2 Peter 1

2 Peter 1:1-21

Division 1. (2 Peter 1:1-21.)What the righteousness of a divine Messiah has provided for the believer. The apostle has already shown in his first epistle how God has provided in Christianity a much better thing than Israel by her unbelief has lost. He does not take this up again, but he refers to it in order to enlarge upon the provision made in this way for the practical need of the soul in the revelation of God Himself through Christ; which is, as we know, the very heart of the gospel, as it is indeed of all divine teaching. The attraction of the glory is that, as already said, which is to furnish us with the needed energy to go through the circumstances of the present; and the practical result of this is insisted on, by which the very evil that has come in may only work for the blessing, under God’s overruling hand, of those who are exercised by it, and who find thus around them a condition of things which calls for the full energy of the Spirit of God to meet it. If faith is that which is the very first necessity for us as Christians, then difficulties, as we have so often had to say, are no hindrances to faith, but only that which exercises and manifests it. We find here a certain difference in the way things are presented to us from that which we have had in Paul; and while the glory of Christ and the sharing of that glory are things put before us by both these, yet Paul evidently carries us more completely to heaven itself, where he had indeed seen that glory, as Peter speaks on his part of what he had himself seen upon earth, which had confirmed the message of the prophets of old. Thus, as in the first epistle Peter has carried us back to the words spoken by the Lord to him at the time when Israel’s rejection had already become manifest, so here he dwells upon what had followed this, which is manifestly, more than with Paul, the glory of the Kingdom in which Moses and Elias are found, with their testimony to Christ.

The special line of truth given to each of the inspired writers is manifest. We need them all, and through grace we have them all.

1. We have first of all the power of the divine call in the exceeding great and precious promises which have become our own. These are not, of course, in any wise Israel’s promises. The “precious faith” of which he speaks is the faith of Christianity, which has come to replace that expectation of earthly blessing which Judaism created. It is in this way that he speaks of “the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” As Paul speaks of the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, with Peter, on the other hand, there is the righteousness of Him who indeed is God, but who is also Israel’s Messiah -a divine Saviour; who, if in Israel He may seem to have labored in vain and spent His strength for naught, yet only brings out, for those who have nevertheless believed in Him, a fulness of blessing unimagined before. Grace and peace are thus multiplied to them in “the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,” which the apostle therefore, desires, in fact, to be multiplied to us.

Alas, as we well know, we do not always find the blessing which God would have us to know. Indeed, how many of us do find the fulness of what is in God’s heart for us? And if this may perhaps not seem so wonderful, considering our own limitations and the infiniteness of the blessing, yet how shall we excuse the dullness and slowness with which we respond to the goodness which has been manifested towards us? How little coveting on our part is there of the very things in which we, nevertheless, believe all true riches, all blessings, are to be found. “His divine power,” says the apostle, “hath given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.”* His power, notice, has given them to us. For how much had to be wrought in order that these blessings might be our own! God has not merely spoken; He has acted. The new creation is a work more wonderful in power than that which God spoke so easily into being. In this He has been not only a Laboror, but a Sufferer; wonderful as it is to speak of this in connection with One who is a divine Saviour. And thus God has been manifested, as we know, in Christ, -not even in temporary manifestation, though with an eternal effect, -but in One who abides ever the Man Christ Jesus, and even, as we see in Revelation, in some sense as “the Lamb slain,” and who has made the very throne of God the throne also of the Lamb.

Here is found that which truly lays hold upon the heart for God. It is a revelation not limited in its effect even to the children of men, but which is that into which the angels look with adoration; sufficient surely to gather up our affections out of a world that lieth in the wicked one, the very world of the cross itself, and to which we are crucified by that cross.

Thus, it is not merely a salvation that is provided, wonderful as this is, and we have not attained what God desires for us in the simple knowledge of salvation -it is God Himself who is drawing us to Himself; and the knowledge of salvation simply in the way that so many seem to know it is not sufficient to fulfil that which the apostle has in mind here. People can vaunt their salvation and go on with the world in decent forms to the very fullest extent; but if we have the knowledge not of salvation simply, but of the Saviour, it is of One who “hath called us by glory and virtue,” by setting before us that which is all the blessedness of life and which is outside the world and all that is in it, while it gives us thus “virtue,” the soldier’s courage, to go through the world as a place merely of opposing forces, where all that is of it, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father.” It is in this way that His “exceeding great and precious promises” are given to us, that thus we may become “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” We should notice here how the power of the Word is constantly that which the Spirit uses to produce in us all His work. It is thus we become “partakers of the divine nature;” it is thus we are assimilated to Him who is revealed to us. We are changed, as the apostle Paul told us, “into the same image, from glory to glory.” And thus the lust is overcome, which is the sign of the fallen creature, the expression of wants which, not having found their satisfaction in God, can find satisfaction nowhere else; and which only, therefore, debase more and more the soul that thus pursues its own gratification, drinking at every broken cistern to quench the thirst which can nowhere be satisfied except by that fountain of living waters, from which unbelief has turned. This is the first point, therefore, for us here; and it is impossible to face the condition of things around without it -to have found in God, as He has revealed Himself in Christ, that which is sufficiency and more than sufficiency, satisfaction and more than satisfaction, for every possible need. These things indeed come to us practically in the shape of “promises,” which need faith in them to keep us pressing on to the fulfilment, but which thus draw our eyes away from the things around us, and develop the energy of the pilgrim and the overcomer.
2. All is grounded, says the apostle, on this with which we start. The knowledge of what is ours is to arouse in us a diligence which will make us fruitful for God. The new life which God has given us needs development, and here is the difference between one like Paul himself and the most stunted, nay, deformed, that we can find among Christians. Alas, how many are these! The very first point, the diligence, how little is it actually found to make progress in the things of God!

How terrible to think that the certainty of what is ours should in so many seem rather to relax diligence than to create it! We hope, after all, to get to heaven at last; and how little do we realize, nevertheless, what eternal consequences may follow the lack of proper development on earth! The present and the future are not so widely separated as we are prone to imagine, and we must not think it a right apprehension of God’s grace which can make us just content to get to heaven without having lived for Christ or honored Him on the way. Whatever heaven may be for such, we may be perfectly sure that loss here will be nevertheless eternal loss.*
The apostle, as we see, is not thinking here of works done for Christ. These come in their place surely; but what he is thinking of now is the development of Christian character, the fruits of that acquaintance with God of which he has been speaking. They are given for us in the most orderly manner possible, and we must not miss the order; but it is not as our common version puts it, a simple addition of one thing to another that he speaks of. It is, as already said, rather the development of life of which he is speaking, which is the result, therefore, of growth, and in which blossom and fruit have their orderly succession and necessary relation to one another. Thus, it is really not, “Add to your faith, virtue,” simply; but “in your faith supply virtue” -see that your faith is of that kind which produces it. Without faith first, there will be none; and so with every step of what is here. The knowledge is found in the virtue; the temperance in the knowledge, and so on; just as the bud contains within itself all the parts that are to unfold in due time, while these, nevertheless, are not merely to be unfolded, or, rather, are unfolded only by their own growth and development. Thus he begins with faith.* Without faith there is no love, there is no beginning; and the very first thing which is to proceed from faith and to characterize it is “virtue,” as already said, the soldier’s virtue, -courage, decision, -that quality that enables one to go through all opposition. This is, of course, a first necessity if we think of what the scene is in which God is finding fruit for Himself, how thoroughly His plants are exotics. Everything is naturally against us, as His people. Thus we must draw from unseen resources. We cannot draw from the soil of this world. That is impossible.

We must be as Christ was, roots out of a dry ground, sustained by the influences of heaven, and not by the earth, which cannot yield sustenance. Faith in itself means the turning away from earth, from all that is for sight or sense; and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory whom the world crucified, is that which overcometh the world. Here is the first thing, therefore, that we need to satisfy ourselves that we are possessed of -an ability to go on, whatever the hindrances, counting the cost, but which counts on both sides, and which recognizes the cost of lack of communion with Christ and all that is involved in this as being that which overbalances all other.
Here therefore, at the outset, the very principle of progress is given us. If earth is closed to us, we must lay hold upon heaven; and thus it is that we learn, therefore, to acquire; we find “in virtue, knowledge.” We cannot learn the things of God, our own though they may be, without the honest intention to live according to them. If we want to have barren knowledge, we must not wonder if God withhold it from us. In fact, what greater injury could our souls receive than just to gain the mere outside acquaintance with things, so that we suppose we know them when there is no virtue and no blessing, no effect to be produced in us by it all.*
This knowledge, then, leads on to “temperance.” Notice that as the apostle has spoken of Scripture as first of all being “profitable for doctrine,” then for “correction” so it is here. The very first thing, as we learn the truth, is to recognize the claim that the truth has upon us -the discipline of it by which it divorces us from other things, gives us thus self-restraint, the power to command ourselves; as we may be sure that we can command nothing else if we do not begin here. “In knowledge,” therefore, we are to find “temperance,” self-restraint. The truth is to govern us, and to give us thus the power of self-government.* The heart must be in the knowledge, not the head simply; and the government of one’s self, as is plain, leads on to and develops what is the next thing here, “patience.”
If we have not self-command in a world like this, where everything is contrary, how impossible it will be to manifest patience! If our hearts are really withdrawn from the world, governed by unseen things in which we find, in fact, the fullest satisfaction, how easy will patience be! We have not, if even we are called to endure the loss of all things, as the apostle Paul puts it, with all this to endure the loss of one thing that is really our own. God has all this in His own keeping for us. If we recognize the government of God, therefore, and if we recognize the grace that has manifested itself toward us, it will make patience easy, make it necessary and sure. Thus, first of all, the truth acts upon us. It delivers us from all things that are contrary to it. It makes us masters of ourselves and of our circumstances. Now the life will manifest, as the result of this, “godliness.” He who in fact has command of us, will be seen in command. Circumstances will not mold us, but He who is above all circumstances. Let them be adverse as they may, we have but to be still and know that He is God.

That is what is sufficient knowledge, if we know Him who is God. We see already that, of course, godliness must have been in the life all through. There could have been no faith, no virtue, no knowledge, no temperance or patience, apart from this. Nevertheless, it has to find room for its proper development. We are delivered from the things contrary to it, and thus the life gains a character which may seem, indeed, to come strangely far on here in the order of development; but we shall find, -there is no question, -if we consider it, if we think of ourselves and look around us, how much there is in Christians themselves that hinders the development of this character. How much needs to be got out of the way before there can be the serene blessedness which is implied in it -God seen in all, God owned in all, God joyed in at all times!

How great an attainment is this! how greatly to be desired therefore! -not that we may have merely some rudimentary experience of it, but the full thing itself as contemplated here. And then notice, “in godliness, brotherly love.” Yet, says the apostle: “By this we know we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” Here, too, is something, therefore, which must have begun with the beginning in us. Yet it is plain that it is produced by godliness, and that it is found in godliness, not otherwise: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.” We are prone to make great mistakes here as to the love of God itself, to judge of what there is in us in this way more by the happy feeling produced, more or less temporarily, and gauged by the glow in our heart, rather than by the apostle’s test of it: “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments:” a test under which how much of what we have counted such would not abide! In how many of most apparently lovely Christians to whom, if you bring the simple and plain command of God with regard to something, you may find even a resentment hard to be understood! How many there are who insist upon certain commands of God very strongly, and have their blind eye turned to what are His evident commands in another direction! But His commandments are His commandments. There are no exceptions, no degrees, we may even say, as to this.

One plain command is just as much that as any other plain command, and we have no right to estimate the importance of one command in such a way as to make light of another. It is as the apostle says with regard to the law: you may keep every commandment but one, and if you break that, you are characterized as a law-breaker, no matter how many you may keep.

God must be absolute Master. He will be satisfied with nothing else; but then, as the apostle says, “His commandments are not grievous.” Even in the law the first commandment of all was, “Thou shalt love;” and the Lord sums it up as all in its essence, “Thou shalt love.” What is this but the reflection of the character of Him who, as He commands this, necessarily delights in it? All other love that can be called such is but the reflection of His love, and what then are His commandments except the dictates of such perfect love towards us? But then if “this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments,” here is something of necessity, as the apostle teaches, by which we may gauge our love to our brethren also. It is no love to ignore evil. To seek to free each other from it is divine.

To win a brother out of it, how blessed if it be accomplished! But to ignore it is dishonor to God and cruelty to our brother, both in one.

Thus, then, we can understand fully how it is “in godliness” that we must find “love.”*
There is but one thing that the apostle adds to this, and that is all in a word, as one may say: “In brotherly love, love.” Love is what God is. It is the divine nature itself; and thus, as we see again here, is what has been with us from the beginning; but the full development of it is what the apostle is pleading for here. These are the steps that lead to it; and there is no other way of attainment than as we come to it thus. Here, then, is that which the truth is to work in us. Here is how the “exceeding great and precious promises” are to vindicate themselves as having in them all things pertaining to life and godliness." These are the things which alone can enable us to pass through a World which is Satan’s world, where allurement on the one hand is strengthened by opposition on the other, and both would unite to make us what the apostle calls idle and unfruitful in regard to the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." We have seen how the apostle of love, the disciple who in this way drew out more than any the heart of the Lord towards him, speaks of where he had acquired this character, and how alone we can acquire it. “He that sinneth,” he says, “hath not seen Him, neither known Him.” To be in living acquaintance with Him, walking in His company, learning from day to day in His presence -this is what will make unfruitfulness impossible to us. We shall not be occupied with ourselves either.

It will be enough to look in His face, to realize our own shortcomings. It is He Himself who has said: “Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.” That “the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” should be unfruitful is a thing contrary to its very nature. The only possible way of its coming about, says the apostle, is by forgetfulness of it. “He that lacketh these things is blind, short-sighted, and hath forgotten his cleansing from his former sins.” It is impossible to live in the things without corresponding fruit. It is impossible to be in the sun without reflecting its beams. If we are not reflecting them, we must have got out of them. That is the whole story; and alas for the possibility, which is most evident everywhere in Scripture, for those who have been cleansed and who once were alive to the joy and blessedness of the appreciation of divine love like this, ever forgetting what they have experienced and the price paid for their deliverance; and yet these things steal easily and quietly upon one. It is, indeed, the only possible way.

An open assault of the enemy would be resisted by a soul in the joy of a Saviour’s love; but that same soul may be gradually weaned from it by the pressure of other things -the call of imagined duties, the necessary occupation with the things of the world, the cares of this life, and the deceitfulness of riches, deceiving, alas, even those who are not possessors of them. The conscience is not alarmed by any open fall.

God’s mercy may, indeed, allow a fall, in order to wake one up with a start to what is coming upon him; but in how many cases there is nothing that alarms the conscience, nothing that is manifestly evil, -a little forgetfulness of prayer, a little disregard of meditation, a little less time for occupation with the Word, a greater pressure of things, so that the very time that may be used in this way shall be unfruitful, -how steadily and stealthily may the work of decline go on and gray hairs come upon one while he knows it not! The Spirit of God that would minister Christ is grieved, the power is gone out of the life, there is no longer the joy of the Lord which is strength, faith is no more in its proper activity. This is what “short-sightedness” means. Faith is never that. The face turned towards Egypt, there is a famine in one’s own land, and then soon the steps are in that direction also, and only the mercy of God can make one realize what it all means. We have, therefore, to use diligence to make our calling and election sure, -not as if they were anything else but sure in themselves, -but to make them a steadfast realization in the soul, a motive to action, a power to devote oneself to the things for which God has called and chosen us: “For if ye do these things,” adds the apostle, “ye shall never fall; for so shall entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be richly furnished to you.” He is not talking of “entering” into it simply, but of an entrance richly furnished. God would not have us enter there without bringing in with us something acceptable to Him, and something that shall turn to one’s own praise from Him. Let us notice that it is of the kingdom still that Peter is talking. He could not in this way speak of entering furnished richly into the Father’s house. It would not be in the same way suitable. The rewards that he has in his mind belong rather to the kingdom than the Father’s house. The titles and dignities of the kingdom, whatever their value, really do not come in as a question in connection with the Father and our relationship to Him as such.* We have to avoid the confusion which is in so many minds between what is the fruit of Christ’s work and what is the fruit of our own; and we have to remember that, after all, the truest, sweetest, most wonderful things, as necessarily the fruit of Christ’s work must be, are just the things that we share in common. A child can never be other or less than a child in that eternal state.

Distance on a child’s part from the Father is impossible. The members of the body of Christ are that, not of their own striving, but of His gift.

That relationship to Him, of which Scripture speaks under the image of the bride, embraces the whole Christian company, out of which none can drop who have ever belonged to it. Yet, while relationship is not and cannot be affected by our faithfulness here in the relationship, nevertheless there are things of the most precious character that can be affected. The white stone with the name written upon it, the testimony. of His approbation, that which is not for public display but for secret communion between the soul and Him, this depends manifestly upon His having somewhat to approve; and, as already said, the honors of the Kingdom, things that are bestowed by His hand in testimony of His approval, are necessarily of this character. As we think of it, if we think of it at all aright, it will promote humility in us rather than pride to think of any reward to such as we are. Yet love will bestow, and love on our part will surely value that which it bestows. His gifts will be worthy of Himself, while He Himself will be infinitely greater than all gifts. But let us remember the apostle’s appeal to us here, which we cannot disregard without loss, not merely for time, but for eternity.
3. The apostle goes on to assure those he is addressing of his desire for them, and that thus he would be careful always to put them in mind of that which, nevertheless, they knew and were established in. How strange, when we realize the character of these things, that there should need to be this stirring up by putting one in remembrance of that which it is not only joy to remember, but which it is, in fact, all the joy we have to remember! He would therefore, as long as he was in the tabernacle of the body, seek to do this, all the more that he had intimation from the Lord Himself that he was soon to put off his tabernacle. The apostle John has told us of the intimation that the Lord had given him that when he was old another would gird him, and carry him whither he would not. This, it is added, signified what death he should die; but it does not say that Peter at that time apprehended exactly its significance in that way.

He had had, apparently, a more explicit and personal word from the Lord since then.* He would therefore use diligence that after his departure they might have at any time ability to call these things to remembrance. He was providing for them in this way in this epistle, and providing for our own needs, through the goodness of God, at the same time. How wonderful is the mercy which has thus given us something that should not have the uncertainty of tradition, its liability to corruption, but a plain word which would abide within our reach at all times!
That he and the other witnesses had not followed skilfully devised fables in making known the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ he could assure them as one of the eye-witnesses of His majesty, who on the holy mount, -hallowed forever by the wondrous memory of His transfiguration, -had received from God the Father honor and glory. The voice had come from that well-known shrine of the Godhead which had so great a place in Israel’s history, and which he calls here “the excellent glory.” It was the “cloud” that went with the people through the wilderness of old, that had entered into the land with them, that had dwelt in a tent and tabernacle until Solomon built the house. It was that which Ezekiel saw; at last wearied out with the unbelief and corruption of the favored people, departing finally before Nebuchadnezzar overthrew the house itself. Now indeed that glory had found a place of rest, not in a house made with hands, but in a living Person, God’s beloved Son, in whom He had found His delight. What a Voice to hear now -no longer the commandments of a fiery law, but the testimony to Him who in grace companied with them, and in whom they had already found for their own souls the divine supply for their deepest need! Here was indeed the confirmation of the prophetic word in which the Old Testament bore witness to the New, the brightness shining for the soul along the track of history, amid the darkness of the world, until the day should dawn and the Morning Star arise.

This is a passage of well-known difficulty to many, but the apostle does not surely mean to limit the use of prophecy as something to encourage us merely till we have the proper Christian hope. That hope those to whom he was writing certainly had.

Was it not theirs already, who had the word of prophecy confirmed when they had before them the blessed One who is at once the Morning Star, which will summon His people to Himself, and the Sun of Righteousness, the bringer of day to the earth at large? It is not at all a statement that prophecy would have fulfilled its purpose when this anticipatory confirmation of it should take place; but as it pointed, so it led on to the end: its light brightening and widening from century to century, even as now it still goes on for us, the night being still around us, although in our hearts it is not night, but day, for upon us the light of that future has already risen. Prophecy, even of the Old Testament, is thus not set aside. The faith that recognizes the great end of it as that which is still to come cleaves only the more to the testimony by which, in fact, the brightness of it shines more and more upon the path until the perfect day. The proper placing of the parenthesis here removes all difficulty. The apostle adds to this what has again had difficulty for many, but in another way. “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of its own interpretation.” “Its own” is the literal force of the word here, which our common version gives as “private,” and which Rome has perverted, in the way well known to us, by making it mean that Scripture is not to be interpreted by the individual for himself, but he must have the consent of the Church before he can know certainly what it speaks. But the words of the apostle say nothing whatever of this kind. In the first place, he is speaking distinctly of prophecy, not of Scripture as a whole, although it is not necessary to contest that Scripture is always more and more made intelligible to us by the light of other Scripture. The habit of taking single texts apart from their context has, as we know, been often most disastrous to interpretation; but this has nothing whatever to do with the so-called “right of private judgment,” which is better put as the liberty of the soul to hear for itself what is by the Spirit made known to every one. The other thought is only a dexterous way of making the voice of the Church override the voice of Scripture, and of enshrining the Spirit in a corporation only to be found for the purpose sought in certain imagined representatives of it, and which, the more earnestly we seek for it, the more escapes from us. The voice of the Church, as given in the celebrated saying, “Quod semper, quod ubique, et quod ab omnibus” -that is, “What always, what everywhere, and what by all,” has been believed, has no existence in fact.

As it is well known, fathers have contradicted fathers; councils have been at issue with councils; popes have clashed with popes: there is nothing that in this way one can lay hold of with confidence at all. Put it all together, and it is at best the word of men -of men not always even respectable, and the Spirit which is supposed to dwell in them is assumed, but little manifested. How blessed to turn from it all to that word of God -addressed, as it is, not to teachers, but to private Christians, which private Christians are therefore surely capable of receiving, or it stultifies itself, and which speaks in its own sweet, homely way in the language of One whose testimony it was that “to the poor the gospel is preached” (Matthew 11:5)! Here not pride of heart is nurtured by the consciousness of the divine voice speaking to man, but lowliness, which will surely believe that His word, in the very form of it, finds the most suited expression, and bears its own best witness to the truth. But, as already said, “its own interpretation” does not and cannot refer to any private judgment of any one, but simply to an interpretation isolated from all that the same Word has given elsewhere, and which would therefore necessarily run the risk of being perverted from its proper use, as a sentence more or less broken, or a page of a book detached from all the rest of it. And it is of prophecy that the apostle is speaking, not of Scripture at large, and prophecy which has for its Author in all its parts the Spirit of God alone. “Men spake from God,” not otherwise; not therefore according to their own wills or according to their own thoughts, but moved by Him who sees the end from the beginning, and for whom all the depths of God are familiar realities. This, too, one has no desire to confine in its application to prophecy. Assuredly it is true of Scripture from end to end. It is our joy to know this. Yet at the same time it is a first principle for prophetic interpretation to realize in this way the connection of every single prophecy with prophecy as a whole. We are thus saved from perverting it to a mere application to certain things which may have, after all, no importance in God’s thoughts such as they have in our own, and which may be even entirely out of the sphere of God’s revelation. We shall find everywhere, as we take up prophecy itself, how important is this rule which is here announced to us.

It is thus things get their place and relation to one another -a relation which gives assurance to us that they do indeed belong to that place. Here alone they will be found to answer perfectly in all parts to that which is written, and we shall never have to lay upon Scripture the burden of what is due to some misfitting upon our own part, some mere human mistake.