Read with Me
2 Peter 1:10-11 (HCSB)
Therefore, brothers, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to you.
Listen with Me
Peter has just unreeled an impressive list of virtues that he urges his readers to pursue, building one on the other, from simple goodness, obedience to moral rules, to the self-sacrificing agape love that caps these virtues off and ties them all together. He declares that possessing these virtues in increasing measure will keep them from being ineffective and unproductive.
Now he urges his readers to do those things in order to confirm their calling and election. These words may strike some as odd if they’ve been taught that they’re calling an election were already confirmed and require no effort or action on their part to ensure them.
But Peter is adamant that people can choose to turn away from the truth and become ensnared in the paths of darkness, like the false prophets he mentions in chapter 2, whom he does not dispute had previously known the way of righteousness and then turned their backs on it. He likens them to a sow that was truly washed clean of its mud and filth, only to choose to go back to it.
But Peter’s focus is not on falling away, though he acknowledges that it is a real possibility. Instead, he focuses here on how to ensure that we do not fall away. And that ability to stand firm only comes through a living and active relationship with Jesus through which each of these virtues mentioned in verses 5 to 7 can develop and grow. And as they grow, each based on the previous virtues, forming an interweaving network, they secure the soil and form a sort of spiritual trellis that will support and encourage additional growth and maturity.
Fostering these virtues is an active process that requires discipline and intentional focus. It doesn’t happen by accident or while pursuing worldly goals. But the end result is that we will be welcomed into Jesus’ eternal kingdom to live with Him forever.
Pray with Me
Father, it is easy to allow ourselves to get sidetracked into focusing on the ifs and hows of eternal security and miss the point of most if not all the epistle writers: we need to keep ourselves growing in Jesus and prevent ourselves from being ensnared by the world and its many enticements. If we keep our priorities straight, and our relationship with Jesus current and vibrantly alive, and if we continually stay in the center of Your will, conscientiously doing the work You have left for us to finish until Jesus returns, we won’t fall away, and all discussions then become purely academic. Help me to live for You and Your agenda today and every day, Lord, so that my calling and election are confirmed, made absolutely secure, and so that I will finish the race well, arriving safely at Your heavenly gates when this life is over. Amen.