Josh King

These because of Those (2 Peter 1:5–11)

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5–7 ESV).

Before you deal with these, you must remember those. These because of those is a fundamental principle. Before you make every effort, you must see the reason why you should do so, namely, the two grants mentioned in vv. 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, 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 (ESV).”

You are not to make every effort to gain the grants; you are to make every effort because you have the grants.

Many churches are thick on command and thin on promise, which means they get neither. If you don’t understand the promises of vv. 3–4, you can carry out the command of vv. 5–7. Paradoxically to some, it is that church that is soft doctrinally that is more about law than grace. Show me a church that is atheological and I will show you one that is anti-promise. To teach the promises of Scripture you must teach doctrine. Doctrines like election, calling, substitution, propitiation, redemption, and covenant are essential to understanding God’s promises. You don’t need any doctrine at all to teach five steps to a better marriage. You don’t even need God’s law. Because we don’t teach God’s promises, we don’t teach God’s law either. We’ve substituted those of man in both instances. Thus it is that we get neither grace nor law.

When God gives His law to His people it comes as grace on top of grace. This means that there must be grace for the law to come on top of. If there is no foundational grace, then the only kind of grace the law conveys is not constructive but destructive as it shows us our need of Christ. But to those redeemed by the blood of the Passover Lamb, God prefaces His law in this way, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:1–3).

Peter is writing to those who stand righteous by faith in Christ (1:1). The Christ in whom they stand has granted them all things that pertain to life and godliness (v. 3). He has granted his great and precious promises through which they partake of the divine nature (v. 4). For the reason of those two grants, we are to make every effort at these virtues. All our effort then is an expression of faith in Christ. Before you make every effort at these virtues, make sure there is a faith to supplement first, faith in the Christ of those promises.

The August Theologian: The Authentic Happy Life

There is a delight which is given not to the wicked (Isa. 48: 22), but to those who worship you for no reward save the joy that you yourself are to them. That is the authentic happy life, to set one’s joy on you, grounded in you and caused by you. That is the real thing, and there is no other. Those who think that the happy life is found elsewhere, pursue another joy and not the true one. Nevertheless their will remains drawn towards some image of the true joy.” —Augustine, Confessions

Those Who Have All and Those Who Have Not (2 Peter 1:3–4)

Fill in the blank.

The pastor announces, “Hey church, Jesus has given us everything we need for ____________!”

So what’s rattling in your noggin? I bet most Evangelicals would have answers related to either evangelism and growth or finances and buildings. Jesus has given us everything we need to be BIG. I think many responses would indicate just how deeply the prosperity heresy has infiltrated the ranks. Of course, she is dressed up as a sexy spy rather than gaudily made up—prosperity soft rather than prosperity over-the-top. That said, how few would answer godliness?

“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, 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” (2 Peter 2:3–4).

All we need for life and godliness, Christ has granted us by His divine power. If you’re checking the Scriptures for an exchange policy, hoping for some measurable bigness instead, I’m afraid you’ll find you don’t have an authentic receipt. You’ve received no grant from Christ at all. You don’t have to make godliness attractive to the saints.

Still, though the saints rejoice at this promise, godliness remains one of those words we throw around but seldom pause to define. Our text speaks of “life and godliness.” The pairing links them together as one. Godliness is a way of life. Godliness is life. As sin is death, so godliness is life. In this way we see that godliness is akin to holiness and righteousness. It is a way of looking at the same thing from a different angle.

What particular aspect is brought to the fore by speaking of godliness? The original could be translated as “piety” or “devotion.” The reason godliness is such a good translation is that these are the words used to define what godliness means. Unfortunately, we think of a pious person as one who puts on a show of religious devotion. Though the hypocrite is devoted, it is only to the religion of self. But true piety is godliness—a life devoted to God. The only alternative to piety then is idolatry. Calvin defined true piety in this way:

“I call ‘piety’ that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.”

The verity of Calvin’s definition is born out by this text. True piety is the result of God’s goodness, not the cause of it. This motive distinguishes true piety from false. Godliness is a gift, not an attempt to garner God’s gifts. Here we have gospel-godliness—a godliness that flows from the grace of God in Christ our Savior.

You can never be more devoted to Jesus than Jesus is to you. Any devotion you demonstrate to God is a gift. You can never out give Jesus, for all your giving is a gift. We are like toddlers trying to splash our dad more than he splashes us. Our hands are so tiny and his are so large. God gives oceans and we return thimbles which we have filled from His oceans.

Jesus gives us everything needed for life and godliness. An earthly and benevolent king may desire to give his subjects many things, peace and safety chiefly, but no matter how great his power, he is limited. There are always threats. Jesus divine power grants and there are no threats nor thresholds. A good father may promise a good thing to his daughter that is well within his ability, yet a thousand evil may prevent him still. But the one who gives what is requisite for godliness is God incarnate. Limitless power grants you limitless resources—everything you need for life and godliness.

This promise thrills the saints and outs the ain’ts. If this promise doesn’t thrill you, then the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, everything true and beautiful you are seeking in your prosperity-soft harlot minus the lies, is not for you. As J.C. Ryle so clearly put it:

“Most men hope to go to heaven when they die; but few, it may be feared, take the trouble to consider whether they would enjoy heaven if they got there. Heaven is essentially a holy place; its inhabitants are all holy; its occupations are all holy. To be really happy in heaven, it is clear and plain that we must be somewhat trained and made ready for heaven while we are on earth.”

The August Theologian: Monica

“And yet, my God our maker, what comparison can there be between the respect with which I deferred to her and the service she rendered to me? Now that I had lost the immense support she gave, my soul was wounded, and my life as it were torn to pieces, since my life and hers had become a single thing.” —Augustine, Confessions

No Backwater Fishing Hole (2 Peter 1:1–2)

“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: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” (2 Peter 1:1–2 ESV).

2 Peter is regarded by some as a backwater fishing hole, aptly, but inaccurately attributed to the uncouth fisherman from Galilee. “2 Peter has been termed the ‘ugly stepchild’ of the NT,” writes Peter Davids. “It is not just that the extended prophetic denunciation is unpalatable to some people and the apparent description of the destruction of the universe in ch. 3 is disturbing, but that many readers wonder whether the book is genuine and belongs in the canon at all.”

It might be surprising to learn that the first two seemingly innocuous words of this letter are likely it’s most controversial and among some of the most contested in the New Testament. There are multiple arguments against Petrine authorship, but I’ll just pick out only a couple since they’re all equally ridiculous.

Some say there are too many unique terms in this letter for it to have been written by Peter. Some 57 words are found here and nowhere else in the New Testament. We have two short letters bearing Peter’s name, each with a different focus, and from so small a sampling can we draw such a conclusion? When R.C. Sproul received his first assignment for doctoral studies in Holland it included 25 titles in Dutch, a language of which he knew nothing. He painstakingly began the task by consulting his Dutch-English dictionary and writing each Dutch word that he came to on one side of a card with a corresponding English word on the other. The first day he worked through just over a page. The first two books Dr. Sproul read in this way were by the same author on the same subject and when the final tally was in, there were over 5000 words in the second volume that were not in the first. Such objections make me think of Dr. Budziszewski’s remark that, “Though it always comes as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to achieve.”

Akin to this, others say that the style of 2 Peter is too different from 1 Peter for him to have written it. Many critical scholars also argue that the Greek of 1 Peter is too refined for Peter to have written that letter. So we have the same pool of scholars telling us that Peter couldn’t have written 2 Peter because its style is too different from that other letter he didn’t write. Huh? Further, it is not as if the church has never known someone who could write children’s fantasy, adult science fiction, popular apologetic works, and critical academic pieces. No, C.S. Lewis could not have written the Narnia tales, the Perelandra series, Mere Christianity, and Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature.

Let’s turn from the opinions of modern scholarship to that of the church. The best Biblical scholarship has historically been done within the church. The Trinitarian orthodoxy of the early creeds cannot be improved on or matched and it was produced not by some isolated scholars operating in institutions of education, but by churchmen serving the church. Michael Allen and Scott Swain argue that “Christian theology flourishes in the school of Christ [meaning the church]… The Spirit of Christ teaches the church in sufficient and unmixed verity such that the church need not seek theological understanding from any other source or principle.” They liken the church to the Spirit-cultivated field God designed theology to grow in.

Though some in the church have wrestled with the authenticity of 2 Peter the overwhelming testimony has been that of affirmation. We should listen to this testimony not because the Bible is determined by majority vote, nor because the church stands over the Word as Rome argues. We should listen to the opinion of the church because it is to her that the self-authenticating Word bears witness. Sheep shouldn’t ask goats for their opinion concerning food.

Scholars who deny the authenticity of 2 Peter are the scoffers Peter goes on to speak of.

“This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:1–4 ESV).

Such scoffers speak with a snake’s lisp asking, “Did God really say?”

This is no backwater fishing hole. It is an ocean of grace upon grace (1:2). It is scoffer-scholars who would have us drink from the stagnant waters of human autonomy.

The August Theologian: Frenemies and Enemends

“Just as flattering friends corrupt, so quarrelsome enemies often bring us correction.” —Augustine, Confessions

Nicely Packed (1 Peter 5:5–14)

¹So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed… ⁵Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ —1 Peter 5:1, 5 (ESV)

Do not make the mistake of thinking that the authors of the Bible are as bad of Scripture-writers as we are Scripture-readers. We often read the Bible as if it were a buffet, looking for what we like, picking a bit here and there. So it is that lo mien comes to sit alongside mac and cheese.

The Bible’s authors planned feasts. There is a theme to the meal. Things are tied together. There is a logical order to the courses.

As you come to the end of this letter, you may think Peter is just filling the empty space on his plate with the victuals he’d like. You theorize that Peter had some extra space on this parchment and means to fill it up like the poor preacher who looks at his watch and thinks, “Hey, I’ve got twenty more minutes!” and conjures up the favorite bits he returns to again and again.

Peter began a new section in 5:1 addressing the elders, but that section starts with “so” linking it back to the previous one where Peter was again expounding the theme of the letter, nicely summarized in 4:19, “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” Elders are to do the good work of shepherding the flock of God among them, despite present suffering in hope of eternal glory. Peter then ends his exhortation to elders holding forth this promise of glory (5:4)

In 5:5 Peter turns to address the saints as a whole. He begins with the word “likewise.” He is now exhorting the church for the same reason he exhorted elders, because of present suffering, and future glory, and the good they are called to do. Peter ends his exhortation to the church holding forth the same hope of glory (5:10).

Peter has not neatly packed his suitcase up to this point only to randomly cram the remaining empty space with whatever else he thinks might be handy. Even in every element of his closing (5:12–14) Peter relentlessly returns to his theme. I would unpack this for you, but my exhortation here is simply for you to notice that things are exquisitely packed. Let’s endeavor to be as tenacious in our reading as Peter was in his writing.

The August Theologian: How Heresy Serves the Church

“The rejection of heretics brings into relief what your church holds and what sound doctrine maintains.” —Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

Watching Sitcoms in the Midst of a Battle (1 Peter 4:1–6)

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“Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin…” —1 Peter 4:1 (ESV)

“Arm yourselves!” The word has as clear a military connotation in the original language as the English translation suggests. The noun form of the word translated “arm” is often rendered “weapons.” This is a call to weaponize.

With what are we to arm ourselves? “The same way of thinking.” It would be progress for much of the evangelical church to arm herself with any kind of thinking. Mark Noll has lamented, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” As you sit in the average American church, is the mood predominantly one of amusement or muse-ment? Here’s a test, if you lose electricity, does the worship gathering fall flat? Often a lot of thought goes into such gatherings, but are they thinking about thinking? If their thinking has any links to the academy, it is likely to the one in Hollywood.

We mustn’t pit the mind against the heart, but when the heart is mindlessly moved we have a word for this—manipulation. Collectively, the Christian masses aren’t so much moved by the Spirit as they are manipulated by men. What we want is for the heart to be moved by the mind. If this isn’t so, then our hearts are affected by our own imaginations rather than God’s revelation and we’re found to be worshipping an idol. Ours should be the ambition of Jonathan Edwards, “I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.”

If we are far from arming ourselves with thinking, how much more so from arming ourselves with a kind of militant thinking that is ready to suffer? We are at leisure in the living room of the world rather than at the ready in God’s armory. If the Christian mind isn’t fighting, it’s surrendered. If our minds are not sober, they’re drunk (1 Peter 1:13–14).

The August Theologian: Total Depravity and Original Sin

“At Rome my arrival was marked by the scourge of physical sickness, and I was on the way to the underworld, bearing all the evils I had committed against you, against myself, and against others—sins both numerous and serious, in addition to the chain of original sin by which ‘in Adam we die’ (1 Cor. 15: 22). You had not yet forgiven me in Christ for any of them, nor had he by his cross delivered me from the hostile disposition towards you which I had contracted by my sins. How could he deliver me from them if his cross was, as I had believed, a phantom? Insofar as the death of his flesh was in my opinion unreal, the death of my soul was real. And insofar as the death of his flesh was authentic, to that extent the life of my soul, which disbelieved that, was inauthentic.” —Augustine, Confessions