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Everything We Need

2 Peter 1v2-4

29th December 2023

2 Peter 1v2-4
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 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.

Let's take a look at these wonderful, life-changing words.

2 Peter 1v2
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Grace is God's generous willingness to give good gifts to us, including the saving faith we considered when we studied verse 1. As Ephesians 2v5 says, "it is by grace you have been saved". God's peace isn't just peace and quiet. Most of us are well aware that it doesn't mean freedom from problems. It means wholeness, well-being, peace of mind. The peace God gives us is about who we are, not about what's happening around us. This wonderful grace and amazing peace are available to all Christians in abundance.

This abundant grace and peace are ours through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. You can't receive more grace by trying to receive more grace. You can't always have peace by trying to be more peaceful. You can only receive increasing grace and peace by getting to know God the Father and God the Son better.

2 Peter 1v3
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Jesus has called us by his own glory and goodness. He's so wonderful that we want Him in our lives, and I hope we want to live godly lives out of gratitude and admiration for such an amazing Saviour.

Wonderfully, graciously, lovingly, God has given us everything we need to live, and for our lives to be godly lives. That's what we want, I hope - to live good, God-oriented lives, glorifying our Saviour and loving our neighbour. We can never achieve these things by ourselves, but God's power has already given us everything we need to do this.

You might not feel like you've been given everything you need but, if you're a Christian, you have. Perhaps we just need to learn how to use what we've been given.

Jesus has given us Christians saving faith. He's given us the Holy Spirit, the Bible and the Church – each other. He's given us the forgiveness of sins, adoption as God's children, and eternal life. He's given us Baptism and the Lord's supper, the Breaking of Bread. He gives us His presence, His guidance, His comfort and His healing power. He heals our minds, hearts, memories and relationships. Sometimes, He heals our bodies. I'm sure all Christians can tell stories of what God has given them, and how God has helped them. In the words of John Newton:

Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come
‘Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

All our resources, all our strength, are from God, not from us. Again, we receive all this through our knowledge of him.

I want to live a truly Christian, Christian life. I hope you do. The key to living successful Christian lives is knowing God increasingly well. To experience more and more of God's grace and peace, to please Him and do His work effectively, loving other people in Jesus's name, we must deepen our relationship with God. Come to church regularly and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ, celebrate the Lord's Supper. Invest in prayer and Bible study. Put to death anything in your actions or your thought life that damages your relationship with God. Then you will experience more and more of God's grace and peace.

2 Peter 1v4
Through these [that is, through His own glory and goodness] he [Jesus] 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.

Because God is infinite in power and glorious in wisdom, He's able to make wonderful promises to us. Because God is good, He chooses to make them, and to keep them. The Bible is full of promises to us, and we can trust every one of them. A particular promise is the Gospel. The Good News is repeated in different words in several places in the Bible. Here are two of the more well-known ones:

John 3v16
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 10v9
If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

We can absolutely trust these promises because God is perfect and honourable, and doesn't go back on His word. God gives us these promises so that we might believe them and be saved and, in so doing, we participate in the divine nature. This is perhaps the most amazing promise God makes to us. No only are we forgiven and adopted as God's children; God promises that we who trust Him will one day be like Him.

We already participate to some extent in the divine nature; the Holy Spirit lives in us, and we are already sanctified to some degree. We are more godly than we were, and the process of what we call sanctification will eventually be competed. We will never be God. We will never have His power or His wisdom. But we will be completely morally pure – sinless. Our characters will be the same as His character. Isn't that astonishing? We will live for ever in perfect union with God. We will share in His glory. As John writes:

1 John 3v2-3
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

God's desire for us is that we escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. This process has already started:

It's hard to imagine, but it's guaranteed by God. All this is by the power of God, not our doing. And all this comes through our increasing knowledge of God.