2 PETER 1
(Unless otherwise noted, all scripture references are from the New King James Version.)
2 Peter 1:1 "Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:"
Before we consider the main themes of this book, it seems worthwhile to consider this first verse, and how it adds legitimacy to the letter itself. Peter introduces himself as Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter was well-known to early Christians, as he is to Christians today. Because of his intimate acquaintance with Jesus during his earthly ministry, because he gave the first sermon in church history in Acts 3, he was the spokesman for the church in Jerusalem, and even Paul felt obliged to visit him to confirm his own ministry, invoking his name should sound to us like "sit up and listen", "pay close attention", or perhaps "ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States".
Also, we should not miss the terms bondservant and apostle. Only a few Christians are called to be apostles, but we are all called to be bondservants, so I want to pay particular attention to what that means. A bondservant is a slave, not one who works for wages, one who has entirely given up and subjected his own will to the will of his master, in this case Jesus Christ.
Interestingly, a bondservant in the Old Testament, according to Deuteronomy 15:12, was a Hebrew who had been sold to another Hebrew as a slave, but the master had to free his bondservants every seven years. This corresponds to the eventual sabbath rest for the people of God spoken of in Hebrews 4:9. Those who enter God's sabbath rest will be those who have faithfully served as bondservants until the sabbath. Jews served one another as slaves for six years and were freed in the seventh year, and there are six introductions of the epistles of the New Testament in the NKJV where the writers refer to themselves as bondservants, Romans 1:1, Philippians 1:1, Titus 1:1, James 1:1, here in 2 Peter 1:1 and in Jude 1:1. We should keep the concept of being a bondservant in mind later when we discuss what duties our Master has assigned to us in verses 5-11.
A bondservant of Jesus Christ is essentially a living sacrifice, which Paul speaks of in Romans 12:1-2 and Peter refers to in 1 Peter 2:1-5.
Romans 12:1 "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
1 Peter 2:1 "Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
2:2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
2:3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
2:4 Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious,
2:5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
Also consider the following verses:
Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
Romans 6:1 "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
6:2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
6:3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
6:4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6:6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
6:7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
6:9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.
6:10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
6:11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
6:13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace."
It's beyond my purpose here to discuss the above passages in detail, but the basic concept is that we have both the power and the responsibility as Christians to be bondservants of Jesus Christ, because our sins and our inclination to sin have been nailed to the cross with him and we have been raised with him to walk in newness of life, not our life, but his.
If I have been both crucified and raised with Christ, I should expect God to be pleased with me, just as he was pleased with Jesus when he was on earth. This is a difficult concept for me, because I am not generally pleased with myself, and it is therefore hard for me sometimes to believe God is pleased with me, when I'm not. Yet this is precisely the faith we as Christians are called to, a faith which believes we are completely forgiven because of Christ's atonement and completely capable to overcome sin because we have been raised with him, exchanging our nature and our life for his. This is a more radical faith than most Christians have, but it is this faith which we need to develop and then supplement with the virtues Peter describes in verses 5-11. No wonder Peter calls this faith precious, and he says we have obtained it through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have all obtained some material blessings at our own expense, but our faith has been purchased by Christ on Calvary and given to us as a free gift.
2 Peter 1:2 "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
1:4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."
Whenever possible, I want to be at peace with other people, as long as it is true peace, not merely the illusionary appearance of peace which may result from going along with the world in order to get along with it. Having favor with others is even better, especially when it takes little or no effort on our part. Being at peace and receiving grace from men is often difficult. In fact, I was just looking at a seminary curriculum yesterday which included a course in conflict management.
For his part, God is willing to multiply grace and peace in our lives as we increase in our knowledge of Christ. Verse 3 says he has given us all things which pertain to life and godliness, but it doesn't tell us what all things are. It seems apparent then that it is our responsibility to find out what they are and to enjoy them as we discover and have need for them.
Verse 4 also does not enumerate what all of God's exceedingly great and precious promises are. We are to search the scriptures and discover them for ourselves, and we will partake of the divine nature as we discover them and believe they are for us personally. For example, suppose I meditate on the following passage:
John 6:39 "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.
6:40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
As I ponder this passage, I partake of the divine nature by knowing I believe in Jesus, and I realize he is promising me that he will not lose track of me, but he will physically raise me from the dead on the last day (assuming, of course, that I have died). This reminds me that Jesus wants to give me eternal life in a spiritual body in which I may live with him forever. This was certainly no idea of mine, nor do I have the power to bring it to pass. It is the product of God's goodness and his power.
1 John 3:2 "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
3:3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure."
In the next section, Peter tells us what kinds of fruit our faith should produce:
1 Peter 1:5 "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
1:6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
1:7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
1:8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1:9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
1:10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;
1:11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
In Matthew 7:16 Jesus says: "You shall know them by their fruits." In many ways, much of the letter we call 2 Peter is an amplification of that saying. Peter speaks in this passage about the works which should result from sincere faith, and in the next chapter he contrasts this with the works of the ungodly. Most of chapter 3 is with regard to the certainty of Christ's return and God's judgment of mankind, even if it seems to have been delayed from a human perspective.
Verses 5-7 list seven things which we should make every effort to supplement our faith with: virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love. Since verse 10 indicates there is some diligence required on our part in this regard, I would think we should ask God to help us cultivate all seven of these things simultaneously. However, the Amplified Bible translates verses 5-7 as if these things need to be added sequentially, as if we were to climb a staircase, with love being the highest virtue at the top of the staircase. The translation below suggests that faith produces virtue, virtue produces knowledge, knowledge produces self-control, self-control produces perseverance, perseverance produces godliness, godliness produces brotherly affection and brotherly affection produces love, which is God's ultimate desire for our character.
1 Peter 1:5 (Amplified Bible): "For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence),
1:6 And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety),
1:7And in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love."
Besides the apparently sequential nature of these qualities, another interesting point to ponder is how much of the responsibility for developing them is ours, and how much of it is God's. Consider the apparent contrast between the following two passages:
Philippians 2:12 "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure."
Philippians 1:6 "being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;"
Working out our own salvation with fear and trembling certainly implies consistent effort on our part, as does 2 Peter 1:10's exhortation to produce the fruits which confirm our calling and election. Yet both Philippians 1:6 and Philippians 2:13 tell us that God has begun a good work in us, that he is working in us, and he will complete his work in us. Perhaps the best explanation here is to say that God is working behind the scenes to put in our hearts the desire for the character and the works which please him. From our perspective, we need to be exhorted to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love to our conduct, but God is working behind the scene, shaping the hearts of men for his own purposes.
2 Peter 1:12 "For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth.
1:13 Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you,
1:14 knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.
1:15 Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease."
This section is fairly self-explanatory and I don't have any comment about it, except to say that Peter always planned to have this preserved for us after his death. I believe this disproves the claims of some scholars that Peter was not the real author of this book, and that it was written by someone else long after most of the New Testament had been written.
2 Peter 1:16 "For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
1:17 For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
1:18 And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
1:19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;
1:20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,
1:21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."
Between appealing to the people of God to supplement their faith by doing works which confirm their call and election and later speaking of God's judgment of the ungodly, Peter pauses to tell us why his word is so authoritative and why we must pay attention to it. The most obvious is the fulfillment in Christ of the Old Testament prophecies about him. He makes no attempt to enumerate them, but many are quoted throughout the New Testament, and others should become apparent to readers of the Old Testament.
To the prophetic word, Peter adds both his eyewitness and earwitness testimony, reminding us of the transfiguration of Christ, which is described in Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-10 and Luke 9:28-36. Peter witnessed many of Christ's miracles, and Christ's miraculous power was at work in him after the resurrection, but the transfiguration is appropriate here because God's voice from heaven was heard, Jesus was transfigured before their eyes and his divine glory was revealed to Peter, James and John, and he appeared with Moses and Elijah, indicating he was about to fulfill both the law and the prophets.
Peter tells us to pay attention to these things until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. Jesus is referred to as the morning star in both Revelation 2:28 and Revelation 22:16. So Peter is apparently telling us to consider
and meditate about these things when we have questions or doubts.
2 Peter 1:1 "Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:"
Before we consider the main themes of this book, it seems worthwhile to consider this first verse, and how it adds legitimacy to the letter itself. Peter introduces himself as Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter was well-known to early Christians, as he is to Christians today. Because of his intimate acquaintance with Jesus during his earthly ministry, because he gave the first sermon in church history in Acts 3, he was the spokesman for the church in Jerusalem, and even Paul felt obliged to visit him to confirm his own ministry, invoking his name should sound to us like "sit up and listen", "pay close attention", or perhaps "ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States".
Also, we should not miss the terms bondservant and apostle. Only a few Christians are called to be apostles, but we are all called to be bondservants, so I want to pay particular attention to what that means. A bondservant is a slave, not one who works for wages, one who has entirely given up and subjected his own will to the will of his master, in this case Jesus Christ.
Interestingly, a bondservant in the Old Testament, according to Deuteronomy 15:12, was a Hebrew who had been sold to another Hebrew as a slave, but the master had to free his bondservants every seven years. This corresponds to the eventual sabbath rest for the people of God spoken of in Hebrews 4:9. Those who enter God's sabbath rest will be those who have faithfully served as bondservants until the sabbath. Jews served one another as slaves for six years and were freed in the seventh year, and there are six introductions of the epistles of the New Testament in the NKJV where the writers refer to themselves as bondservants, Romans 1:1, Philippians 1:1, Titus 1:1, James 1:1, here in 2 Peter 1:1 and in Jude 1:1. We should keep the concept of being a bondservant in mind later when we discuss what duties our Master has assigned to us in verses 5-11.
A bondservant of Jesus Christ is essentially a living sacrifice, which Paul speaks of in Romans 12:1-2 and Peter refers to in 1 Peter 2:1-5.
Romans 12:1 "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
1 Peter 2:1 "Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking,
2:2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
2:3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
2:4 Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious,
2:5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
Also consider the following verses:
Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
Romans 6:1 "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
6:2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?
6:3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?
6:4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
6:5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6:6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
6:7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
6:9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.
6:10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
6:11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
6:13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace."
It's beyond my purpose here to discuss the above passages in detail, but the basic concept is that we have both the power and the responsibility as Christians to be bondservants of Jesus Christ, because our sins and our inclination to sin have been nailed to the cross with him and we have been raised with him to walk in newness of life, not our life, but his.
If I have been both crucified and raised with Christ, I should expect God to be pleased with me, just as he was pleased with Jesus when he was on earth. This is a difficult concept for me, because I am not generally pleased with myself, and it is therefore hard for me sometimes to believe God is pleased with me, when I'm not. Yet this is precisely the faith we as Christians are called to, a faith which believes we are completely forgiven because of Christ's atonement and completely capable to overcome sin because we have been raised with him, exchanging our nature and our life for his. This is a more radical faith than most Christians have, but it is this faith which we need to develop and then supplement with the virtues Peter describes in verses 5-11. No wonder Peter calls this faith precious, and he says we have obtained it through the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have all obtained some material blessings at our own expense, but our faith has been purchased by Christ on Calvary and given to us as a free gift.
2 Peter 1:2 "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
1:3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
1:4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."
Whenever possible, I want to be at peace with other people, as long as it is true peace, not merely the illusionary appearance of peace which may result from going along with the world in order to get along with it. Having favor with others is even better, especially when it takes little or no effort on our part. Being at peace and receiving grace from men is often difficult. In fact, I was just looking at a seminary curriculum yesterday which included a course in conflict management.
For his part, God is willing to multiply grace and peace in our lives as we increase in our knowledge of Christ. Verse 3 says he has given us all things which pertain to life and godliness, but it doesn't tell us what all things are. It seems apparent then that it is our responsibility to find out what they are and to enjoy them as we discover and have need for them.
Verse 4 also does not enumerate what all of God's exceedingly great and precious promises are. We are to search the scriptures and discover them for ourselves, and we will partake of the divine nature as we discover them and believe they are for us personally. For example, suppose I meditate on the following passage:
John 6:39 "This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.
6:40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
As I ponder this passage, I partake of the divine nature by knowing I believe in Jesus, and I realize he is promising me that he will not lose track of me, but he will physically raise me from the dead on the last day (assuming, of course, that I have died). This reminds me that Jesus wants to give me eternal life in a spiritual body in which I may live with him forever. This was certainly no idea of mine, nor do I have the power to bring it to pass. It is the product of God's goodness and his power.
1 John 3:2 "Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
3:3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure."
In the next section, Peter tells us what kinds of fruit our faith should produce:
1 Peter 1:5 "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
1:6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
1:7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
1:8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1:9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
1:10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;
1:11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
In Matthew 7:16 Jesus says: "You shall know them by their fruits." In many ways, much of the letter we call 2 Peter is an amplification of that saying. Peter speaks in this passage about the works which should result from sincere faith, and in the next chapter he contrasts this with the works of the ungodly. Most of chapter 3 is with regard to the certainty of Christ's return and God's judgment of mankind, even if it seems to have been delayed from a human perspective.
Verses 5-7 list seven things which we should make every effort to supplement our faith with: virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love. Since verse 10 indicates there is some diligence required on our part in this regard, I would think we should ask God to help us cultivate all seven of these things simultaneously. However, the Amplified Bible translates verses 5-7 as if these things need to be added sequentially, as if we were to climb a staircase, with love being the highest virtue at the top of the staircase. The translation below suggests that faith produces virtue, virtue produces knowledge, knowledge produces self-control, self-control produces perseverance, perseverance produces godliness, godliness produces brotherly affection and brotherly affection produces love, which is God's ultimate desire for our character.
1 Peter 1:5 (Amplified Bible): "For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence),
1:6 And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety),
1:7And in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love."
Besides the apparently sequential nature of these qualities, another interesting point to ponder is how much of the responsibility for developing them is ours, and how much of it is God's. Consider the apparent contrast between the following two passages:
Philippians 2:12 "Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure."
Philippians 1:6 "being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;"
Working out our own salvation with fear and trembling certainly implies consistent effort on our part, as does 2 Peter 1:10's exhortation to produce the fruits which confirm our calling and election. Yet both Philippians 1:6 and Philippians 2:13 tell us that God has begun a good work in us, that he is working in us, and he will complete his work in us. Perhaps the best explanation here is to say that God is working behind the scenes to put in our hearts the desire for the character and the works which please him. From our perspective, we need to be exhorted to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly affection and love to our conduct, but God is working behind the scene, shaping the hearts of men for his own purposes.
2 Peter 1:12 "For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth.
1:13 Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you,
1:14 knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.
1:15 Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease."
This section is fairly self-explanatory and I don't have any comment about it, except to say that Peter always planned to have this preserved for us after his death. I believe this disproves the claims of some scholars that Peter was not the real author of this book, and that it was written by someone else long after most of the New Testament had been written.
2 Peter 1:16 "For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
1:17 For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
1:18 And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
1:19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;
1:20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,
1:21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."
Between appealing to the people of God to supplement their faith by doing works which confirm their call and election and later speaking of God's judgment of the ungodly, Peter pauses to tell us why his word is so authoritative and why we must pay attention to it. The most obvious is the fulfillment in Christ of the Old Testament prophecies about him. He makes no attempt to enumerate them, but many are quoted throughout the New Testament, and others should become apparent to readers of the Old Testament.
To the prophetic word, Peter adds both his eyewitness and earwitness testimony, reminding us of the transfiguration of Christ, which is described in Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-10 and Luke 9:28-36. Peter witnessed many of Christ's miracles, and Christ's miraculous power was at work in him after the resurrection, but the transfiguration is appropriate here because God's voice from heaven was heard, Jesus was transfigured before their eyes and his divine glory was revealed to Peter, James and John, and he appeared with Moses and Elijah, indicating he was about to fulfill both the law and the prophets.
Peter tells us to pay attention to these things until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. Jesus is referred to as the morning star in both Revelation 2:28 and Revelation 22:16. So Peter is apparently telling us to consider
and meditate about these things when we have questions or doubts.
posted by TAPIOCA at 7/29/2007 02:17:00 AM
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