December 10, 2022 IN ORDER THAT
2 Peter 1:2-4 “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificence promises in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
This passage contains some amazing truths that we must not overlook. One is that God “has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us.” All too often believers feel that they are lacking in some way in their walk with the Lord, or that they are needy, or that they are sinners who continue to sin. The awesome truth is that we are not lacking anything we need for life and godliness! God has made us sufficient for anything we face in life. Of course we are not sufficient in and of ourselves, but only through the true knowledge of Him-and that is the critical truth we must understand. We can have a wrong perception of God and of what we think the Christian life is; and we can have a wrong understanding of the scriptures. For that reason, we must personally read and study the word of God; and we must do so without our pre-conceived ideas, our preferences as to what we want the scriptures to say, and without our traditional views that can cause us to have blind spots as to what the scriptures teach. In other words, read the scriptures and let them speak for themselves, and if we need to, let us adjust our thinking and our understanding to the truth of the scriptures. God desires that we have a true knowledge of Him-and we find that in His word. Another awesome truth we discover in this passage is that we can “become partakers of the divine nature.” A lot could be said at this point, but the fact is that God has given us a new nature-a nature like His! We no longer have to live according to our old nature. Please hear this: the most common and the biggest error for believers of our day is not knowing that we have been given a new nature like His and that now we can live in a way that is pleasing to Him and that we are no longer bound to sin! (If and when we sin, we do so because we choose to sin-there is nothing making us sin.) We can walk according to the Spirit and not sin. More good news is that we can escape! We can escape the corruption that is in the word; we can be pure. All of these things are for us, but they come only through a true knowledge of Him who has called us. We do not have to live in doubt or feeling as thought we are lacking anything; God has already given us everything pertaining to life godliness. Let us discover these precious promises He has given us.
Ephesians 4:20-4 “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
Blessings,
Buddy
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