02 What Peter Teaches About the Marks of Genuine Faith (2 Peter 1:5–11)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is the podcast where we explain not only what scripture means, but how we know. You can follow along with Lecture Notes by going to the link below this podcast, or you can go to the website wednesdayintheword.com slash two Peter Two. If you've only been listening to my podcast, let me take a moment to invite you to visit the website wednesdayintheword.com. You will find there a wealth of Bible study materials, not just lecture notes. You'll find articles on how to study the Bible, how to do word studies, plus maps, tables, small group study guides, outlines, and a whole lot of resources to help you do your own study and improve your study skills. I have no advertising on my site and I don't ask for any financial support. Everything there is free and easy to download, and it's my gift to you. Today we're going to be studying 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 5 through 11. This is the second talk in my series on the book of 2 Peter. Let me start with review. As we saw in our first session, Peter opens his letter by laying the foundation for what he wants to discuss. I believe that the Apostle Peter is the author of this letter and that he wrote it toward the end of his life, which would put it in the late 60s A.D. Peter served as an apostle of Jesus Christ for three to four decades, and as his earthly life and ministry were drawing to a close, he wrote this letter to the same churches he addressed in his first letter to encourage and admonish them to remain true to the gospel. He gives his purpose in chapter 1, verses 12 through 15, which we'll look at in a future talk. But basically, I argued that Peter is writing to encourage his readers to continue believing and embracing the apostolic gospel. He's concerned that they are being seduced by false teachers and that they are abandoning the truth of the gospel in exchange for a lie. And so he's writing this letter to urge them to remain true to the apostolic gospel, to embrace the message of the gospel and to reject the message of the false teachers. He doesn't want them to believe what the false teachers believe, and he doesn't want them to live as they lived. So he opened this letter by reminding them that as an apostle, he is uniquely commissioned to speak for Jesus, that Jesus alone has the words of life, and if we abandon what Jesus taught and what his apostles taught, then we lose the promises of the gospel. The goal or the point of the gospel is that we might be rescued from sin and death. That is our ultimate goal, to be made free from sin and death and to be made like Jesus in holiness and godliness. And the apostolic gospel gives us everything we need to reach that goal. And if you don't understand what I mean by that or by the gospel, I invite you to look at my website. There's a series called What is the Gospel, which I'll link to in the lecture notes, which will explain it for you. So our ultimate goal is to be made free from sin and death and to be made like Jesus in holiness and godliness, and he's going to build on that truth in the section we're going to look at today. What I want to do today is set the stage for understanding this section. He gives a list of virtues in 5, 6, and 7, and I want to first look at the context of those before we look at the list itself. These are the kind of verses that get put into song, they get memorized, and they often get taken out of context. In fact, they are fairly famous verses, and it's easy to lose sight of what Peter intended to say in the context of this letter and in chapter one in particular. So I wanted to look at that today, and then in next week's talk we will look at the virtues themselves. So as good Bible students, then let me remind you of two things. First, different authors emphasize different issues based on the needs and the situation of their original audience. I know this is one of the first things we learn when we start studying how to study the Bible. It's also one of the first things we tend to forget. Because the easiest thing for us to do is start reading the Bible and immediately apply it to our own lives. And we immediately want to take it as a word straight from the author to me. But we have to remember that biblical authors are always speaking to a specific situation and a specific group. There is something happening in the lives of the people they're writing to, their first readers, and they want to address that specific situation. Depending on that situation, then they will emphasize different ideas. So they might emphasize grace to one group, they might emphasize judgment to a different group, they might emphasize mercy, they might emphasize unity, they might emphasize persevering through trials, depending on what's going on in the lives of their readers and the situation they're addressing. So for example, if Peter were writing to a group that had been influenced by the self-righteousness and legalism of the Pharisees, he might emphasize that we are saved by grace, not by keeping the law. Or we might see the other side of the coin. Sometimes they might be writing to a group who has taken God's grace to mean I can sin all I want because I am forgiven by the blood of Christ. And to that group, the authors might emphasize the need to pursue holiness as defined by the law. So they might emphasize that part of the gift of saving faith is not only being forgiven, but also being given the desire to love holiness, to long for holiness, and to no longer love sin. An essential part of saving faith is wanting to be made holy. And if my life does not reflect that desire because I'm pursuing sin, then it calls into question whether or not I really have faith. So when those kinds of people are being addressed, the author might emphasize the moral standard to which we are called and the need to pursue it, even though we are still sinners saved by grace. And I would argue that Peter is writing to that second kind of situation. He's writing to an audience who has been deceived by false teachers into believing that they can live the wrong kind of lifestyle. Listen to what he's going to go on to say, and yes, I'm reading ahead. Another good idea in Bible study is to read the entirety of the book as you study, before you study, and not just look at a specific word or verse, but remember to put it in its larger context. So this is Second Peter chapter two verses one through three. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing themselves swift destruction, and many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be blasphemed, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. So there we see there are false teachers among them who are following sensuality. Then down in two hundred fourteen, they have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin, they entice unsteady souls, they have hearts trained in greed, accursed children, forsaking the right way they have gone astray. So again says something about their lifestyle. They have a lifestyle full of adultery and insatiable for sin. Skipping down to two hundred eighteen and nineteen, for speaking loud boasts of folly they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. Again, he's speaking to their lifestyle. Then in three hundred three, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires, they will say where is the promise of his coming? Again, following their own sinful desires. And finally in three seventeen, you therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. So these are the sorts of people who are influencing the original recipients of Peter's letter. He's warning them that these false teachers are deceiving them. These frauds are presenting themselves as the real deal. They are claiming they have the true gospel, but in fact they're denying some of the basic truths of the gospel. They don't really believe Jesus is returning to establish a kingdom of righteousness, and their lives are committed to greed and sensuality. That's the situation Peter's addressing. And I think that situation explains the tone of the next verses and why Peter would emphasize a life filled with the virtues he's going to put in the next couple of verses. Alright, so the first thing I wanted to remind you is that different authors emphasize different issues based on the needs and situation of their original audience, and Peter is writing to an audience infected by false teachers who are telling them they can live lives devoted to greed and sensuality. The second thing I want to remind you of is that one of the key themes in this letter is that a knowledge of God comes only through the apostolic message. We saw this in the opening four verses last week. God has revealed to us everything that is required to gain life and holiness. And he gave that revelation through his Son Jesus Christ, who in turn gave his apostles the authority to teach and proclaim that truth, the truth of the gospel. And it is through knowing and believing that truth, that truth of the apostolic gospel, that we gain life and holiness. Peter is one of many New Testament authors who make this connection between knowledge and salvation. And we've talked about this before, but let me just revisit it here. Because I think it will help us understand what Peter's doing in the next verses. I want to start with an analogy to try to explain this connection between knowledge and salvation. And I'm going to give you two. So here's the first one. Imagine that we are in an action adventure movie. Let's say we are part of the Avengers, and the evil aliens have planted a bomb that is about to explode the entire planet. The clock's ticking down, and you have to figure out which wire to cut to diffuse the bomb. And all of a sudden your sidekick says, Hey, I know, let's read the instruction manual, which he whips out of his cape. And there in the instruction manual is this big color picture that says, Cut the red wire. Okay, great. These are the instructions. We now have the right knowledge and we can save the day. Some people view the knowledge of the gospel like a bomb's instruction manual. It gives us the knowledge we need to follow to be saved. So the instructions are things like believe in Jesus, confess your sins, join a church, pray, and so forth, and we just have to follow the instructions. You can probably guess that I don't think that's the best analogy to explain the connection between knowledge and salvation. That's not the relationship between knowing God and arriving at salvation that I think is taught in Scripture. So I'm going to give you a better analogy. This time we're in a fantasy movie, and in this movie, a prince falls in love with a beautiful princess, but alas, she's enchanted. Her fairy godmother tells him that in order to break the enchantment and to win her heart he has to pass through three great trials. He has to bring back a jewel guarded by a fierce dragon, he must trek through the desert and solve the riddle of the Sphinx, and he must climb the highest mountain and convince the prophet who lives there that he, the prince, is the wisest man of all. Now in one sense, the prince has the knowledge he needs to solve the problem. He knows that he must accomplish these three tasks to free the princess and win her heart and live happily ever after. But if you stop and think about it, you have to be a certain kind of person for these instructions to do any good. The instructions in and of themselves are not going to solve the problem. First, only a prince who is truly and deeply committed to this princess is going to attempt to follow these instructions at all. If not, he's not going to go anywhere near a dragon, it's just too much time and effort and trouble. Not only that, he has to be the right kind of person to find these instructions helpful. It's not just a matter of cut the red wire, he has to be the right kind of person. He needs a certain level of bravery, courage, wisdom, fortitude, trust. He needs all those skills to have any hope of succeeding at all. So how does he lure the jewel away from the dragon? Well, let's say unlike everyone else who charged in with their swords and armor and got burned to a crisp, this prince showed kindness to the dragon and charmed the dragon into voluntarily giving up the jewel. How does he solve the riddle of the Sphinx? Well, thanks to his homeschooling education, he really was smarter than everyone else who tried it and he figured it out. How did he prove himself the wisest man of all? Well, he had read Socrates and he admitted that he just didn't know all the answers. So those instructions on how to free the princes were only useful because the prince was a certain kind of person. He was dedicated, kind, clever, and humble, and these instructions then provided the opportunity for the prince to reveal his character. They weren't instructions on how to become dedicated, kind, clever, and humble. They were instructions that created a set of circumstances in which the prince could demonstrate that he was dedicated, kind, clever, and humble. So in short, they were an invitation to discover what kind of person he was as he sought to follow them. Now I would argue that the gospel is much closer to my prince analogy than my cut the red wire analogy. The gospel is the kind of message that will only do you good if you are a certain kind of person, that is, if God in his mercy and grace has given you the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it. The gospel is a message about sin and mercy and eternal life and how to find them. And to embrace it, we have to be the kind of person who recognizes that we no longer want to be a sinful person and we want a life of holiness and godliness. We have to be a person of faith, and faith itself is a gift of God. Now let me be clear, by nature we are rebels and sinners, and left to ourselves we would all, every last one of us, mock and scoff and reject the gospel. Because left to ourselves we are trapped in sin and we will reject the gospel every time. And if you want more of my reasoning behind that, again I'd refer you to my What is the Gospel series. But God in His mercy, because of the blood of Jesus Christ, has reached out to us to change us from the inside out so that we become the kind of people who will repent of our sins, who will long for the truth of the gospel, and will humbly trust in the blood of Jesus, rejecting sin, hating our sin, and longing to be holy and righteous. So through the working of the Spirit of God, we respond to the gospel and recognize that it's true. Yes, we're still sinners, but now we understand that we're sinners and that we are in need of grace and mercy and forgiveness, and that forgiveness is only made possible by the cross of Christ. We have become a kind of person for whom these instructions will be helpful because we now have a heart attitude that is open to being corrected, that is open and eager to learn more about God, and that wants to see his ways and understand them, and we seek to live and be like him. So I would argue that the gospel doesn't just come along and say, do this and be saved, cut the red wire and you'll be fine. Rather, salvation comes to us by God changing us from the inside out and making us into people of faith, and then the instructions we find in Scripture and in the law begin to make sense to us, and they give us an opportunity to reveal the faith that God has given us, like the Prince in the Fairy Tale. So let me just summarize. Peter is speaking to a people who are bewitched by false teachers, and part of what these false teachers are telling them is that to live a life filled with greed and sensuality is perfectly fine and acceptable. So these false teachers are denying parts of the gospel, or maybe all of it, and they are denying the moral implications of the gospel. They are saying a lifelong pursuit of sin is okay and no problem because we're forgiven. So that's the first point. The second point is that the gospel Peter preaches calls for a response. It is not just a set of tasks to accomplish or a set of ideas to believe, it calls for a change of heart, a change of attitude, such that we now want to live differently and that we want to pursue different goals. And as we face the choices and circumstances and situations that life throws at us, our fundamental beliefs will be revealed because God will put us in situations that force us to ask the question, do I really trust God? Do I really want what the gospel promises? So it's not that we will be perfectly obedient, but it will become obvious the kind of people we want to be and the goals we're striving for because life will give us situations where our willingness to follow and love God will be revealed. And it is into that context that Peter writes these verses in chapter one verses five through eleven. Let me read that for us. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self control, and self control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You'll notice that at first reading this passage gives a list of virtues that most of us would find overwhelming. I don't know about you, but I look at that list and I go, I'm not there yet. And then the scary part is it ties them to whether or not we will enter the kingdom of God when you get down to ten and eleven. That's kind of scary, and I think it could easily be taken the wrong way. That's why I spent so much time on the analogies in the beginning. Why would Peter launch into the body of his letter with a list of these kind of virtues? Well, I'm gonna argue it is because these virtues are not the kind of lifestyle being advocated by the false teachers, but they are the kind of lifestyle that would follow from pursuing and seeking the gospel. The false teachers have been denying the gospel and distorting its moral implications, and now Peter's gonna argue one of the ways we know that these folks are in fact false teachers is that they live ungodly lives and they promote ungodly behavior. What they teach about God can't be trusted, and their lives show that they don't understand who God is and what he values. So when he says in these verses that faith leads to a lifestyle filled with these kinds of virtues, his intention is to warn them away from the teaching and the lifestyle of the false teachers. And he's reminding his readers what kind of lifestyle belief in the gospel promotes, and those who lead a vastly different lifestyle from that are not to be listened to, not to be trusted, and not to be followed. So the second question we need to ask then is what does this list of virtues have to do with faith? Notice he says faith leads to virtue and virtue to knowledge, and knowledge to self control, and so on. And as we've seen, belief in the gospel is the result of a heart attitude changed by the spirit of God. The response of genuine faith and trusting God is a work of the Spirit of God, and I would argue the same goes for the virtues on this list. He's not giving us a list like cut the red wire. He's describing the sorts of qualities that will grow and mature in a person who has been given saving faith. Faith will lead to the kinds of things on this list because these are the kinds of things the Spirit of God is working to produce in us. So I'm going to argue this is not a list we need to write down and it and then based on our own self-effort start making sure we follow it and produce it in our own lives, but that this is part of the of God's gift to us and the way the Spirit works in us, and as we grow in faith, we will also grow in these qualities. Okay, before we talk about all of that, notice that one five is the bridge between the first four verses and what the rest of chapter one. He says, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge. That's first five. So we need to say, okay, for what very reason? He's pointing back to what he just said. He's just said that the knowledge contained in the gospel leads to holiness and godliness, and that the gospel ultimately saves us from sin and death and leads us to becoming holy like God is holy. Since the very purpose of the gospel is to free us from the corruption of sin, faith by its very nature leads to a pursuit of holiness. Why would I want to continue a life that pursues sin when the very basis of my faith is a desire to be freed from sin? Part of faith is longing to be saved from sin and to be freed from it, and why would I continue to pursue the very thing I'm longing to escape from? On the other hand, if I don't want to be freed from sin, then it calls into question whether or not I have saving faith. So why tie the gospel to holiness and godliness? Because a pursuit of holiness and godliness is a mark of the person who has saving faith. So for this reason, because we have turned to the gospel, because we've trusted in it, because we are now pursuing a life of holiness and godliness, trusting that the Spirit of God will produce it in us, we would then see these qualities in our lives. Now we are going to talk about each of the virtues on the list in our next talk, and we're going to talk about why they're included specifically, but before we do that I want to point out his conclusion because it's always helpful to know where we're going. Look again at eight through eleven. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Notice verse ten, if you practice these qualities you will never fall. Falling or stumbling in verse ten is a very serious thing. We're not talking about making a mistake or messing up now and then. We're talking about stumbling so as to fall headlong over a cliff. If you fall, you miss the entrance into the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ, as he says in 111. If you persevere, you gain entrance. When he concludes this section, he's going to say, if you want to make certain that you are in fact called and chosen by God, what path would you take? Well, that path involves the items on this list. Now again, I do not think that Peter is arguing that the virtues on this list are the way you earn your salvation, nor do I think he would say they are a technique you use to prove yourself a person of faith. I think Peter is saying this. Do you want to know what the life of a person who has genuine saving faith looks like? Well, this is what it looks like. The person of genuine saving faith has these qualities and they are increasing. Over a lifetime of growing and waiting and trusting and following God, these qualities will be revealed in the person who truly has saving faith because these are the qualities the Spirit of God is busy at work to produce in people of faith. So what does your life look like if you long for these things, if you desperately want to be the kind of person described in this list, and if you see yourself growing in these qualities over time, then rest assured God has marked you as His and you are on the right path. But if you don't care a fig about these virtues, then you have cause for concern. So this is not intended to be good advice on how to be a nice person and how to play well with others, although if you are that kind of person, that might follow. But what he's ultimately emphasizing is that faith in the apostolic gospel leads to a character marked by these things, in contrast to the kind of lifestyle the false teachers are advocating. Okay, one more comment about the list itself. When you come to a list like this, it's always helpful to ask, is there any particular logic or structure to the list? Has he randomly ordered the items on it, or has he placed them alphabetically, or has he put them in a particular order on purpose? Does one thing follow from another in a particular way? For example, some scholars see this list as a kind of ladder where each step up the ladder is more important than the step before. So they would argue that there is a progression here that you start at one point on the lowest rung of faith, and then you step up to the next most important thing, and then the next and then the next, and so on, until you get to the last item on the list, which is love. That does make a certain kind of sense given how much the Bible emphasizes love for God and for our fellow believers. And as Jesus says, you can summarize the law as love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. And I do think Peter ends the list with love on purpose, but once you start scrutinizing the items on the list, I think it's very hard to make the argument that they're a progression. I think that view begins to fall apart. You have to push it to say that brotherly affection is greater than godliness, for example. So I don't think that is what is tying the list together. Another possibility is that each item on the list logically leads to the next one, so it's a kind of natural progression of maturity. So it's not that one is more important than the next, but that one leads to the next. So as new believers, the first things you would expect to see is faith, and then you'd expect to see virtue, and then you'd expect to see some knowledge, and so forth. And it's as we grow, this tends to be the order that these virtues will appear in our characters. That may be true for some people, but again, I don't think that holds up to scrutiny because believers come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Our paths to faith are very different, and different people learn different lessons in vastly different ways and in different timings. So I just don't think that one holds up to real life. The view that makes sense to me is that Peter's logic is a not just this, but also that kind of logic. So we start with faith, but faith involves virtue, but it doesn't stop there. It's not just virtue, it's also knowledge. And it's not just knowledge, it's also self-control, and it's not just self-control, it's also perseverance, and so on. So the pattern is a not this but also that. Not just this, but also that. It's more than this thing I just said, it's also this other thing. You might picture it as kind of like squeezing a partially deflated balloon. When you squeeze one place, it pops out over there, and then you squeeze that place and it pops out in a different place, and so on until you get the whole picture. So he's kind of amplifying not this, but that, but this, but that. Okay, now that we've set the stage, what we're going to do in the next talk is go slowly through the list and look at each item on it. And for each item, we're going to talk about not only what it means, but why Peter included it on the list and then ask what we can learn from it. So today was more setting the stage for how do we approach a list like this in Scripture? How do we approach it as good Bible students and understand it? And as we've seen, Peter is speaking to people who are bewitched by false teachers, and part of what the false teachers are telling them is that it is okay to live a life filled with greed and sensuality, and they are denying the moral implications of the gospel, and part of Peter's purpose with this list is to counteract that view. And then we've also seen that the gospel calls for a response. It's not just a set of tasks to accomplish or ideas to believe. There is a lifestyle change that follows from belief in the gospel because we no longer want to pursue a lifestyle of sin. Yes, we're still sinful and we will still fail, but we no longer want to pursue that lifestyle of sin, and instead we long to be made holy, and then this list reflects that growing understanding and maturity. So thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. I really hope you leave a comment on Apple Podcasts or iTunes, and please share this podcast with someone you think who will benefit from it. A word from a friend is the best reference. You can subscribe to this podcast so you never miss them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, or however you get your podcasts. If you want to find out more or hear previous episodes, please go to WinstonTheWord.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates, who is my favorite musician and worship leader. You can find a lot more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org, and I invite you to listen to his other songs. They are well worth it. I'm Krisan Marotta. Thank you for joining me today, and I will see you next week at Wednesday in the Word. In the meantime, I hope you find some time to visit my website, wednesdayintheword.com, and take advantage of some of my free Bible study materials. Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next week.