Growing in Grace
2 Peter 3:8-18
We can read with wonder the writings of the fisherman Peter, who was, as a disciple, somewhat of a flea on the hind end of progress. It was Peter who could be expected not to get the significance of what the Master had to say. It was Peter who wanted to be a general in charge of the
It was Peter who always was comparing himself to the rest of the Apostles, making certain that he was getting fairly treated and not unfairly imposed upon. And it was Peter who became so self-absorbed that he found it necessary to deny his Lord 3 times at the trial rather than take the chance of suffering the same fate.
Despite Peter’s good heart and good intentions, he had to be brought up short when it came to Jewish customs. The sheets with animals on them that were lowered from heaven in a vision were intended to impress upon him that those dietary rules were no longer applicable – that
When you read the epistles of Peter, you discover an entirely new person. This 3rd chapter of 2 Peter is as forward-looking as it gets in the Bible. He is writing to the church at large – particularly to those Jewish Christians who have been driven out of
It is clear from Peter’s letter that if you were not growing in grace, you would likely be taken in by false teachers. Laziness in matters of faith and growth in Christ would lead to laziness of discretion. The defense against charlatan teachers, apparently, is to focus on Jesus and to increase our knowledge of Him.
You will remember that James defined pure and undefiled religion as visiting the fatherless and widows in their distress and keeping oneself from being polluted by the world. The path to that simple walk is nothing less than growing in the knowledge of Christ.
Imagine a world in which the Christian church followed that simple formula.
I heard a radio ad for the investment-banking house, Smith-Barney, a few weeks back. It’s slogan is this: “Smith Barney – Where Wealth Works.” The ad featured a whining young lady wringing her hands about Mom and Dad needing help and how she couldn’t believe that these same people who had traveled all over the world and were once so vital were now forgetting things and not rational. The young lady said, “Mom keeps asking me, ‘When are you going to come visit?’” “I can’t just get up and go there,” she says.
Smith Barney has the answer. They can help you prepare for your Mom and Dad’s exit without interrupting yours! Imagine being surprised at old age and its infirmities! Imagine being unprepared! Imagine, however, missing out on one of the most gratifying, rewarding experiences of your life. Smith Barney leads us to one more step away from growth as individuals, as a community and as a nation.
That is the very American Dream so worshipped by the Christian Right today – prosperity, power and success.
Peter desperately tries to persuade these Jewish Christians not to become so flabby in their relationship with Christ that they will begin to listen to Smith Barney and stop practicing religion that is pure and undefiled. In order to do that, they will need to stay engaged with Christ. Otherwise, they are fodder for any game in town. They will hire pastors to scratch their itching ears. The end result for which Peter is reaching is not theology or doctrine; it is love!
Peter reminds us that we have everything we need for life and godliness. He begins his letter with, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.” The key to grace and peace is knowledge; the key to grace and peace in abundance is more knowledge.
Knowledge does not come through osmosis. It requires effort: “Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Peter seems to be talking here about a sort of chain reaction – a forward-motion that begins with saving faith and on through a whole bunch of disciplines, ending in love. That is the way to stay effective and productive as a Christian. The way to be ineffective and unproductive is to be undisciplined and flabby in working out our own salvation with fear and trembling – kicking back and hoping for the best. In 2 Peter 2:9, he tells us that once flabbiness sets in, we forget that we have been cleansed from our past sins and begin to focus on the sins of others. At that point, we hire pastors to us feel better rather than preach the Gospel.
What is wrong with the church today in America, if you go by Peter’s thinking, is not that pastors are leading people down the primrose path. It is that people want cheap grace and easy believism. They hire these false teachers because that is what they want. And they want it because they have not grown in grace. They have not grown in grace because they have not bothered to get to know Christ. So they set up other Christs to fill in the gaps.
It is not enough to consider yourself as called of God – one of the elect. It is not enough to be merely saved. I often say that out of the last century of altar calls, we have too many saved people and not enough disciples. Repeating the Sinner’s Prayer is not enough, Peter tells us in Chapter 1, v. 10: “Be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. If you make this effort to grow in the knowledge of God and Christ, you will “never fail.” Furthermore, they will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Peter is preaching to our generation, is he not? He reminds us that we did not come to Christ because of cleverly invented schemes or stories. We have the written record! The Apostles were eyewitnesses to the majesty of Christ. They heard the voice of the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” They know that this Jesus is the Messiah promised by the word of the prophets. They have been there; they have studied; they have increased their knowledge of this Christ, and they have therefore grown in grace. Peter wants the same for us – to make our election sure.
We talked last week about the HS as a wind that blows from where, we do not know, and where it is going, we do not know. We considered that the way to get the most out of this Christian life is to bob and weave with the Spirit – to hold our long-range planning loosely. Peter picks up this theme when he talks about paying attention to where we are going and how we are growing until “the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” The Sinner’s Prayer is not enough to make our election sure. There is a way and a point along that way when the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. It reminds me of that old saw, “Light dawns over Marblehead.”
False preachers and teachers will introduce destructive heresies, and we won’t know the difference because we have not cared to know the difference. “In their greed,” he tells us, “these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.”
Does that not hit us where we live today? We have given over our teaching to televangelists of every stripe. Because getting to know Christ takes work, we let these false teachers lead us into excitement, the most current of which is that we must prepare the Middle East for Armageddon. We must invade Iran so Jesus will come back.
That all comes from losing sight of our own salvation – our own deliverance from sin. We begin to look at the sin of others and devise ways of carrying out God’s plan in human history – anything but growing in the knowledge of Him. Sloppy discipleship is all about that – losing sight of our own deliverance from sin because it is so far back in our experience and, sadly, may be one of the only experiences we have had with Christ. We fail to make our calling and election sure.
In Chapter 3, Peter sees the Christian life as requiring stimulation into wholesome thinking. If things don’t seem to change much from generation to generation, it is not because the Lord is slow concerning His promises. It is because He is merciful and patient with us, not willing that any should perish, but that all His elect should come to repentance.
While there is a great deal of excitement in the various scenarios of Christ’s coming and the fate of the Jews in Jerusalem, the bottom line, Peter reminds us, is that nothing is going to happen until the last of God’s elect comes to repentance. We cannot, therefore, trigger the Second Coming of Christ. It is on a timetable that is known only to God because God alone knows the ones that He has chosen for life.
What we know for certain is that this old earth is bound for destruction. Maybe it will happen tomorrow; maybe 30,000 years from now. What kind of people must we be in the face of that kind of uncertainty? “You ought to lead holy and godly lives, as you look forward to the day of God and ‘hasten toward,’ the KJ tells us, “its coming.” There is a necessity of forward motion. Leading holy and godly lives requires discipline; hastening toward His coming requires movement toward tomorrow.
We then have Peter’s glorious sign-off at the end: “Be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position (as brothers and sisters in Christ). But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be glory both now and forever, Amen!”
The alternative, then, to falling from your secure position of being sure of your calling and election is to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. That’s the condition and the antidote to the condition. It’s that simple.
The way to stand is to grow! That way to be sure is to move forward! Once the heavenly motion stops, we begin to look for other ways to entertain ourselves within the church.
The love of God towards His people cannot be improved. God’s grace is not there in dribs and drabs. We become complete – perfect in Jesus Christ the moment we profess faith in Him.
But there is a vast difference between grace growing and our growing in grace. Amazing Grace is there for us; it is available to us 24/7. We cannot grow more of it. Neither age, not years spent following Christ, nor intelligence nor knowledge of the Bible can improve on grace. Neither can any of those things or all of them together help us grow in grace until we begin to take on the mission of advancing our knowledge of God and Christ. The words of the Bible are futile unless we hear the Word of the Bible.
As we get to know Christ, we grow in grace. It is that simple. That is the mission of our Christian life, and that ought to be the mission of the church – to help us grow in the grace that is already there by increasing our knowledge of Jesus.
If you want to break out into the morning sun of your faith, that is the only way to have that happen. Because we may feel holy and righteous from time to time has nothing to do with our growth. Our growth comes from getting to know Jesus – increasing in the knowledge of Christ. Conversely, because the feeling of joy may be gone from time to time does not mean we are not growing in grace, so long as we are increasing in our knowledge of Jesus.
I relayed to you last week about John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress. That classic book was written in prison because Bunyan refused to renounce his faith in Christ to the King of England. He spent 12 years in prison for that. Depressed? No doubt. But what better place to grow in the knowledge of Jesus then where and when you are incapable of filling your life with busyness? What a treasure came from that experience!
We are in Christ, not by feelings, but by faith. Feelings will get out of the equation the moment we decide that our mission in life is to know Christ and to know Him better. The test for faith and grace is not when things are going well, but when things are in the dumper. That’s when we discover that we do or do not really know Jesus.
I have a friend with whom I have been working for the past several months. He is a committed Christian, and I have enjoyed many long talks with him. But he also is on the brink of financial disaster. Barbara and I should like to help him and his family, but 5 years of Barbara being off the payroll and funding the ASAA have taken their toll, and we are not at the moment in a position to help much. Maybe that’s a good thing. He has witnessed to my spirit in believing that God is in charge even in these dark times for them.
He has a tune that is in his head all the time, and he will sometimes drive me crazy with his whistling. The tune is called, “I am sure that He loves even me," and it goes something like this:
When I think of my Savior’s great love,
In coming from Heaven above,
To die on a tree for a sinner like me,
I am sure that He loves even me.
I am sure the He loves even me!
I am sure that He loves even me!
For His love is so sweet,
Makes my joy so complete,
When I think how He loves even me.
“Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things (add to your faith goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love and possess them in increasing measure), you will never fail."
Are we ready for that kind of discipleship in our own lives and in the life of our church?
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