Read with Me
2 Peter 1:3-4 (HCSB)
His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.
Listen with Me
Peter is in prison in Rome and is nearing the end of his earthly life after having lived nearly forty years in the power and glory of God’s kingdom. And that has given him a powerful perspective on what it all means, a perspective that he wants share with the upcoming generation of Christians before he is done.
Some might wonder if the divine power Peter references in verse 3 is the power of God or the power of Jesus since both are mentioned immediately before this paragraph in verse 2. That question would have made little sense to Peter. He well understood that the divine power of Jesus that He bestows on His followers is the divine power of God – there is no division between the two.
This divine power flows into and through the lives of the disciples of Jesus through knowledge of Him, through relationship with Him. And it provides everything that His followers need not just for life, according to His promise (Matthew 6:33), but for godliness as well. There is no need for Jesus’ followers to be held in thrall to the world, the flesh, and the devil when He has provided everything necessary for us to walk in His power and His holiness each day.
Peter goes even further. This godliness, this true holiness that he points to is not a mere legalistic righteousness obtained by following a set of rules. Instead, it is an actual participation in the divine nature, a complete transformation of the whole person, body, mind, and will, into the image and likeness of Jesus Himself. This transformation makes it possible for all the followers of Jesus, from the greatest to the least, to escape the corruption that is so rampant in the world, to escape not only its evil actions, but evil desires as well, since such desires are entirely at odds with the inner transformation that is bestowed through faith in Jesus.
Peter does not see this genuine holiness through transformation as something reserved for only a few of those in the body of Christ, a special class of Christians known as saints. Peter wore that title proudly, but he did not see himself as an outlier, an exception. Instead, he understood true holiness, real transformation, and not just the title of saint but the character of true sanctity to be the birthright of every child of God.
Pray with Me
Father, somewhere along the way we seem to have lost this all-inclusive understanding of holiness and sanctity. Instead, we now recognize an elite few as having somehow achieved the elevated status of “saint” through hard work and stern discipline and sacrifice, with the rest of us content to live in the much lower stratum of “ordinary people”. Indeed, it is a point of pride today to disclaim real holiness. “Oh, I’m no saint!” How sad that we have sold our birthright so cheaply and seem to be proud that we don’t have it! Lord, help me to live today and every day in the knowledge of Jesus, and in the godliness that is made possible through that knowledge. Help me to live as a true saint in the power of Jesus and to His glory. Amen.