Knowledge of God
My early childhood experiences with church were not very uplifting. Church was a place where we spent too much time thinking and talking about God and not enough time getting to know God. It was a place where the words of God took precedence over the Word of God.
We had a little orchestra there, and I played a portable marimba. The pastor played the trumpet. Sunday evening service was a great experience, even for a kid – lots of singing and testifying.
It was the testimonies that continue to haunt me to this day. The testimonies were about what God was doing to relieve sickness and financial problems. God was a very much-honored Gargoyle in the sky – reminiscent of Aladin’s Lamp – available to the faithful at a moment’s notice provided you followed certain rules.
What we had there was a great group of folks who were standing on the sidelines waiting for the end of the world, praising God for healing a hangnail this week. I recall one severe case of a beautiful woman with a brain tumor. She came through the surgery quite disfigured, but it was her use of lipstick and earrings that was the primary focus, as though her sinful appearance brought on the brain tumor.
There was too much emphasis on what God can do for me if I behave and not enough emphasis on getting to know God.
One of my most vivid memories of that childhood church was taking the step of what they called a Second Work of Grace – publicly committing myself to the service of God through Christ. What I did not know at that time was the cost of that step – that I would have to be broken.
You see, I know all about the sins of the flesh because I have committed most if not all of them, either in thought or in deed. I know about divorce and the futile hope that it carries that things will be better the next time around. They won’t be better; they will be different. Success the next time around will depend on whether you are better. It is not the marriage that makes the person…It is the person who makes the marriage.
One thing drives me to this day. It is that there are too many of God’s people out there wandering around aimlessly with no rudder or focus, using God as a fire extinguisher to keep them out of Hell, and that is about all there is. I have referred to these folks as the “Church in Exile.”
I cannot tell you how distressing it has become for me to stand and watch while the
What the Apostle Peter is telling us in this passage from 2 Peter 1 is that you cannot experience grace and peace without the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. You want grace and peace? There is only one source – increased knowledge of God and Jesus Christ.
Can you get that benefit here at the
Secondly, you cannot know God without knowing His people and growing together with them. We are in this journey together. God has called every one of us to a faith that is equally precious. There is not one of us here whose faith is any more valuable than another’s. If all Jesus is to us is a fire extinguisher while we work hard, have fun and seek the American Dream rather than the
Conversely, if we have been nailed up the side of the head with a 2x4, it may well be that God is trying to get our attention.
Peter, in this 2nd Epistle, zeroes in on what it means and what it takes to abound with grace and peace in this life.
I have a habit of skipping by the salutary parts of the first chapter of any Epistle. I tend to look at that part as incidental and having no meat. Big mistake! There is a wealth of good, practical theology in the first 3 verses of 2 Peter 1.
He begins, “I, Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ...” He tells us who he is. That he is an apostle carries with it authority. He has been chosen; appointed; sent out to preach the Gospel by none other that the Author of the Gospel, Jesus Christ. Peter has been given permission to speak for the living Christ and to do it boldly as His ambassador.
Contrary to the actions of many self-proclaimed apostles of Jesus Christ today, Peter is careful not to flaunt this authority. “Apostle” comes second in his credentials. It is preceded by “servant,” or slave.
On the surface, there would appear to be a great difference in status between ambassador and slave – two opposite ends of the spectrum. Peter does not think so, however. He sees them as much the same thing. If Jesus could first become a servant and live among us, setting aside His power and glory, our point of identification with Christ is as a slave.
Peter had taken seriously the teaching of Jesus as written in Luke 22:
The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you must be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.
Peter was the greatest among the apostles: “Upon this rock, I will build my church!” Jesus makes it clear, however, that the greatest must be like the one who serves. So Peter defines himself first as a servant. Can you imagine the power that the
Peter continues: “To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours.”
He is identifying his audience – those to whom he is writing directly and those who will read and consider his writings for centuries to come. His readers have obtained a faith of equal standing to his. Peter has leveled the playing field within the church.
I have never forgotten a panel discussion of religion many years ago on TV. The televangelists of that time were all there. Jerry Falwell was speaking for the group when he said. “We are the leaders of the Christian church in
In Peter’s worldview, we who believe stand on an equal footing of faith. Notice, however, that there seems to be no human accomplishment involved here. Peter is helping us understand how futile it would be to be boastful about our faith. Faith is something he and we have received!
It is a great mistake to look at somebody else’s life and say, “Boy, I wish I had as much faith as he does or she does!” You do! Develop it! Use it! Stop limiting God because of your own compromises with the world system. What gives our faith value and distinction is not our righteousness. It is Christ’s righteousness. Therefore, we cannot boast in either our faith or the faith of someone else.
What we do with that faith, however, is what Peter wants to get to next.
He begins by stating in v. 2 that grace and peace in abundance can be ours. He makes it clear that grace and peace are not ours by nature. They come to us from outside ourselves. Peter is telling us that we can have as much or as little of grace and peace in this life as we want, and that it is God who can and will make grace and peace abundant. We may have grace and peace abundant when things are going well, and we may have grace and peace abundant when things are going into the dumper?
How do we get that grace and peace? It is ours, Peter tells us, through the knowledge of God. In other words, where the knowledge of God is dormant, grace does not flow. Where folks think they can treat Jesus as a fire extinguisher, grace does not flow, and the abundant life is not theirs. We miss out on the abundant life that God intends for us when we decide that we will pursue it through our pleasures or our money or our power.
The channel from God’s infinite reservoir of grace in our lives is the knowledge of God. Peter pushes this theme in v. 3: “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.”
As Peter goes on through this Epistle, he shows great concern for how some in the church are living corrupt lives. He sees a very close connection between godliness and eternal life. In Chapter 2, vs. 19, 20, he tells about false teachers who are very popular with the people:
They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity – for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.
The way of godliness is abundant life – grace and peace in abundance, all available through an increasing knowledge of God. The more we know God, the more abundant life we have. On the other hand, if the way of godliness is rejected, so is the way of eternal life. Peter is telling us that to turn our lives into an insurance policy for escaping Hell while we remain unchanged is an indicator of unbelief. Hope and godliness stand or fall together. That is why the world makes fun of the church today – too many people claiming change but living the same old way.
In that 3rd verse, Peter makes it very clear that we have all that we need for life and godliness. “His divine power has given us everything we need.” Insisting that we are incapable of living in the power of Christ is a cop out. Bragging on somebody else’s faith is a cop out. We have everything we need through our knowledge of Him. And what is more, God does not take a passive role in our development. He not only opens His riches to us, He has called us by His own glory and goodness.
The Christian faith is not a set of doctrines to be accepted. It is a power to be experienced and shared with God’s people and with the world outside the church. It begins with the power over sin and death and extends to the power to live the victorious life. The mark of adoption by God is godliness. That means that we are to have a love of the things of God and desire to walk in His ways.
V. 4 tells us how to increase our knowledge of God: “Through God’s glory and goodness, He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires."
Is there any more to ask in this life than to be in a position of participating in the divine nature of God and escaping the corruption of our evil desires? I am going to say something very familiar to you. Sin attacks us by holding out promises for relief or happiness – short term or long term. That is why we lust after sex, money and power. We think they will bring us happiness.
If we lie on our tax return – just a little bit, we will have more money and be happier. If we divorce our spouse whom we were getting rather tired of anyway, we think we will be happier. Sin will always win the battle unless we can have the hope of God’s promises clearly in front of us. Principal among those promises is grace and peace in abundance and the hope of life eternal. If you have grace and peace in abundance, the downside risk of sin will restrain you back from repeating it. We repeat our sins because we have not built up the defenses against them through the knowledge of God.
We tend to think we can summon up the goodness to overcome our favorite peccadilloes by sheer willpower. On the other hand, the power to overcome is right at our fingertips. It is a case of where we choose to direct our energies. Peter is telling us that we need to direct our energies toward increasing our knowledge of God.
It takes effort, however. V. 5 – “Make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, etc. If you have these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive… Want to be effective and productive? Direct your energies away from being a nice guy with less visible sin than the guy next door and toward them toward increasing your knowledge of God.
Finally, Peter pleads with us to be “…all the more eager to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things you will never fall…”
Putting your relationship with God through Jesus Christ on the shelf while you depend on your own ability to please yourself and solve your own problems will not feed the bulldog – will not make your calling and election by God a certainty in your life.
We need each other. More than that, we need the kind of honesty and humility that Peter displays in his writings. We need to serve each other; we need to view each other as being of equal measure of faith; we need to grow in the knowledge of God – all of us; we need to experience victory in order to press onward to higher ground.
