2 Pet 1.1-4
all we need
(2 Peter 1.1-4)
Jason Procopio
If you’re joining us for the first time today, your timing is perfect.
Since September of last year, we’ve been in a series on the letters of the apostle Peter, and last week we finished Peter’s first letter—so today, we’ll be starting in on his second letter. (So you can turn to 2 Peter 1 right now if you have your Bible.)
I grew up in church, and didn’t really become a Christian until I was in my early twenties, just before I got married. The church context I grew up in was very “conservative America” church. By that I mean that it was very focused on behavior. If you did certain things, God would approve of you; if you did other things, God would disapprove of you. So if you wanted to be really sure you were saved, really sure God was on your side, you needed to do the right things and not do the wrong things.
Now a lot of the time the “wrong things” they told us not to do were, in fact, things the Bible calls sin; so they weren’t wrong to tell us to avoid them. Where they went wrong was telling us our assurance depended on our ability to obey God; and they never told us how obedience happens. They stole from Nike: “Just do it.”
So when I finally started living for Christ, the pressure to perform was incredible. There are a few things I’m good at—I can sing pretty well, I can write and teach reasonably well (thankfully), I can do a few pretty decent card tricks. One thing I am not very good at is obeying the commandments I see in the Bible.
Maybe you can identify with this. Some things, I can do. “Thou shalt not kill”—I’m good at that. But when Jesus says, “If you get angry without cause at your brother, you’ve pretty much killed him in your heart...” I’m not sure how well I do there.
Do you see? There will always be commandments we are simply unable to obey perfectly. In fact, most of our obedience is more like half obedience, where we obey in one way, but that obedience is tainted with sin in other ways. We can never be good enough.
So after a while of being beat down by the pressure of it all, I just didn’t see the point anymore. I kept trying, but it was super discouraging, because it was never quite good enough. And this depressing state continued for a long time.
So I’ll never forget the day that I actually sat down to seriously read Peter’s second letter. I read the first fifteen verses of chapter 1, and I had to stop, and go back; and I stayed in these first fifteen verses for weeks. I read on, but I kept coming back here. These verses have been some of the most foundational verses in my own life, so I am thrilled to be arriving here today.
Now since we have a lot of introductory things to see today, we’ll be looking at a relatively short passage—chapter 1, verses 1-4. But those four verses are incredibly dense, so we do have our work cut out for us. And next week, we’ll go back a little: we’ll start at v. 1 and then go all the way to v. 15, because these first four verses are part of a larger passage that should be taken together.
But first things first.
Background
Peter probably wrote this letter from Rome, not long before he died (as he mentions in the letter), around 64 to 67 A.D (a couple years after he wrote the first letter). And the Christians to whom he is writing are likely the same Christians to whom his first letter was addressed—he suggests as much at the beginning of chapter 3. So these are the same “elect exiles” he exhorted to live for God in 1 Peter, and their situation is, again, one of suffering and persecution for their faith (probably persecution under the Emperor Nero, who died not long after this letter was written).
Some themes we see here are similar to what we saw in 1 Peter: the theme of perseverance in obedience in the context of suffering, for example. Peter’s encouraging these churches to live for God in light of his grace, no matter what suffering they may endure.
But there are different challenges that led Peter to write this letter in particular. He counters false teaching that was infiltrating the churches in Asia Minor, which sought to pull Christians away from the true knowledge of Christ; the particular false teaching Peter is addressing apparently advocated for sexual sin as a healthy part of a godly lifestyle.
So that is why Peter writes his letter; now, what does the letter say? 1 Peter taught that even in the midst of suffering and persecution, Christians should be full of hope and assurance that they have received God’s grace; and they should testify to his grace by the way they respond to their persecution.
2 Peter picks up the subject of suffering again, but this time, Peter teaches that the grace of God in Jesus Christ transforms us and makes us able to live godly lives, even in the midst of struggle and persecution.
Even though we don’t see any of these things addressed in our passage today, we should keep it in mind as we read, because these opening verses will serve as the basis for everything he’s going to say later. Let’s get started: chapter 1, verses 1-4.
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:
2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
3 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, 4 by which he has 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.
So this morning I have only one point. I split it up into two parts, but really, there’s one point. You have everything you need. That’s it. That’s the point. If God has given you faith in his Son, then you have everything you need to live for him and to become like him.
So let’s take it slowly.
God has given you faith… (v. 1-2)
Let’s read again, v. 1:
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:
2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
So Peter is writing to a group of churches, probably in Asia Minor. Some of those Christians, he might know; but there are certainly Christians in those churches whom he has never met. He’s throwing out a blanket statement when he says to whom he is writing—he just assumes that the people to whom he is writing have faith, and they’ll know that they have faith.
So first off: what is faith? (Real quickly.)
Faith is what happens when the Holy Spirit of God takes a sinner, who is dead in his sins (according to the apostle Paul in Ephesians 2), and makes him alive. The Spirit comes into us and “regenerates” us—that’s a fancy theological term which means simply he wakes us up. He opens our eyes. Before, the gospel was nothing but folly to us; now, we see the gospel as truth. Before, we wanted nothing to do with Christ; now, we want to follow him.
Faith is the belief that he exists, and that what he says is true, and that his plan will come to pass. The author of Hebrews says faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11.1). It’s what takes unbelieving people and makes them say, You know, I think this might actually be true.
And Peter says that those who have faith didn’t drum it up on their own; they didn’t work for it. They received it. The word that the ESV translates as “obtained” is only used three other times in the New Testament, and in every other case it designates something that was decided for someone. It’s the word used for what happens when they cast lots, or when Jesus chose his disciples. It’s not something you do, it’s something that is done for you. (And just in case you think I’m reaching here, go read Ephesians chapter 2—we don’t have time to read it here, but in that chapter Paul says explicitly what Peter strongly implies here.)
The point is this: if you have faith in Christ, it is because God gave you faith. It is not something you did for yourself, but something he did for you.
Now that is wonderful news, but it’s not finished.
I know a good number of you are chronically unsure of yourselves; you’re constantly asking questions about your own faith (like, Is it really real? Am I legitimate? Can I really claim these things are true about me?), and you live in a kind of perpetual uncertainty about what God is doing in your life. You’re sure you have faith, but you’re not sure if it’s any “good”.
If that’s the case for you, get ready for what Peter says next.
He introduces himself as a servant and apostle of Christ, and then he says that he is writing To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours. With whose faith? With the other apostles’ faith.
I sometimes wonder if Peter didn’t giggle a little as he wrote this, because he had to know that when this letter was delivered, and someone stood up to read the letter aloud to the church (that’s how they did it then), pretty much everyone in that room would look around and go, “Um... Does anyone here fit that description? Who here has the same faith as the apostles?”
The answer of course is both obvious and unbelievable: all of you. If you have faith in Christ, then that faith is of equal standing with the faith of the apostles of Jesus Christ.
If you have faith in Christ, no matter how small it is, no matter how unstable it is, no matter how unsure of yourself you may be… If you have faith in Christ, then your faith is of the same nature and value as that of the apostles.
Now, is your faith as mature as theirs? Almost definitely not. Is your faith as experienced as theirs? I doubt it, because none of us actually walked and talked with a physical Jesus Christ while he was on this earth; none of us established the Christian church. Is your faith as tried as theirs? Probably not, because we’re all still alive, and all the apostles but one were killed for their faith (and John was still thrown in a vat of boiling oil and exiled on a deserted island).
But the nature and value of your faith is no different from theirs. If you have faith in Christ, your faith is of equal standing with that of Peter, Paul, John, James and all the apostles.
And if that sounds insane to you, Peter explains the logic of it. How on earth could we say we have the same faith as the apostles? Well, where did it come from?
He writes:
To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ...
Our faith is the same as theirs because we obtained it the same way they did. We have faith because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ that was given to us as a gift. It’s not something we could have produced on our own, and it’s not something they could have produced on their own.
Remember, these guys were pretty sad disciples of Christ! They were constantly doubting, constantly bickering, constantly misunderstanding what Jesus said… And Peter was the absolute worst among them. This is the guy who got it wrong almost every time! His natural instincts are almost always completely the opposite of the right way to go. And the one time he got it right—when Jesus asked who they thought he was, and Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus says, “That’s absolutely right, Peter! Gold star for you! By the way, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16.17).
They were saved the same way we were, guys. They were hopeless on their own, and were only saved because Jesus lived the life God commanded them to live, took their sins on himself, was punished for their sins in their place, and was raised to give them his perfect life. There is no fundamental difference between their faith and ours.
And that is incredibly important to know going forward, because it’s going to be the basis of what he’s going to say next. If we have faith in Christ, it is the same faith that was given to the apostles themselves…which means that if they could live for Christ they way they did, so can we. We have everything we need.
…you have everything you need (v. 3-4).
3 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, 4 by which he has 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.
Now there is a lot to unpack in these two verses, but right at the outset, Peter gives us the most important thing. It’s the foundation of everything that’s going to follow in verses 5 to 15.
So if you remember nothing else about this message this morning, if you write nothing down, write this down. Put it as the background on your phone or your computer, print it out and tape it to your nightstand so it’s the first thing you see when you get up in the morning and the last thing you see when you go to bed. Tattoo it to your forehead so that every time you look in the mirror, you’re reminded of it. (Don’t really do that—please no one come to me complaining that I told you to get an ugly tattoo and now you’re depressed because no one will want to marry you because of your ugly face tattoo.)
REMEMBER THIS, because it is one of the most life-changing truths in the Bible:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
ALL THINGS. ALL THINGS. ALL THINGS.
Everything you need to live for Christ, you already have it. Everything you need to obey God’s commandments, you already have it. Everything you need to put your sin to death, you already have it.
His divine power HAS GRANTED to us—past tense—ALL THINGS that pertain to life and godliness.
Now of course, Peter’s specific here. He doesn’t say we have everything we’ll need for every possible situation. Do you have everything you need to build the family you want? Well, if you’re single, not yet, he hasn’t. And even if you are, you have no guarantee kids will come. And even if they do, they may not be the kids you thought you wanted. Your family may not look like what you had in mind.
Do you have everything you need to get your dream job? Maybe, maybe not. You may have the talent, but lack the opportunity; or you may have the opportunity but lack the talent.
Peter’s not saying that you have everything you need for every situation you can imagine. He’s saying that if your goal is to live for Christ, and grow in him, and honor him, and put your sin to death, and glorify God in your body… If that’s your goal—then yes, you have everything you need. RIGHT NOW, you can do it.
And that goal should be everyone’s goal.
Now the big question is, how can we be sure of this? Peter answers that question by telling us a) how God gave us what he need; b) what he has given us; and c) why he did it.
So first—he has given us everything we need… How did he do it? Read v. 3 again:
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…
So here’s the essential thing to see here: God has given us everything we need to live for him by giving us knowledge of himself. He has called us to live for him—which is not a small task: Peter says God has called us to his own glory and excellence—and he has given us the knowledge we need to actually do it. Not just a knowledge of doctrine, of information, not a knowledge about God…but a knowledge of himself. TO KNOW HIM is what we need if we are to live for him.
The first kind of knowledge we have of God is what we could call “general knowledge”. This is knowledge that God has given us about himself simply through the things he has created. The apostle Paul says in Romans 1.19-20:
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
So every human being has everything they need to know that there is a God and that they should worship him; and they have this knowledge because they’re alive, and they live in this world. That’s the first kind.
The second kind of knowledge we have of God is what we could call “particular knowledge”—the specific knowledge God has revealed to us in his Word.
Paul tells Timothy (2 Timothy 3.16):
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Thankfully, God didn’t stop at nature. He didn’t just give us mountains and trees and then say, “Get to work—figure out the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.” He gave us general knowledge of himself in nature; but he revealed himself in detail in his Word—in the Bible he tells us not only what we are supposed to do, but most importantly, he tells us what he is doing and why. In his Word, he tells us the story of how he created all things, the people he set apart for himself, and finally, the Savior he sent to save them. In Jesus Christ—as he is described and recounted in the Scriptures—we have a perfect revelation of God.
And that’s not all.
Even if we read the Bible cover to cover, day after day, that still wouldn’t be enough to actually know him. Plenty of people know the Bible by heart and remain unchanged. And that is why we have a third kind of knowledge, which God gives us through his Holy Spirit, God himself, who takes what God says in the Bible and applies it to our hearts.
Now here’s why I call this “knowledge”. We may not know everything there is to know about God—and we never will; we will never exhaust that subject, never stop learning about him—but if we have faith, then we know God.
When our kids were born, they knew nothing about us. They didn’t know our birthdays, where we’d come from, what we liked to do, when we got married…but they knew us. They didn’t need anyone to tell them, “This is your mom, this is your dad.” They just knew us.
When the Holy Spirit gives us faith in Christ, he gives us this kind of knowledge. Paul says in Romans 8.15-16:
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God...
In other words: the Spirit regenerates us through the hearing of the gospel (brings us from death to life, gives us faith in Christ) and then he takes what we read in the Bible—the good news of the gospel, every promise God gives to his people—and points at it and says to our hearts, “You see that? He’s talking about you. This good news is for you. These promises are for you.”
And that’s where Peter goes next. He has told us how God has given us everything we need—through a knowledge of himself. Now—what did he give us? What tools did he put at our disposal to help us live for him?
V. 3-4:
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, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises...
Now the obvious question is, what promises is he talking about? The answer is a simple but a risky one: ALL of them! All of the promises God gives to his people in the Bible are for God’s people today.
I say that’s a risky answer because there are loads of promises given in the Bible, and many of them were given to specific people at specific times. (Promises given to the people of Israel during their exile in Babylon, for example—we don’t need God to save us from exile in Babylon, because we’re not in exile in Babylon). Can we really take those promises God gave to specific people at specific times, and appropriate them for ourselves?
Not directly, no. But in God’s promises to his people—any promises, at any time—we can see God’s plan at work for his people; his intentions for his people; his desires for his people. And although the details of how he will accomplish his plan change from situation to situation, his intentions and his desires for his people never do. We can read these promises of God to his people and know that as surely as he cared for his people in these specific situations, as surely as he remained faithful to his plan for them, he will do the same for us.
So we have this wealth of promises God has given to his people—of where he is taking them and what he is doing in them and for them and through them—and these promises are the tools in our toolbelt. They are the weapons at our disposal, to put to use as we fight our sin and live for Christ and grow in him. Every promise he gives to his people, he gives to us, because we are his people.
So that’s how God gave us all we need, and what he gave us; now, why did he do it? What is the goal?
V. 4:
…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.
God’s wonderful, glorious goal in giving us all we need to live for him through the knowledge of himself is that we might share in the divine nature with him. Now of course this doesn’t mean that we become gods. When Peter speaks of us being “partakers of the divine nature”, he’s using language from Hellenistic (Greek) culture and reappropriating it so that his readers will understand him more easily.
The “divine nature” he is referring to is our new life in Christ. He’s actually retreading territory he covered in his first letter here, which he doesn’t need to repeat because he’s writing to the same people. He said in 1 Peter 1.3 that in his mercy, God caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…
He gave us new life—we were born again, brought from death to life in Christ; he gave us a new hope, no longer based on our own success or failure, but based on Christ’s work for us; and he gave us an inheritance—which is to share the glory and joy of Jesus Christ himself when he welcomes the church home as his bride.
So Peter just comes back to this now without restating it all; he says that the goal of these promises God gives to his people is that through them, we may enjoy the fruit of Christ’s work—and this is possible because we have escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
If we were still slaves to sin, we would not enjoy this divine life. But in this new life, the sin that used to plague us is dead. It was killed at the cross with Christ. We forget that sometimes, and we go back into it, but it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that our sin has been dealt with. Christ has rescued us from it. It no longer rules us as it does the rest of the world. So we can live for him.
Now I know how hard it is to believe that. It’s hard to believe that we really can live for God with only the things he has given us today. And there’s a really important reason why it’s so difficult.
Very often we operate under the mistaken assumption that apart from a few changes in lifestyle and head-knowledge, we ourselves are fundamentally the same as before. God has changed plenty of things in our life: he’s changed our preoccupations, our habits, our reflexes, our desires. But very often, we don’t feel entirely different. Part of that is because we still have the same personality we had before; we still have the same struggles we had before. So although a lot has changed about us, we ourselves—as in, the people we are, our identity—don’t feel like we’re entirely different people.
But we are.
Let me give you a ridiculous illustration. When I was a kid I had a buddy named Ben. Ben’s brother (who shall remain nameless) desperately wanted to be a fish. And he took his little fantasy way too far, to the point where we worried for him a little: when he swam, he put his feet together to make the shape of a big flipper, and he’d swim like that. He always talked about how he wanted to live underwater—with no equipment, no masks, no snorkel. Now of course as a human being, he wouldn’t be up to that task.
But imagine my friend’s brother found a wizard who actually transformed him into a fish. If that happened, his dream wouldn’t be so unattainable—in fact, he’d need to go live underwater if he wanted to survive, because fish can’t live outside of the water.
Like I said, it’s a ridiculous illustration. But guys, this is what has happened to us, except God’s not a wizard, and we haven’t been turned into fish. If we knew we have not just been given new information and new tasks, but have been completely transformed, have become new creations, we’d not only believe we were able to live this way; anything else would be unthinkable. Because the sinners we used to be, that’s not who we are anymore!
We are changed. We are no longer what we once were. God has pulled us out of the corruption in this world because of sin; he has given us new life in his Son; he has granted to us the promises we need to hold fast; now we don’t just know about God, but we know him… We have everything we need to live for him.
Conclusion
Now how are we meant to respond to this truth? What will this truth do in us if we truly integrate it and believe it?
It will fill us with confidence. Killing our sin is a daunting task, and we rarely feel up to the challenge. Because we’ve failed so many times before. We’ve seen the trend. We get into a discussion with someone who annoys us, and we know how it’s going to end: it’s going to end with us getting angry and saying something rash and feeling guilt and shame over our impatience.
We’ve gotten ourselves into a situation in which we are not living the way God calls us to live, we are not modeling the gospel the way we should (say, we’re an unmarried couple living together, risking constant temptation to sin, and giving the world a false picture of what relationships are meant to be, and what the gospel has to do with our marriages), and we know we won’t get out of it, because we’ve been in it for so long. Getting out of it would require one of us to move out until we get married, and that takes time, and effort, and money… And we just can’t see ourselves going through all of that.
We feel bored, and we know that boredom is going to lead to our mind wandering, and we know our wandering mind will sooner or later land on lustful thoughts, and we know we’ll act on those thoughts.
In every situation we find ourselves, what will change if we truly believe what Peter tells us here—that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness?
We will know, even as we feel our anger rising, that we have what we need to stay calm… And when we know we have what we need, we’ll make the effort to do so, with the help of the Spirit.
We will know, even as we look at all the obstacles before us, all the work required to get us out of the unhealthy situation we’ve put ourselves in, that we have what we need to do the hard thing, and get ourselves out of it. And when we know we have what we need, we’ll make the effort to do so, with the help of the Spirit—even if it costs us.
We will know, even as we feel our mind wandering, that we have what we need to keep our thoughts pure, to focus on things that honor God… And when we know we have what we need, we’ll make the effort to do so, with the help of the Spirit—even if it’s difficult.
And here’s what we need to remember, brothers and sisters… If God has given us all we need to live for him, then there is no longer any excuse to do otherwise. And there is no longer any good reason to do otherwise.
Brothers and sisters, we can live for him. We can put our sin to death. We can model the gospel for the world in a way that honors God, and doesn’t just placate our own desires. We can do this. Because his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
Now, there’s nothing left but…to do it, with his help.
