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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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IT WAS SOMETHING LIKE two minutes before the arrival of the Holy Ghost. Inside, the friends of Jesus were huddled within the upper room. Outside, the Pentecost crowds were going about their morning’s busyness.
These two groups of people weren’t yet aware of each other. At each corner of the room, rudimentary sconces held flickering oil lanterns: the dancing yellow light illumined the faces and bowed heads of the circle. The smell of the room was thick with unwashed clothing and stagnant breath. This was where they’d been, and all they’d been doing, for the last ten days since he went. One of the women was praying aloud: “…and did you not tell us the story of the judge and the widow, Lord? Well, here I am, a widow like she, and I beseech you. I beseech you, Lord, that, being as we are so small, so insignificant, so terribly outnumbered by the powers and people who would stand against us, Lord, that you yourself would stand within our midst—O, be our strength! be our might!—so that we might hold our heads high…in you. You have given us an impossibly difficult task to do, Lord. You have left the whole world in the keeping of only us… “And I recall you asking, when you stood before the crowd that day, if you, on your returning, would be able to find faithful ones who had maintained their faith…” She lifted her head and the lantern-light caught the edges of her features. “Well, Lord, we believe—and we are ready to receive…” A wind starts to blow within the room… Jesus takes His time to arrive where He's going.
He searches your eyes to see what you think; what you believe. People believe and then become who they are in the Kingdom of Heaven. People believe and then become who they are in the Kingdom of Heaven. People believe and then become who they are in the Kingdom of Heaven. Embracing death, Jesus was endeavoring to embrace us. How freeing to know that only Jesus can handle everything. Perfect adherence to the Law will not save you: the Old tried that and failed.
Every single person is as big of a sinner as any other: the Old and New agree on that fact. Trying to make your adherence to the New Covenant about you is returning to the terms of the Old Covenant. Instead, when Jesus died, your old nature died with Him, and you are invited now to RISE WITH HIM and BE NEW. You will be as new as the degree to which you allow Jesus Himself to live His resurrected life within you. You allow Him to do this by believing in Him, by abiding in Him, and by staying connected to Him at every moment: all the time. Understand: Jesus, in love, has already done it. Therefore, honoring His life and death and resurrection, we refuse ANYTHING with even a hint of the Old Law of self-perfection. And, with that, we refuse shame, every form of trying to hide, going-it-alone, discord with the people around ourselves, and, most importantly, any sense of any sort of disconnection with God. Under the New Covenant—which was sealed forever by the blood of Jesus Himself—we receive joyous mercy, being known, never being alone, new relationships, and our place at the Family Table of God. That is who we are now—and who we'll be. For this is what Jesus lived and died and lived again for. With the New Covenant, our righteousness is belief in the righteousness of Jesus; our obediences are an active act of walking alongside Him.
His proximity to us is not fearful; it is freedom. He is as near to us as our breath, as our heart—and as our ongoing faithful declarations of His glorious Lordship. We are, in seeking Him, already saved; already His. Belief is our once-and-then-forevermore, daily, ongoing act of obedience—and, from here, all other obediences follow. And, all of this—all the promises, all the offerings, all the inheritances, all the spiritual adventures—are found in the One who will never let us be put to shame. Thank you, Jesus! |
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