Sermon

Sermon # 1025
January 23, 2011
2 Peter 1:2-11
Dr. Ed Pettus

“Participants in the Divine Nature”

We have been focusing on keeping the Lord always before us as written in Psalm 16:8 and seeking to know Christ from Philippians 3. Last Sunday we spent time in Colossians 4 regarding the removal of the old sinful life and putting on a new life in Christ. Today we enter Peter’s second letter to the church. Our passage deals with building up our faith and spiritual life using what God has already given us. The letter begins with the greeting of grace and peace, words loaded with theological meaning, Christian code words, concepts we learn in our knowledge of God and of Jesus. Grace – the unmerited favor God gives us in Christ, and peace – shalom in the Hebrew, wholeness, contentment, and rest.
Peter encourages us as he reveals what God has given us already. God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Just as he greets us with grace and peace in the knowledge of God, now he tells us that we have all we need for life through the knowledge of Jesus. It is in getting to know Jesus Christ that we come to know more and more of what God has given us. It’s like receiving a new gift to unwrap every time we learn a new verse of scripture or reflect on what Jesus did in healing someone. Imagine if you received a new wrapped gift in the mail every day…Monday you read the beatitudes and as you finish the UPS man drives up with a new gift. Tuesday a reflection on Psalm 100 and FedEx pops by with a gift. Wednesday – Psalm 16 and you cannot figure out how you missed it but there appears a gift on the kitchen table for you.

God gives us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Christ. Our response? Thank you, God, for these gifts, for this word, for that teaching, for this work, for that call. Thank you. And the more we give thanks, the more gifts that come. 2 Peter 4:4 “Thus he has given us…” he has given us more: through knowledge, through grace and peace, through his power, he has given us great promises. We are not told here what those promises are but we are told their purpose. Through his promises we may escape the corruption of the world. Through our relationship with God through Christ we are able to avoid all that garbage we see in the world. Through Jesus – that is the key to Peter’s exhortation. We know God’s provision, God’s power, God’s promises, only because we have come to know Christ. And having seen God’s gifts, we can also see the world for what it is – the corruption, the lust, the greed, the deception, and we can flee from it. We do not have to participate in the ways of the world. 1 John tells us more:

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever” (2:15-17).

The word that Peter uses to talk about the corruption in the world is a word that denotes internal decay. In essence the world and its ways are rotting away, but we can escape that decay by participating in God’s will – God’s divine nature.

We may now participate in the divine nature. We are participants in the kingdom of God. We become children of God who play in a different kind of playground. We are citizens of heaven and a part of the priesthood of all believers. God has invited us into a new reality, a reality we discover, a reality revealed to us as we read and study the Bible, by getting to know Jesus Christ, by keeping the Lord always before us, by serving the Lord. God has invited us into this realm and said: “Make yourself at home, you have everything you need right here.” We have been asked to participate in the life of God. This is a life that does not decay, but lives forever. Being participants in the divine nature means that we share with God in his glory:

“So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).

As Paul tells us to seek the things that are above so too does Peter tell us to do something. Verse 5 begins with this phrase: “For this very reason…” For what reason? Because God has given us everything we need, because we have knowledge in Christ, because we have received promises, because we are now participants in the divine nature, for all these reasons…make every effort to support your faith. Make every effort. I’ve made the statement in my last two sermons that grace is not opposed to effort. Grace is opposed to earning, thinking that we can earn our salvation, but not opposed to the effort to grow in Christ since we have already been given everything we need in Christ. Peter tells us to make every effort, every effort to support our faith. Work at it, give it energy, time, devotion, love, discipline, obedience. This is no insignificant matter, but our very life, for Christ is our life.
The same was said about God’s word when Israel was preparing to go into the promised land:
45When Moses had finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46he said to them: ‘Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law. 47This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess’ (Deuteronomy 32:45-47).

God’s word helps us to fulfill the word from Peter to make the effort to support our faith. We read and study God’s word that we might grow in Christ, know Christ, and know what it means to be participates in the divine nature.

So Peter bids us: “Support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). Eugene Peterson says it this way: “So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others” (The Message, 2 Peter 1).

If we make this effort then good things happen…as Peter puts it: we will be effective and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if we make no effort and we lack these things, then we are short sighted and blind and forgetful of what God has done and provided for us. What I think we tend to do is to think that God is just going to drop every insight into our lap, but what we find is that with no effort to see, we become more blinded by the deception of the world. As Liz Gilbert referred to this topic in her book Eat, Pray, Love: “eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception” (155). Our effort in faith is to grow in the knowledge of Christ until our eyes are opened to see the truth. St. Augustine said it this way: “Our whole business therefore in this life is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen” (from Eat, Pray, Love, p. 123).

We are participants in the divine nature. Participants by definition are active, included, taking part in something, and in this case, taking part in the kingdom of God, in the life of God. We have not been invited to sit down and watch but to live in obedience to God’s word, building our faith, making the effort! One of my favorite scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is the two pirates in the row boat and one is supposedly reading the Bible but he cannot read, so his response to the other pirate who points this out is that you get credit for trying. Make the effort!
Thomas Merton points out in a prayer that desiring to please God is pleasing to God:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Desire and effort get us on the journey as participants in the divine nature. Obedience leads us into the transformation we seek and that transformation in turn makes us more obedient. But it takes desire and effort to become the obedient followers of Jesus that these passages from Psalms, Colossians, Philippians, and 2 Peter all anticipate.

Imagine yourself as a participant in the divine nature. You have been chosen to participate in the life of God, in the kingdom of God. We like to be selected, picked to play on the team, and God has chosen us to be his own. God has chosen us to come to know Jesus Christ his Son, personally and intimately, not just a knowledge for the head, but a knowing in the heart and soul. We are not just after information about Jesus, but transformation in Christ. We are participants in the divine drama, in the kingdom, in the story of God’s people today. Let us make every effort to support our faith: in prayer, in scripture study, in worship, in love, in peace and grace, in every way we can imagine to actively participate in the life God has given us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Receive God’s gift as a participant in the divine nature. Amen.