Thank you for directing your internet connection to this sermon audio page for Christ Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You can learn more about ChristOPC by visiting our website at www.christopcatl.org. ChristOPC meets for worship each Sunday at 11 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. Our sermon passage this evening is in 2 Peter 1. We'll be continuing on in our new series in this book this evening, looking at verses 3 and 4. I'll go ahead and begin reading in verse 1. So here now, the holy, inspired, and inerrant word of our God, 2 Peter 1, verses 1 through 4. 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 by the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Through the knowledge of him, called us by 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. The grass withers and flower fades, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Well, the amount of times that I have, and probably you have heard, laudatory phrases like self-made or self-sufficient or self-respect, I couldn't even begin to count them or catalog them into a single volume. We kind of prize the idea of the self-made man. We value the reality of being self-sufficient and dependent upon no one and no thing. And there's reasons why those sorts of things are valued. in our culture. We appreciate it when someone works hard and accomplishes something that they are working toward. And it's true that we should at least strive to be fiscally self-sufficient to where there's enough to provide for the needs of our lives and our families and even can share and give some of those things away. But there is a significant problem, isn't there? when we take those ideas of self-made and self-sufficient and apply it to our Christian lives. There's a problem when we begin to see and bring over those sorts of cherished things in our culture and consider our lives of faith as something self-made and self-sufficient. Because if we've taken much time at all to read the Word of God or to come to terms with passages like this one here in 2 Peter, we find the sobering truth that we are not self-made, nor are we self-sufficient. Instead, the reality of the gospel is that we are God-made and God is our sufficiency for faith, for life, and for godliness. That the soul and sufficient cause for our salvation. The soul and efficient working to grant us new resurrection life and eternal life in heaven and even the power to live a godly life today does not come from anything inside of us, but rather comes from God Himself. The Christian life, and even living a godly life as a Christian, is something given from God. It is something worked in us by the power of God Almighty Himself. It is a working of the grace, love, and power of the Creator and Sustainer and Consummator of the universe. In fact, the main verb used twice in our passage this evening is to give. Verse 3 begins, His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And then verse 4 continues, by which He has given or granted to us His precious and very great promises. Everything you have in Christ, everything you are in Christ. And the life that you live in Christ is a gift from God, given by His almighty power to work that faith and to work that life in you. See, Peter, in this letter, is going to have a lot of things to say, beginning in verse 5, about how you ought to live your life. but how you want to live righteous and holy lives in the midst of an age where we are surrounded by wickedness on every side. But before he gets to anything that he is going to call you to do, he wants you to have a robust understanding of how you are able to do it to begin with. And it's not because you're so great, it's not because you're so wonderful, or you have the ability in and of yourselves to turn up righteous living. It's because God is at work in you and for you. It's because your salvation is the very working of God's almighty power. The words of Augustine in his confession, I think, catch the tenor of 2 Peter 1 well, where he says in one of his most famous quotes, Lord, give what you command and command what you will. Well, we could say here in verses three and four that the Lord is giving what he commands. He is giving you life and godliness in Christ. And then beginning in verse five and on through the rest of the letter, God is going to command what he wills for you. So this evening, let us consider together the power of God, who gives you everything you need for faith and life and life and godliness. And we'll do this under two parts. First, considering how his divine power has given you every spiritual blessing in Christ. And second, how he has given you his precious and very great promises. Well, Peter begins our passage this evening saying, his divine power has granted to us all things. And I think the first question we have to answer for this text is, who is the he? Who's the his? What is this referring to in our passage? We know divine power that it's God, but is there something more that we can say? Well, remember how verse two ended. Jesus, our Lord. Jesus our Lord." And then the very next word is His. So the His divine power, I believe, is most probably a reference to Jesus Christ Himself. Peter is drawing your attention to the power of the Son of God that is working life and godliness in you. In fact, the other occasion in Peter's letter where he talks about the power of God, I think confirms this to us, and it's in verse 16, so just a few verses later, where Peter says there, we did not follow cleverly devised myths we made known to you, notice what he says, the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. They weren't making it up. They didn't devise some myths to then fashion a new religion. Instead, they bore eyewitness testimonies to the power and the coming of Jesus Christ. And what Peter is there saying in verse 16 is that they saw the power of God on display for the accomplishment of your salvation. that he witnessed the declaration that Jesus is the Son of God. He heard the voice booming from the top of the mountain telling them about who Christ is. Peter was there when Jesus went to the cross and accomplished atonement for sins. He saw the resurrected Christ and he saw Him ascend up into heaven. He was a witness to the power of God to accomplish your salvation. But interestingly, here back in verse three, Peter is talking about the same divine power of the same person of the Trinity in Jesus Christ, and I think he's dealing with it not so much in terms of what Christ has accomplished for your salvation, but rather instead his divine power to apply that salvation to you. See, Jesus's power and God's power is not just to finish the work of redemption in history, but it's also in the application of redemption in your lives. It is God's power that is at work sowing faith in your hearts. It is God's power that is at work to conform you more and more to the image of Christ. It is God's power that is at work to cause you to look to Christ to begin with, to change your nature, to change you from sinners to saints and to long to live the life of faith for Him. God's divine power accomplishes your redemption, but it also applies redemption to His people. You see, the foundation of your salvation, both accomplished and applied, is the power of God. It is God working and the strength of His might to accomplish your salvation and then to save you particularly. and to unite you to your Savior, that you would have faith and that you would have life. Isn't that what Peter says here in our verse this evening? His, that is Christ's, divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Life in Christ, the godly life that you are called to live of holiness and righteousness, that is, the working of Christ's divine power in you. And notice the emphasis that he places here. He says that his divine power has granted to us all things. We should put that in bold and italics and underline all caps. Because Peter is emphasizing here the reality that everything that you need for salvation is yours through the power of God working in you and uniting you to Christ. There is no sense where you contribute to the application of salvation to you. It is the soul and almighty work of God. It is the power of God at work that even causes you to cling to Christ by faith to begin with. It is all from God and it is all to God. See, it's important to realize when we're reading passages like 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 3. that those systems of theology that are out there that'll say things like God gives a general unction to all people that maybe perhaps through their own will they may lay hold of Christ or others that are probably more common where Jesus is standing at the door knocking and you won't feel the influence of his power at all until you open the door or out of accord with Peter's instructions. God does not wait for you to open the door for you to feel the influence in His life. It is the very power of God that works faith in your hearts to begin with. It is the power of God as we confess together in the words of WLCC 67 that causes us to be renewed to faith. Without God's power, we do not have life at all. Apart from God's power, we remain dead in our sins and our trespasses. But God's strength and His power works to grant to His children, to grant to His people, the sheep of His pastor, the church of Jesus Christ, everything that you need for life and for godliness. All things, Peter says, all things in your life in Christ, all things in your pursuit of godliness and righteousness and holiness are given to you through the power of God to save. For the Christian, this is wonderful good news. Because all Christians know and have experienced at some point the reality of sin. It's sinfulness and it weighs upon the condition of one who is outside of Christ. And we all know that by the strength of our own hands, we would never be able to reach out and lay hold of Him. but because of the strength of his arm, the strength of his might, he is able to save to the uttermost those whom he calls to himself. Do you remember what we read a little while ago in Isaiah chapter 40? Those who wait for the Lord, shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. The potency and the power to live this life of faith comes from the potency and power of God himself, giving you life, sowing godliness in your hearts. And this is the case, beloved. not only in the initial moments of your salvation, not only when you initially come to faith and trust and rest in Christ, but it's also the case for the entirety of your Christian life. God's power is not something that sets you on a right path and then leaves you to live by your own means. It is something that continues and works perpetually in you to continue renewing you unto life in Christ and to continue invigorating you unto godliness and righteousness. There is no sense where upon the foundation of God's power you then begin to rely on the strength of your own hands. Your very faith and your entire life is from the power of God. And think of what that means for you today. How significant and hopeful this is for all of you who are sitting in this room, for those of you who may be fighting some sort of indwelling sin, for those of you who might be struggling with depression or a lack of hope, for those of you who might be wondering, where on earth are things going? For my children and maybe even in my own life, when we read passages like this, it takes us to reckon with the reality that God's power is at work in all of those things. that sin does not have the final word. That while we might not know where everything is going to go, that God remains at work in our lives. where even as we may not have sight to see everything, we know a God who controls all things which come to pass. His divine power, beloved, has granted to you all things, everything that pertains to life and godliness. But how? How is it that God's divine power works in you to give you this faithful life, this resurrection life and this holiness and this godliness. Well, Peter doesn't leave it to our imagination. He continues saying here in the second half of verse three, that this power is at work in you through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. It is through, or by means of, the knowledge of the one who has called you to himself. Now it's a remarkable thing, isn't it, when we think about what Peter is saying here. We have a tendency to juxtapose relationship and knowledge, or emotions and knowledge. In fact, shortly after I became a Christian, probably never even heard the word Presbyterian in my entire life and I had barely known who John Calvin was. I remember sitting in a worship service and the pastor was preaching, if you could call it that, on Genesis chapter 3. And he said something that stuck in my mind to this very day. And what he said was this, this is a direct quote. The fall happened when Adam and Eve exchanged relationship for theology. The fall happened when Adam and Eve exchanged relationship for theology. And what he continued to do throughout the rest of his monologue is he talked about what Adam and Eve really should have done is just enjoyed their time in the garden, just spent some time kind of floating around in paradise and enjoying life that is there. And then they could have, you know, walked around with God and been happy. But instead, instead of that just ecstatic life, that easy life, just having this natural relationship, instead, they really desire to know more about God. They desired that cold, analytic thing called knowledge, rather than this warm and comforting thing called relationship. I never walked back in the doors of that church. And I didn't because, quite frankly, that sermon made absolutely no sense to me. Because when I read passages like this in 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 3, And I hear that God has made himself known to his people. I hear the wonderful truth from John 17, 3, that what is eternal life according to Jesus in John 17, 3, but that they would know God and the Christ whom he has sent. You see, knowing God is eternal life. You can't have a relationship with a God you don't know. It doesn't work that way. And Peter, I think, is making that quite clear here. For what God's power does for you is He leads you to knowing God, to knowing the Lord, and to, as you know the Lord, receive what? Life, eternal life, abundant life with God in Christ through the knowledge of Him who has called us to His own glory and excellence. No, there is no contrast. between knowledge and relationship. to run more to his word, to think deeply upon it, to chew on it and to ponder it and to read the words of theologians and pastors who have come before us and tell us about the God whom they have come to know as well. And this God is the God, Peter says, who has called us to his own glory and excellence. By his divine power, God calls his people to himself. He effectually moves in their lives, effectually calls dead sinners and resurrects them to spiritual life that they might know him. And knowing him, they might live forever with him. And as we come. To experience this power of God through the knowledge of God as he calls us to himself. Peter tells us that this is ultimately by his own glory at excellence. This phrase is puzzled commentators for many a year and many a page. If you go and do any reading on it. But I want you to notice Peter's use of word pairs here. life and godliness, glory and excellence. And in fact, the term excellence there is moral excellence. It's the exact same term for virtue as it is translated later on in verse five. And I think those phrases, those word pairs need to be read together. That's Christ, by His own glory, by His own majesty, by His own power, by His own everlasting life, gives eternal life to His people. And then Christ, who is perfect moral excellency, who is perfect in virtue and righteousness, is the one who calls you and grants you godliness in Him. See, what Peter is saying by God's power giving you all things that pertain to life and godliness, and this is through the one who called us by his own glory and excellence, is really drawing our attention to the reality that the great benefit of salvation is not actually something tangential to who God is, it actually is God. Herman Boving, the great Dutch reformed theologian, has a wonderful statement where he says, there are no benefits of salvation apart from union with the benefactor. And Peter draws our attention to the benefactor, doesn't he? He takes us to Christ. He takes us to our Savior, and it is by His glory that you receive the glory of eternal life, and it is by His moral excellency that you receive the virtue of godliness in your life. Because what God does, by the strength of His power, through the knowledge of Him who has called you, is He unites you to Himself. The great benefit The great blessing that you receive in salvation is God himself. Everything else, atonement for sin, being redeemed out from the penalty of sin and death, even though the promise of heaven itself is subordinate to this, because everything is about Christ, to Christ, and through Christ. And to make that point, I think, especially clear. Peter tells us that you have not only been given all things that pertain to life and godliness for you, but you have especially been given his precious and very great promises. And this is what we see second of all in verse four. where Peter continues to say, by which, that is, by his own glory and excellence, through which you are called to glory and excellence yourself, he, that is Christ, has granted to us his precious and very great promises. Precious and very great promises. There's a lot of questions about who the His is in verse 3. There's even more questions about what the promises are of verse 4. And most commentators will argue that the promises come up later in the verse, specifically that you might become a partaker of the divine nature. We'll handle what that means here in a moment. But I don't think that that answer is enough. And the reason why I don't think it's enough is because you'll notice that Peter says here, he says, so that through them, that's through the promises, you may become partakers in the divine nature. See, you can't equate the two things here. So what are the precious and very great promises? I believe the precious and very great promises really are the glory and moral excellency of Christ. You see, the precious and very great promises is the reality of the promised one who has come and who will come again. The precious and very great promises were from the very outsets of the fall when man chose sin and misery over eternal life with God, that God promised that was not the end. that he would not leave his own to that state of sin and misery, but because of his love and as an outworking of his power, he would call his own to himself, that he would send his son as the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent. God's promise is that a righteous one would come from the line of Abraham in whom all nations would be blessed. The promise is that there would be a lion to come from the tribe of Judah, a king even greater than David, even the divine king himself who would usher in an eternal kingdom. The promise is that there would be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, and a priest who would come also as the Passover lamb to bear the sins for his people. The promise was that a prophet even greater than Moses would come and would usher in the age of salvation for his people. The promises were that the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the servant of the Lord would come to be crushed so that through his wounds he would make right with God the many whom he has called to himself. The promise, the precious and very great promises that is worth more to you than everything in this world is Christ. It is the one who has promised and the one who works by his power to bring you to himself. And as Christ, the promised one, works in his power to bring you to himself, the promised one also gives you a promise in 2 Peter. In fact, two times in the book, the word promise is used. The first one is in chapter one, verse four. The second one is in chapter three, verse 13, where he says, according to his promise, we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. See, the promised one has given his church a promise. and the promise that is as sure as the one who keeps it is sure and steadfast, is that He will come again. He will come and He will establish and found that new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells. The eternal life, the life that is yours now, will be brought to glory then. You see, the life that you have now is not different than eternal life. It is eternal life. But it's eternal life that you have in a mode of suffering and of persecution and wilderness wanderings and waiting for the final promise of God to come. But it's the same life. And it's the same hope that we have to be brought to that eternal kingdom. And so this means for you, that that precious and very great promise both is now and will be. It is now at work in you because you already now have that eternal life. You already now are made new by the power of God. You already now are citizens of heaven. And you will be, because you are these things by the power of God, brought into that new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells. And the giving of these precious and very great promises has a purpose in your life. And it's a purpose that Peter says here at the end of verse four. that you had come to reckon with the reality that you are already now a new man. You are already now a new creature in Christ who has put to death the old man and been made alive in the new. So notice how Peter finishes our passage this evening. So that through them, that is through the promises, you may become partakers of the divine nature. having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. This line has two sides to it, one positive and the other negative, and they have to go together, don't they? To be a partaker in the divine nature would mean that you have escaped the corruption of sinful desire and to be in the corruption of sinful desire would have to mean that you are not a partaker in the divine nature. But what exactly is Peter trying to drive home in this verse? What exactly is he saying here? Is he saying, as some have argued, that by the power of God, you become God? That in the strength of his might, you get a little piece of God's nature to yourself and you are divinized in the sense of becoming equal with God, at least in some way. Well, surely not. This couldn't possibly be what Peter has in mind, because it really goes against everything he's saying about God's power sowing godliness in you. Instead, it seems to be what he's saying here is not that you partake in the divine nature in the sense of you become God, but rather that you are renewed unto likeness in God. See, what he seems to be saying here is that mankind, and here renewed mankind in Christ, receives a new nature where we are like God. In the Fall, man made in the image of God lost the ethical likeness unto God, and instead we became confirmed in our sin and in our misery. But what God does in the life of his people is he breaks the power of reigning sin, and he shows God likeness in our hearts. He renews us after the image of God in Christ, and that's really what Peter has in mind here. It's very similar to what Paul says in Ephesians 4, verse 24, where Paul tells you to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God. in true righteousness and holiness. It's another way of saying what he just said in verse 3, that by the power of God and through his precious and very great promises, You are made godlike. You are not made God, but you are made godly. You are renewed in the image of God. The impact of sin in the fall is removed from you and you are renewed and restored to life and godliness. In fact, the term translated become is actually the same word that means to be born again. And the term that is used for nature, it means a nature that you have from birth. So you can even say, you can even translate it as, so that through the promises, you may be born again to a new divine nature from birth, a newborn person, raised to new life, renewed in the image of your creator. And as you are renewed in the image of your creator, restored to life and godliness, as he put it in verse three, Peter wants you to recognize lastly about your life, that as you have been restored to God, as by his power he has called you unto himself, that the reigning power of sin has been broken for you. You are no longer dead in sin. You are raised to life and to godliness. And he says here, ending verse four, that you have escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. Due to sin, all man in Adam has borne the curse of sin. All man in Adam is totally depraved, brought down low, and experiences the reality of sin and misery and is enslaved to sin. But what the power of God does is it brings you out of that slavery to sin and sets you unto service for the Lord. The corruption The corruption of the world and its sinful and corrupt desires are no longer true for you. You are, as we said a little while ago, a citizen of the world to come. The power of reigning sin is no more. You have escaped. Notice how he puts it. You have escaped. It's done. It's definitive. Christ reigns in you, not sin. And therefore, I think Peter would say as he moves on in the rest of his letter, live in light of who you are. Do not like the dog return back to its own vomits. You have a new nature, a new life, a new man in Christ that is marked by godliness. Pursuing and loving the life of sin cuts against the very nature of who you are. As you are made godly through the work of Christ and His divine power, pursue that godliness even more. He has worked in your life. And he, through the strength of his might, continues to work in you to put to death remaining sin and to fan into flames this new life and love for God that is yours in Christ. So beloved, as we close this evening, I want you to see the power of God for you. God's power accomplished your salvation as the Son of God was sent into the world to save sinners. And the power of God applies that salvation to you. It is the power of God that gives life to dead sinners. It's the power of God that breaks the reign of sin that was over us in our natural born lives. And it's the power of God that raises us and gives us new birth. that we might live for him. And so in the power of God, live this new life. Live the life that Christ has already given to you for this life is yours in him. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that you are the one who through the power of your son has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Lord, let us not seek to live a life building on any other foundation than this one. Let us not seek to live by the strength of our own hands, but instead to rest wholly in your power to save. And let us do this with great confidence, knowing that it is by the strength of your might that we live a holy life even now. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.