A Note From Simon Peter

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, sends this letter to those who have been given a faith as valuable as yours in the righteousness of our God, and Saviour Jesus Christ. May you know more and more of grace and peace as your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord grows deeper… 

…you must do your utmost from your side, and see that your faith carries with it real goodness of life. Your goodness must be accompanied by knowledge, your knowledge by self-control, your self-control by the ability to endure. Your endurance too must always be accompanied by devotion to God; that in turn must have in it the quality of brotherliness, and your brotherliness must lead on to Christian love.

If you have these qualities existing and growing in you then it means that knowing our Lord Jesus Christ has not made your lives either complacent or unproductive. The man whose life fails to exhibit these qualities is short-sighted—he can no longer see the reason why he was cleansed from his former sins.
Set your minds, then, on endorsing by your conduct the fact that God has called and chosen you. If you go along the lines I have indicated above, there is no reason why you should stumble, and if you have lived the sort of life I have recommended God will open wide to you the gates of the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:1,2, 5-11)

For me, this past week, what has felt important about this text—at the beginning of verse 1 and the end of verse 11—is its point of departure and point of arrival: “Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ” and “the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” Identity and citizenship. How Peter interpreted his existence, and the destination of his everyday actions.

And, to that point, I want to “pull the thread through” on the meaningfulness, for all of us, of intimacy-with-Jesus being our everything. As Peter is spurring on his first-century brothers and sisters unto Jesus, what is he also saying to us?
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• That our faith in Jesus is exactly of the same sort, and value, as his own faith was.
• That our faith is accompanied by direct interaction with—and being changed unto—God’s righteousness.
• That “knowledge of Jesus” is synonymous with the grace and peace of Jesus; that knowing Jesus better we will learn to access more and more.
  
  After which Peter offers us some challenges…
  
  

• Would we bring our everyday to this? would we delight to walk with Jesus as He refashions our life toward His good?
• Would we never settle for yesterday’s knowledges of Jesus? would we go on and on, day by day, to know Him more?
• Would we offer Him our inner lives? would we let Him make our spirits like His Spirit — by His Spirit?
• Would we learn, with Him, to be steadfast? unshakeable? unable to be moved off this position?
  
  After which Peter then gives a vision of what this is all like…
  
  

• Jesus, teaching us how to walk with His Father; accompanied by Kingdom-brothers and -sisters; all surrounded by His love.
• Jesus, growing us toward a life like His: utterly attentive; endlessly fruitful; Kingdom-focused; made Heavenly-pure in Him.
• Jesus, having called us once, calling us every single day after, to remind us that He’s chosen us for His sort of life.
• Jesus, always holding us by the hand, escorting our lives along the Way, finally bringing us through the gates into the fullness of the Kingdom.
  
  

Friends, is what He offers us not glorious?