Through the Bible - 2 Peter

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue... (2 Peter 1)

A dying apostle's final charge: grow in the knowledge of Christ, for it guards your soul against every counterfeit and prepares you for the day of the Lord.

The Setting: Persecution Without, Heresy Within

This second letter of Peter is a bit different than the first. In 1 Peter, the apostle wrote to a church to encourage them in the midst of coming persecution. Both letters were written during the time Nero was emperor of Rome—a madman who, it is believed, had parts of Rome burned and then blamed the Christians, an easy minority to single out. So the church was being persecuted from the outside.

But alongside external persecution there were internal problems. We sometimes look at the early church with a glowing gaze, as if everything flowed perfectly. That's not the case. Acts highlights great things over about thirty years in twenty-eight chapters, but we also see Ananias and Sapphira, the contention between Paul and Barnabas, and the quarrel over the Gentiles. And heresy was being taught within the early church as well.

This second letter was written somewhere around 64 to 66 AD, before Paul's martyrdom (between 66 and 68 AD)—and Peter mentions Paul here, so Paul was still alive. It was also near Peter's own death. Tradition holds he was crucified in Rome, but he did not feel worthy to die as his Lord did, so he was crucified upside down, all the while professing the faith. You can still visit the area near St. Peter's Basilica where it's believed he was martyred.

Knowledge as the Cure for Heresy

One of the early heresies making its way into the church was Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge. Throughout this letter Peter speaks a great deal about knowledge, because a true knowledge of who Jesus is, is the best way to combat heresy. Four times he tells the church they need to be built up in the knowledge of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus is how we are strengthened against false doctrine.

You've probably heard the illustration of counterfeit money. How does a banker recognize the counterfeit? By knowing the genuine so well that when a fake passes through his hands, something doesn't feel right. When our church ran a coffee shop in Escondido, counterfeit bills came through. Our manager, Jason, was counting quickly through twenties and stopped—something didn't feel right. He pulled one out, and when he brought it to the bank, sure enough, it was counterfeit. You must know the genuine to recognize the counterfeit.

People today like to take world religions classes to study the errors of Islam, the Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Mormons. That's fine and good, but I would encourage you, more than anything, to dig into the Word of God so deeply that when you encounter a heresy you can say, "Wait a minute—that doesn't fit with what the Bible says." It's more important to know what you believe and to stand upon the true Word of God.

Making Disciples, Not Merely Converts

This letter divides neatly along its three chapters. Chapter one looks at the development of Christian character. Paul, Peter, and John were all focused on people growing in godly character because of the Great Commission. Jesus did not say go and make converts; He said go and make disciples, teaching them to observe everything He commanded. The author of Hebrews even rebukes his readers: by now you ought to be teachers. Discipling people, raising them up in understanding the Word, is the best way to combat false doctrine.

There were false prophets in the Old Testament, and Deuteronomy gave the test: if a prophet's words contradict God's Word or his prophecies don't come to pass, he is false. The same applies to false teachers. In Galatians 1, Paul writes:

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel... But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Twice Paul says it. The Greek word anathema speaks of damnation. That is heavy, but Jesus said it would be better to have a millstone hung around your neck and be cast into the sea than to lead one of these little ones astray. Many ignorant people have been led astray and died in their sins because they followed false teaching. The Lord looks on the false teacher and pronounces a strict judgment.

Everything We Need for Life and Godliness

Peter begins, "Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle." I love that he names his service first. Peter, who once kept asking who would be greatest, now writes as a bond-slave of the Lord, "to them that have obtained like precious faith with us." He writes not only to believers in the 60s AD, but to anyone who has received this like precious faith—so our ears should perk up; he is speaking to you and me.

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord.

Underline knowledge. Eternal life begins the moment you come into a relationship with God, into the knowledge of who He is through Jesus Christ. In John 17 Jesus prayed, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Grace and peace are multiplied through the knowledge of God. People want to be built up in grace and to receive His peace—it is found by getting to know Him.

According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.

How powerful is God? We are finite; He is infinite. If we could fully grasp His divine power, He would not be big enough to be God. And by that immense power He has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness. So if we don't walk in godliness, it is not God's fault—it's the fault of my flesh. We cannot stand before God and say, "You didn't give me enough power." James said, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God." And to say "I'm only human" is no excuse, because Jesus was 100% human, tempted at all points yet without sin.

We've been given every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, yet many Christians live as spiritual paupers, as if bankrupt. He has called us to glory—both to glorify Him ("Let your light so shine before men... that they may glorify your Father") and to eternal glory with Him. And He has called us to virtue, granting us exceedingly great and precious promises that we will never understand unless we get to know our God.

Partakers of the Divine Nature

By these promises we may be "partakers of the divine nature." Just before, Peter spoke of God's divine power; now he speaks of God's nature beginning to indwell us. Paul calls it "Christ in you, the hope of glory." We are the temple of the living God. As His Spirit fills our lives—as we yield to Him and allow Him to work in and through us—we learn to walk in the divine nature He has given us, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

Highlight diligence in verse 5. The chain ends with charity—agape love. Brotherly kindness is phileo, but charity is agape. All of this culminates in love, because all the law and the prophets hang on that one word. When the lawyer asked Jesus the greatest commandment, every Jew knew the answer: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Paul sums up the law in one word: love. And in 1 Corinthians 13, after describing the gifts, he says, "Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

This love is not natural to any person. Only the one who knows God loves with this self-sacrificing love—which is why the King James translators rendered agape as charity, a love that gives out without seeking return. We see it in Jesus on the cross. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." But God commends His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners—His enemies—Christ died for us. No one can fulfill this without the Holy Spirit, for the fruit of the Spirit is, first and foremost, love.

Taking Up the Cross: Yielding to His Lordship

Yet we still have a responsibility. It is God who works in us to will and to do His good pleasure, but our part is to yield to the work of the Holy Spirit and to give diligence to do so. Often we won't—out of laziness or because we refuse to give up the throne of our lives. Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross." Leonard Ravenhill said that every Jew who saw a man carrying a cross outside the city knew one thing: he wasn't coming back. To follow Christ is to take up our cross—we are not coming back to our own lordship.

His lordship over the universe is settled—He is Lord of lords and King of kings. But His lordship in my life involves me laying my life down and saying, "You are Lord." The American mind resists this; we are a nation of individualistic risk-takers, descended from those who left everything to come here. So we say, "Lord, I'll scoot to the passenger seat." Not good enough. "I'll get in the back seat." Not good enough. What you must do is take the keys out of the ignition, climb into the trunk, hand the keys to Jesus, and say, "You do with me as You please." That is the call of the gospel: deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Him.

Fruitful Trees Planted by the Water

For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There it is again—the knowledge of the Lord. This echoes Psalm 1, a passage near my own heart since Pastor Mark shared it at my ordination in 2002: "Blessed is the man... his delight is in the law of the LORD... And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither."

A person who delights in the Lord and meditates on His law day and night has a good knowledge of God. In Isaiah we read that we are the planting of the Lord, His vineyard, that He should be glorified in us. Most fruit trees have seasons of bearing and seasons of shedding leaves, but this tree's leaf does not wither—continual fruitfulness, like the tree in Revelation that bears different fruit every month.

What is the living water? In John 7 Jesus said, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me"—and John adds, "This spake he of the Spirit." We must be planted by that living water, the Holy Spirit. I read this last week that a tree receives nourishment from the sun and water, yet gives forth fruit it never partakes of itself. So with us: we receive our nourishment from heaven and from the living water, and then we become fruitful for others.

But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

The one not striving after these things has forgotten that God called him out of darkness into His marvelous light. So, Peter says, "Give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall." We may fall down—the righteous man falls seven times—but we will never finally fail if we are seeking to make our calling and election sure.

The Equation for Success

Just before Israel entered the promised land, God told Joshua: "Be strong and very courageous... This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night... for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." There is God's equation for prosperity—not monetary gain as the false teachers claim, but treasure stored in heaven. The prosperous believer is the one who meditates on God's Word day and night.

For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Peter goes on: "I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth." It does not matter if you've been a Christian for fifteen, thirty, or fifty years—it is good to look again at passages you've read a hundred times. You may hear the same truths over and over at our services, because God knows we need reminding of the first things, for so quickly we forget. Peter knew his time was near—"shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me." He had a prophetic understanding of his coming death and labored that, even after his decease, the church would have these things in remembrance.

Not Cunningly Devised Fables

From verse 16 on, Peter grounds our faith. They did not get together after Jesus died and invent a new religion. He rose from the dead—and even that was prophesied beforehand. Peter says, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables." He saw Jesus in the flesh and heard the Father's voice on the Mount of Transfiguration: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." We heard that voice from heaven.

And beyond eyewitness testimony, "we have also a more sure word of prophecy." Holy men spoke as God moved them. As Paul told Timothy, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God"—God-breathed. God stirred these holy men to write.

Chapter 2: The Condemnation of False Teachers

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

Just as there were false prophets in Israel, there are false teachers in the church—then and 2,000 years later. They bring in heresies worthy of damnation, and they bring on themselves a swift destruction. Perhaps they have a long life here, but a swift destruction awaits in the next.

And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

Circle "many." It is a sad fact that many follow them, and because of it the church is called a den of hypocrites and the name of the Lord is defamed. Through covetousness, with feigned words, these teachers make merchandise of people—they come not to serve the Lord for His glory, but for their own gain. Yet their judgment lingers not.

Peter gives examples that God knows how to judge: He spared not the angels that sinned but cast them into chains of darkness; He spared not the old world but brought the flood, saving only Noah and seven others; He turned Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, yet delivered righteous Lot, whose soul was vexed day by day by their unlawful deeds. The angels who sinned may refer to those cast out with Lucifer, or to the strange events of Genesis 6 where the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, bringing forth the Nephilim and provoking the judgment of the flood. The point stands: the Lord knows how to deliver the godly and reserve the unjust unto judgment.

These false teachers are "wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever." Jesus calls the Word water that washes us (Ephesians 5), and in Isaiah 55 God says His Word goes forth like rain that waters the earth and shall not return void. These false prophets are wells without water—they speak great swelling words of emptiness but lack the Word that does not return void. They can lead souls astray, but they cannot change a single soul.

They allure through the lusts of the flesh. Now, some won't like what I'm about to say, but I believe it: there are those in the body of Christ who teach a doctrine that simply caters to our flesh—"give money to this ministry and God will give you a hundredfold." That is greed. They promise liberty while they themselves are servants of corruption, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought into bondage.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

It would be better for such people never to have known the way of righteousness than, having known it, to turn from it. "The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." They received a counterfeit gospel and were never instructed in the true knowledge of God. They have some temporal blessing from what their church offers, but no assurance of true salvation. They need the truth of the gospel.

Chapter 3: The Certainty of His Coming

Now Peter fixes our focus on the second coming. He stirs up our pure minds by way of remembrance, that we be mindful of the words of the prophets and the commandment of the apostles.

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning.

But Peter says they are willingly ignorant of the Word. It is not true that all things have continued the same—God created the world, and then judgment came through the flood, and all perished. The present heavens and earth are reserved unto fire against the day of judgment. Next time He will not judge with water but with a fervent heat.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise... but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Why has God taken 2,000 years? Because He is patient. He does not desire that any should perish. This is a good indication that God's will is not always fulfilled—He is not willing that any perish, yet many do. The Lord delays, waiting that all might come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

How Then Should We Live?

As with all prophetic Scripture, this is comfort to believers but also an exhortation to godly living. "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?" Everything you see, everything you are trying to acquire, is going to burn. How should that affect the way you live today? Yet do not be discouraged, for we look, according to His promise, for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Peter even references Paul: "Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you," though some of his writings are hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction. And he closes with knowledge once more:

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.

Since you know there are false teachers, since you know God will judge them, be diligent to make your calling and election sure. Add to your faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love—and the way to do it is by gaining the knowledge of the Lord. For this is eternal life: that you would know Him.

I believe we are approaching the day He shall come again. The scoffers say, "Where is the promise of His coming? Everything is the same." But it is not. Thousands of years ago God destroyed His creation with a flood—and even the fossil and geological records seem to point to it, though they won't tell you so. He has promised never to flood it again, but He said nothing about fire. He will come again. The only way to guard against the crafty deceptions of false teachers is to know the Lord. You could never become an expert on every false doctrine, and it would waste your time. Be an expert on God's Word, on the knowledge of Him, and you will not fail. You might fall down, but you won't fail.

Closing Prayer

Father, I ask that You would help us to plant these things deep in our hearts tonight, and that Your Word, which is precious seed, would grow and produce fruit in our lives. Lord, help me and my brothers and sisters to be those who meditate upon Your Word day and night—taking time to consider it, to mull it over, to dissect and digest it until it becomes a part of our lives. Just as the food we eat is broken apart and taken in until it becomes part of us, would Your Word that has gone into our ears sink into our hearts tonight. By Your Spirit, remind us of these things, and let Your Word transform the way we live. Knowing these things, Lord, change our conduct. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.