Everything we need

So at the end of September the Vella family is going to England. This will be the second time in my life that I had travelled overseas and the first for the kids. And, as we get closer there are lots of plans as to what we have to pack, as we can only carry so much. There is a fear, that if we don’t plan, we might not bring everything we need. It would be so much better if there was no weight restrictions and our arms were a lot stronger. This is a realistic worry, as in a usual week in the Vella houshold there are things forgotten. Like did we pack the viola on the right day? Do we have the right covered shoes, or the library bag or music sheets for the right day?

Not having the right thing can be annoying. One time, before we were married, Hannahs family was going overseas and one of her brothers forgot their passport. That’s kinda important. I had to go and collect it from their house and bring it to them at the airport as they didn’t have time to do the round trip before the plane was to leave.

Not having the right things for travel can be frustrating, but do you ever feel like in your Christian journey you don’t have all that you need? Like if only you knew more things, or was back in the first centuary and had seen or met with Jesus. If only you were one of the five thousand fed, or saw Jesus ascend into heaven, then your faith might be stonger? (Ignoring the fact that when Jesus ascended some there still doubted). You might look around or read about people in Church history and think you don’t have all that they have. That you lack something. If only you had more to help in your Christian walk.

Received a Precious faith

In the letter of 2 Peter, Peter is writing so that people will not fall for false teachings, but instead be confident in their knowledge of God and their own salvation. Today we are just looking at the first four verses of this letter, which tells us that we have the same precious faith as Peter and that in Christ we have everything we need for living as a Christian.

We have the same precious faith, and we have everything we need.

The opening sentence starts with

2 Peter 1:1 NIV

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

At the start of this letter, Peter introduces himself as a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter was one of Jesus closest followers, but he did have a bit of a bumpy track record. He was rebuked by Jesus and he did deny knowing Christ three times. But Peter was also restored. He was brought back in to help sheperd and encourage more Jesus followers. And here, Peter is writting at the end of his life, fuiffling that calling, by encouraging Christians to see that

1 & 2 Peter and Jude—Sharing Christ’s Sufferings One Experience

we can possess a faith that will not fail… You can fall and yet still finish… you can have regrets and yet know what it is to be rescued by Christ

Peter write to those who have recieved a faith as precious as his.

The faith they have, they didn’t work for, they didn’t think their way up to enlightment, they didn’t say the right holy prayers or visit the right holy spots, instead they recieved this faith.

We see that it was through the righteouseness of Jesus that they, and we, recieve our faith. Jesus, the only truly right one, gave us our faith. It was only through Jesus’ right living that He kept the law for us, and only through His right scrafice, dying in our place, that we can be saved. And we recieve His accomplishment.

That is why this faith is described as being precious. “Precious” is a bit of a faviourite word for Peter, we get this word twice in our four verses and he mentioned it four more times in his first letter.

Our faith is something of great value. We sometimes think, yes we are saved all well and good, so are many other people, now what? And Peter wants to remind his readers right from the start, that their savation was given to them and is something of great value. Don’t forget this, even if it seems common or basic, our faith is of great value. It cost Jesus His perfect life.

Salvation is like that quick little parable Jesus says in Matthew 13

Matthew 13:45–46 NIV

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

This merchant finds what he is looking for and goes and sells everthing he has, because in his mind, that fine pearl is worth more to him than everything else he has.

Through Christ, we have righteousnss, that is, we are deemed as being right with God because of Jesus. Lets not forget how much it cost God. Lets not forget how good that is.

Bernard of Claivaux (Claire-vough) said

300 Quotations for Preachers from the Medieval Church Righteousness Better than Money

Righteousness is incomparably better than money, because the one enriches and fills only the chest, but the other the soul.

(He means like a treasure chest, not the chest in our bodies.)

No only is our faith given to us and of great value but it is also just as good as Peters.

There is no extra level of being a servant or apostle of Jesus. Those who have been saved by God have the same faith as valuable as everyone else. You don’t graduate or level up higher in the faith. Jews or Gentiltes, Apostels or laypeson, all have recieved the same faith from our rightouse God.

Peter may have physically been with Jesus for a few years, but, we are all saved the same way: through Jesus’ scrafice. We have all recieved this through Christ and so therefore our faith is just as preciouse a Peters.

Jesus is God

And one last point, here, we see that Peter says faith was from “our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Jesus here is called our God and Saviour. Peter knew who he was talking about. Some people say Jesus was a good guy, that he might have been a prophet or a good moral teacher, but how well do they know Jesus? They didn’t spend at least three years with Him. Peter, who was there, says Jesus is God and Saviour. Peter has a right understanding of who Jesus is, and Peter wants to make sure we know the right Jesus, too.

He says this in the second sentence

2 Peter 1:2 NIV

Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Knowledge is a big theme in 2 Peter, it is mentioned six times in three chapters. Peter wants people to have the right knowledge of our God and Saviour. He doesn’t want them lead astray from false teachers. Most false teachers work this way, they say they have recieved some new insights, some new teaching and you have to come and believe and know their new message.

Instead Petere is saying we need to know the right things, which we already have access to, which can grant us an abunance of peace, for if we know we are right with God, this could settle some of our biggest fears.

Everything we need

With this faith-gift that Christians recieve, does it feel like it is enought? Or is this gift a little like a gift that comes with those dreadded words “Batteries not included”. These word are dreadded in our house when we recieve a gift for we might not have any batteries but even worst, if we did, the toy they they are going into is bound to make noise.

Just this week, my sister bought me a heated vest from Amazon as I was saying how cold it has been. That didn’t come with batteries. I had to pay $30 to get it to work.

Do we feel like the gift of faith we have recieved is nice, it is a good idea, but it is a little powerless for us to live now? We need something added to help.

Peter writes these comforting words in sentence 3

2 Peter 1:3 NIV

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

God has given us everything we need. This almost to hard to believe. We haven’t been left alone to fend for ourselves. God has given us everything we need for a godly life. He hasn’t given us everythign we desire or want, He hasn’t given us the knowledge to pass our exames or what stocks to invest in, but He has given us all we need to live as a Christian, He has done this through what we know of Him who called us.

God has called us out of darkness to light. He has acted on our behalf so that we can be redeemed and brought back to Him. Brougt back into His family. He did the calling, He did the saving and so He is going to do the keeping.

God is a completer finisher.

Paul says in Philippians

Philippians 1:6 NIV

that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Our God doesn’t just leave us once we are saved and hopes for the best. What God begins, He will complete.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy along with Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Lion, they go to visit the Wizard because they lacked something. Scarecrow wans a brain, Tin man wants a heart, Lion wants courage and Dorothy wants a way home. But in the end, when they visit the wizard for the second time, they find out, throug the power of friendship, that they already had what they thought they lacked all along. (Dorothy gets the magical shoes right at the start and no one tells her she could use them to get home, who does that?)

Now in the Wizard of Oz, they looked within and triumphe over evil themselves, but for us, we already have everything we need, not because we are self sufficent, but because God provides. He has given us everthing we need.

We have access to knowledge of Him, and so we can see His promises and trust them for God is trustworthy. We don’t need the latest Christian living book to know how to live, as helpful as they may be. There is already a book where we can know God through. We are to know the real Jesus who is God and Saviour, and we can. It is possoble to know the true things about Jesus, so that we will not be led astray from false teachers. We can and should seek Him though His word, not just to gain facts about God. Knowledge here isn’t passive intellectualism, but it is to know Him, to know who He really is, and how glorious and good He is.

And, all this knowing doesn’t mean we don’t do any doing. In the next weeks we will see there are things we are to make every effort in doing. For our knowlege of the personal God, is to change how we are.

Saved for Christian living

But note the order here. We have recieved salvation and then we are to live in a way. There is a process in our chatacter and growth, but not in our salvation.

There is work to be done, but we need to remember the order. That comes after we have been called, after we are already included into God’s family. We don’t make the effort to be adopted by, God does that initally. Only then do we learn what is to live like in His family.

It like when God rescused His people from slavery in the book of Exodus. It was only after He has saved them from the Egyptians, it was only after He had rescused them to be His people, that He gave them the law. They weren’t to keep the law to beome His people, they were already His free people. They were now free to live how God intented them to live. Same with us.

We have everything we need, we have been called by God, but this isn’t a passive calling. There are thing we are to do and we are to live in a ceratin way, but that is next week. For today, we see that our precious faith has been given to us because of Christ, and we have been given what we need now to live in a godly way. So seek out what we already know.

Precious promises

Then in sentence 4 we read:

2 Peter 1:4 NIV

Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

It is through Jesus glory and goodness that He has made precious promises to us. We can trust that we have everything we need, because we have a trustworthy God. Our God is glorious and our God keeps His promises.

This single fact was instrumental in Hannah becoming a Christian. God has made many promises and we can trust that they will come true, because He is a good God.

Peter doesn’t mention what the promises are here, but what we know of God, when He speaks it is valuable. We should listen to His precious promises.

Before Jesus ascended to heaven, His last words to His followers were

Matthew 28:20 NIV

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

In Hebrews we read

Hebrews 13:5–6 NIV

God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

Jesus might have ascended to heaven, but He is still with us. We can take comfort in this precious promise. The Lord is my helper, we do not need to be afriad.

Not only that, God and Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to help us. We have a new heart, one powered by the Spirit, enabling us to follow His good ways.

God has called us, forgiven us, empoweres us and says He will be with us. These are precious promises we can trust. Do you believe this? Well, He said it, so we can tust them.

Participate in the divine nature

And Peter here says, through God’s promises we can participate in the divine nature. This is a bit crazy if you think about it. This is saying that we humans, take some part or share in the divine nature.

This turn of phrase of “participating in the divine nature” has cause some people great interest. What does it mean? This phrase may have been something the false teachers were talking about, as it does appear in other Greek writings of the time. Peter may have wanted to coop their words and reframing in their Christian context.

The Mormons, their fifth president, Lorenzo Son famouly said back in 1840 “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”

They believe that God started as man who worked his way up to become God. And also beleive that we too, if we are good enought, if we follow the right path, we also can become gods oursevles.

That is heritical, God the Father has always been God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. God didn’t self-improve to become a deity, but are we also to become God? Is that what Peter is saying?

Are we like droplets that merge back into the ocean of the invinite divine like some Hindus believe?

In our 2 Peter verse, notice that it contrasts participating in the divine nature with escaping the corruption in the world. This leaving the evil desires of the world means we are to be sepeated from this world.

We are to be holy in this world, which just means to be “other than”, the world. We are to be Holy for God is Holy. In 1 Peter he said this idea a few times. God is Holy and we are to be as well. We can particiate in the divine by being seperate from the evil desires ot this world.

Participaing in the divine may also mean that in the end, we escape the curruption in the world as we are going to get new bodies that are incorruptible, that will last for eternity. We get immortality, which is a trait of God.

Holiness and immortality, are traits we can share with God, without becoming divine. We don’t become divine, we don’t take part in a process that will change our essence. It’s not like we are on a journy in a dark tunnel and overtime as we approch the divine light we merge with it. That’s not the Christian hope. Our hope is that through Christ, we are made new, set apart, holy, and immortal, but God is still God, and we are still His redeemed people.

Wrap up

So take heart. We have been given great and precious promises form God, we have been given a fatih to follow Jesus, we have been given power through the Holy Spirit. We can now, thorugh knowing the real risen Jesus, have everything we need for a godly life.

William Temple who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1940s said:

“It’s no use giving me a play like King Lear or Hamlet, and telling me to write plays like that. Shakespeare could do it; I can’t. And it’s no use giving me the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it; I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me; then I could write plays like that. And if the spirit of Jesus could come and live in me, then I could live a life like that.”

We have the spirit of Jesus in us. We have Gods revelation and access to the true knowldge of Jesus in His word. We have the promises of God.

The batteries are included. We have been given everything we need from God. We have not been left alone. Let us rejoice in this good news, of our precious faith that we have recieved.

Let me pray

Heavenly Father, We thankyou that through Jesus Christ, our God and Saviour we have recieved a precious fath. Help us to increase in knowldge of our glorious and good God.

We thankyou that you have given us everythign we need to live a godly life. We thankyou for your precious promises, help us to know and remember them, so that we can live holy lives, seperate from the worlds evil desires.

Amen.