OVERVIEW:
The divine strategy for our spiritual growth and development; the superiority of God’s word to experience; false prophets and teachers; the Second Coming of Christ.
HIGHLIGHTS & INSIGHTS:
Peter writes his second epistle to remind these believers of truths they already KNEW, but needed to always have in REMEMBRANCE. Do you ever need to be reminded of what you already know? There is a major difference between knowing something in our minds, and seeing it become operative in our lives. That’s what Peter is driving at in this book.
Obviously, the most important decision any person will ever make is the decision to come to Christ, or as Peter refers to it in verse 1 of chapter 1, to “obtain like precious faith with us”. What an incredible reality, that the faith each of us has in Christ today is the same exact faith the apostles, like Peter, had; and the power that saved the apostles, is the same exact power that saved us!
You know, sometimes the journey to get to the place of expressing faith in Christ can be long and hard. By the time many people get to the place of calling on the name of the Lord by faith, they feel such a sense of relief and release, they feel the journey is over. What Peter lets us know in chapter 1, is that the journey of coming to faith in Christ isn’t the END of anything; it’s actually just the BEGINNING! God has a whole lot more in mind for our lives than simply our coming to faith, as vital and important as that is! He intends for the “grace and peace” we experienced in salvation to be “multiplied” throughout our lifetime (1:2), all the way until we make our entrance into His “everlasting kingdom”. (1:11)
Peter tells us in verses 5-7 of chapter 1, that after coming to faith in Christ, we are to “give all diligence” to add seven things to that faith. Notice, adding these seven things is so important, he doesn’t admonish or command us to simply “give diligence” to add them to our lives, but to “give ALL diligence” to add them! In other words, this is something to which we are to make the focus and pursuit of our lives, for the remainder of our lives!
Notice also, that the seven things Peter tells us to “give ALL diligence” to add are SEQUENTIAL. This is not just a random list of seven things that we are to make sure get added to our lives (or, our faith) over the course of our lifetime. The grammar in verses 5-7 dictates that these seven things be added sequentially. In other words, the first thing we are to “give ALL diligence” to add to our faith is virtue. He is careful to word verses 5-7 in such a way, so that we understand that once virtue has been established, then we begin the process of adding the second thing, knowledge. But notice, when knowledge gets added, it doesn’t get added to faith, it actually gets added to virtue. Then when we add the third thing, temperance, it likewise, doesn’t get added to faith, it gets added to knowledge. The remainder of verses 5-7 follow this same pattern. This pattern that is laid out in these verses is what I like to refer to as “The Divine Strategy For Spiritual Growth.” This strategy will never be improved upon, and should not only be the strategy we build our lives upon, but should be the strategy every church should employ for growing its people!
Now, the very command in verses 5-7 that we are to “give ALL diligence” to add these seven things is certainly enough in itself for each of us to drop our present pursuits and set our lives totally to adding them to our lives. However, Peter goes on in verses 8-11 to push the importance of these things into an entirely different realm!
First of all, Peter gives us three incredible POSITIVE GUARANTEES for what will happen in our lives if we will “give ALL diligence” to add these seven things:
1. We will truly KNOW Jesus.
Wow! How awesome is that?! Note in John 17:3, Jesus lets us know that knowing Him is what this thing of “life eternal” is really all about!
2. We will never FALL.
What a tremendous promise that is, especially when you stop to consider that:
- Adam, the most perfect man who ever lived other than Christ Himself, FELL!
- David, “the man after God’s own heart”, FELL!
- Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, FELL!
- Samson, the strongest man who ever lived, FELL!
- Thousands and thousands of others through the centuries who were just as sincere in their faith as any of us are in ours, FELL!
Here, Peter tells us that if we will “give ALL diligence” to adding these seven things to our lives, we will NEVER FALL! Wow! That is quite the guarantee! Let’s do this thing!
3. Our entrance into the everlasting kingdom will be ABUNDANT.
In other words, when it’s all been said and done—when our life is over, and we walk OUT of the Judgment Seat of Christ and IN to the everlasting kingdom, if we added these seven things, our ENTRANCE into that kingdom is going to be everything God intended for it to be! It will be ABUNDANT! Can you imagine any three guarantees that could possibly be more powerful and positive then these?
Yet, realize, that Peter also gives three incredible NEGATIVE GUARANTEES if we neglect to add the seven things he listed in verses 5-7.
1. We will become BLIND.
How interesting it is that Jesus said that in Revelation 3:17 that one of the chief characteristics of believers in the last days is that they are spiritually BLIND. Blind to the WORD of God, blind to the WORK and WORKING of God, and blind to the WILL of God.
2. We will be unable to see into the ETERNAL REALM.
Peter says that we won’t be able to “see afar off”. (1:9b) In other words, we won’t be able to see the things Paul said he was looking at in 2nd Corinthians 4:18, “the things which are not seen”, or, in other words, the things in the eternal realm that are seen only through the eyes of faith!
3. We will end up LIVING LIKE WE DID BEFORE WE WERE SAVED.
The way Peter says it is, we will forget that we were “purged from [our] old sins”, or, we will end up living like we did before we came to faith!
With those six guarantees (three extremely positive and three extremely negative!), how could we not take the rest of our lives and set it to “giving ALL diligence” to add these seven things? Peter was so sure that this was what we were to give the rest of our lives to that he basically says this in verses 12-15:
“Listen, these seven things are so significant to what you do with the rest of your life, that I don’t care whether you’re already established in them or not; I’m not going to stop talking about them! I’m going to approach them as if you’ve never even heard them! I’m going to take every ounce of energy I have for the remainder of my life to stir you up about the necessity of being established in these seven things! Because, the Lord has revealed to me that my days on this planet are limited, so I’m going to ‘give ALL diligence’ to make sure you ‘give ALL diligence’ to add these seven things, because I want you, not only to get established in them now, but I want to make sure that you remember to remain established in them every day of your life for the rest of your life, long after I’m dead and gone!”
I’d say the old boy was pretty enamored by those seven things! Oh, may we be likewise!