call. He forgot his own identity as a child of God or a citizen of heavenly kingdom or the people of the kingdom of God.

Knowing all these, what should we do?

V10 ¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall,

We must make every effort to add! One at a time! Start from faith,.. and then goodness

Some lingers in between faith and goodness. They could not add knowledge that is essential to make further growth. Their mind is filled with uncertainty and insecurity. They have no confidence in God’s call and his election.

The knowledge is jumping board. When one gets knowledge, he can make progress and grow in confidence in God’ call and certainty of his place in God’s kingdom!

As we grow and add more and more, our confidence grow and God’s calling becomes a certainty in our mind.

Also it does not end here.

V11 ¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Rich welcome! Have you ever received a rich welcome!

It is very sad thing if we are not sure if we will be accepted to God’s kingdom or not. It is a great blessing if we know and convinced that we will be received to the kingdom of God with rich welcome!

Now it is clear what we must do!

¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. 

Be more eager so that you may be efficient and productive. Become victors in you walk with our Lord Jesus!

May God bless you richly in the year 2012!