Sermon: The Promise and Possibility of Holiness (2 Peter 1:1-11)

This is an English translation of a sermon I preached in chapel here at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia this past Thursday, September 24, elaborated from the Spanish outline I used to actually preach from. This was my first chance to preach for the whole seminary community. I hope the sermon can bless and challenge others through this blog.

           When you hear the word holiness, what is your first reaction? I suspect that a majority of us feel a slight discomfort when we hear the word. We know it is something we are supposed to pursue, but thinking about it makes us feel inept and incapable as followers of Jesus. Yes, I know holiness matters, but do I really have to listen to another sermon on it?

            About a year ago I was at a Bible study at my church and the leader asked us to share one word that summed up what God had been teaching each of us recently. A lot of people said things like “love,” “peace,” or “Father.” When it got to me, I said “holiness”. I noticed a couple of people in the group visibly react, straightening up a bit as if to say, “Holiness? Why mention something so negative?”

            Why is it that we tend to see holiness as something negative, something we’d rather not talk about? I think when it comes down to it, the reality is that a lot of us doubt whether God can really transform our lives. For those who are students, you have to fill out your Spiritual Formation Project every semester in Ministry Practicum class, identifying an area of your character to seek to intentionally grow in and spiritual disciplines and practices that will help get you there. If you’re diligent, you fill out the weekly log of activities sharing what you have done to seek growth in that area. But what is your attitude in the process? Is it just more paperwork to fill out? Another class requirement? Or do you enter each semester with the expectation that God really will work to make you more like Christ than you were before?

            Today I want to focus on a text in the Bible that isn’t particularly well-known, from a book that gets largely overlooked. But it is a text that God has used greatly in my own life to teach me about holiness and its relation with the salvation that we have in Christ. What we will see in this passage is that holiness is something that is positive, possible, and nothing less than a progressive participation in the fullness of salvation. Please open your Bibles to 2 Peter 1:1-11.

The text says the following (ESV):

¹ Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

² May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

³ His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, ⁴ by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. ⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, ⁶ and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, ⁷ and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. ⁸ 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. ⁹ For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. ¹⁰ Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. ¹¹ For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

            What we find in this passage is an exhortation to holiness based on a promise in two parts: a promise about the possibility of obedience and a promise about the nature of the salvation that we have in Christ. But before we get to those promises, we have the greeting in verses 1-2.

            Many aspects of the greetings in the epistles are formulaic. But if we pay close attention we can note that each author adds his own particular touch to his greetings, often related to the key theological themes of his letter. In 2 Peter what is most notable is the way that Peter describes his recipients. He writes to them saying that they are “those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.” The word for “of equal standing” means that the faith of his readers is equal in honor to the faith of apostles like Peter. They aren’t second class Christians, inferior to the apostles. They are on the same level, sharing the same promises from God. But how did they come to have this faith of equal honor to that of Peter and the rest of the apostles? Verse 1 says that they “have obtained” this faith, but a more literal translation would be that they “have received” it, as in the way one receives something by lot or by the divine will. In other words, they have a faith that is not inferior to that of Peter not because they are so great, but because God is so generous.

            Now I imagine most of you will probably say, “Yeah, of course, I agree with that. Our faith is on the same level as anyone else’s.” But when the rubber meets the road, the real question is the following: If you have a faith that is in no way inferior to that of the apostles, do you really believe that the same character transformation is possible in your life that we see in people like Peter, Paul, John, or Barnabas?

            After describing this faith that puts us on the same level as the apostles, Peter shifts in verses 3-4 to describing two blessings of this faith in our lives. The first blessing, which we find in 1:3, is that God has given us everything necessary to obey him. What Peter says literally is that God has given us “all things that pertain to life and godliness.” What does that mean? Well, we might think it means that God has promised to always bless us with whatever we need to make us happy. But we know from experience and from other parts of the Bible that that isn’t the case. “All things that pertain to life and godliness” doesn’t mean God always gives us what we want, but rather that he gives us what we need to be faithful. It’s for that reason that the NIV paraphrases a bit in its translation, saying, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.”

            How do we come to experience that new capacity for obedience? Verse 3 says that it happens through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. The Greek word for knowledge here appears two other times in the passage, in verses 2 and 8, and most likely points back to the knowledge of God that they obtained at their conversion. For that reason, verse 8 focuses on not being unfruitful in such knowledge. Our justification is by faith alone, but it ought to produce fruit as a natural result.

So then, this is a promise for every believer. But so often we put limits on God’s grace. In the face of which situation do you say, “I am incapable of confronting this?” Perhaps it is a temptation, perhaps a diagnosis of a chronic illness, perhaps a death in the family. Or maybe you are ready to deal with whatever challenge might arise in ministry, but you’re deathly afraid of having to face a ministry failure. Maybe loneliness is something you just don’t know how to cope with. Whatever that area might be, God has given us a promise: that his power gives us what we need to live for him when we depend on his grace.

The second blessing of this faith that we have received is that God has promised to make us like himself, as we find in verse 4. The verse tells us that through God’s promises we will “become partakers of the divine nature.” When was the last time you meditated on that? I imagine that very few us of think of our salvation in such terms, if for no other reason than that if we didn’t already know it was part of the Bible we would probably say it is heresy. It smells a little too much like New Age thought or pantheism. But Peter isn’t saying that we are literally going to become God, where any distinction between God and the believer ceases to exist. What he is concerned about is total character transformation.

I say this not to explain away the text, but based on what Peter himself tells us. If you note the way that verse 4 ends, Peter relates the promise of partaking in the divine nature with “having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” The human problem is fundamentally a problem of corruption, but what kind of corruption? A large part of the pagan world in Peter’s day and afterward in the early church thought that corruption was the result of finitude and materiality. We are corrupt and separate from God because we exist in a body. But that’s not the problem, according to Peter. The problem is sinful desire. What separates us from God is sin, not finitude.

What Peter is saying is that God has promised to make us like himself, to completely transform our nature so that we live like Christ. How much do you yearn for that? How big is your concept of salvation?

Salvation certainly includes forgiveness of sins and justification, but it goes beyond that to the total transformation of our natures so that each and every one of us who knows Christ will be transformed to live like Jesus. For me, that is the only lasting hope for society. Of course we ought to seek justice here and now. But when we look at our society and see the problems of violence and dysfunctional relationships that are so ingrained, really the only complete hope is that in the new heavens and the new earth God will have decisively done away with the human sin problem altogether, and we will live in a world where every single person lives a life just as holy as Jesus did when he walked on earth. That’s what’s involved in participating in the divine nature—nothing less that the eradication of sin from the human heart once and for all when God gives us resurrected bodies.

When I lived in the United States, I had a number of friends there who were atheists or agnostics. One of the biggest objections that I often heard to the gospel from them was the following: “Why would I even want to go to heaven? It seems pretty boring to spend eternity praising God, especially if I have to sit around on a cloud strumming a harp. And if I have to spend eternity with these church folks, even worse! That would be the ultimate punishment.” I understand why some people see things this way, but they are missing in a very fundamental way the true Christian message. Christianity is not about getting forgiven and just staying there, never to truly change. The hope of the resurrection is the hope of total transformation. I can look forward to spending eternity with all the church folks for one simple reason—they are all going to be perfectly living like Jesus lived.

When we understand that this is the final goal of our salvation, we can start to make a little more sense of why holiness is something so positive for the biblical writers. Holiness is something so supremely good because it is nothing less than experiencing in the here and now a glimpse of the total transformation that awaits us when God raises and glorifies us. For that reason, Peter shifts in verse 5 to exhortation, ceasing to speak in terms of we and the promises that apply to us, and now addressing his readers directly as you. If the fullness of salvation is actually being like God himself in our character, we ought to seek to manifest that character starting now.

In verses 5 through 7 Peter gives us a chain of seven virtues to add to faith, culminating in the highest of them all, love. Love is the greatest expression of the Christian life. But the problem with love is that it is so easy to deceive ourselves. “I’m a loving person. I get along well with everyone else and don’t seem to have too many issues. I’ve got this covered.” The problem is so much of the time we think we love because we have some nice feeling, but our actions just don’t back it up. It is here that Peter’s chain of virtues can be so helpful.

Some of the students in my Ministry Practicum group are doing their Spiritual Formation project this semester related to the value of love. But one of the things that becomes painfully obvious when we start asking how we can grow in love is that in order to grow we need specificity. We have to focus on the most routine and unglamorous aspects of life to arrive at something that seems so simple, being a loving person. So, what are the steps that Peter suggests that can help us get to love?

First he tells us that we need to add these different virtues or characteristics to our lives. The word literally means supply or provide, and it highlights personal responsibility in the sanctification process. The first thing to add is virtue or moral excellence. I think the reason that Peter focuses on virtue as the first thing to add is that virtue shows the initial fruit of true repentance. When a person comes to Christ, they must repent and put their faith in him. Unfortunately, a lot of times we preach a gospel that stresses faith to the exclusion of repentance. Repentance, of course, is not penance. My justification does not depend on me doing a certain quantity of good to prove the sincerity of my repentance. Yet the faith that justifies ought to produce changed character as a result. Virtue, then, is a way of putting into action the commitment we make when we give our life to Christ.

After virtue comes knowledge. It is possible to be a person of faith and even of virtue, and end up with a well-intentioned yet seriously misguided devotion. God recognizes that part of our growth comes from study, learning who God is and who we are, so we can make better decisions that lead to deeper maturity. Knowledge, at some level, is essential to a deeper Christian life.

Yet what do I do with all that knowledge? Well, knowledge is only helpful when we act on it, which may be why Peter next mentions self-control. In self-control I seek to make conscious decisions in how I live my life based on the knowledge I have gained. This is essential for lasting spiritual transformation. I believe self-control is important as well for another reason: knowledge often has the tendency to puff up the knower. It is all to easy to fall into pride as a result of study. One manifestation of that pride is what 2 Timothy 3:6-7 speaks of—that some people are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. They lack the humility to accept the truth when they see it. They lack the humility to act on and accept what they know—with all its limitations—because they want the complete answer. The problem is we’re never going to able to explain everything about God. We need self-control as a way of exercising humility in our knowledge.

Peter next mentions steadfastness or patience. If we aren’t steadfast in self-control it isn’t good for much. Most people can be self-controlled for a short time, but how many of us show commitment in character transformation not just for a day or a week, but over the long haul of many years of following Christ?

Next Peter adds godliness. While virtue was mentioned previously, Peter is probably thinking of a deeper level of devotion here. He is describing a person whose life is characterized by the fear of the Lord at a profound level.

The fear of the Lord and godliness, however, can never be content to focus on love for God to the exclusion of love for others. Peter next mentions brotherly affection as a way of pointing out that devotion to God has be express itself in tangible ways in our relationships with others. I think it is instructive that Peter mentions brotherly affection before love. It is easy to think we love someone, but brotherly affection forces me to be more concrete. In what ways am I really expressing to others in the body of Christ that I care about them like I care for family?

The thing about family is that we are born into an obligation that we didn’t choose. It’s common to have family members that we would never relate to were it not the fact that they are simply part of the family. While it’s not exactly the same, there is a close parallel in the church. When we are born again, we are not just adopted as God’s children; we are given brothers and sisters. God places us in a new family, the church. Part of what that means is learning to love the particular body in which God has placed us, even in its imperfections. We often have to lay aside our preferences and desires and commit ourselves to this group of people as they are. When we truly do this, love often flows naturally as the result. When we focus on the tangible, concrete expressions of brotherly affection, God brings the heart change in the process.

My question for all of you is a simple one: What is the weakest link in this chain in your life? How does that weak link affect the rest of your spiritual life and keep you from loving well? I know that in my own life my weakest points are self-control, especially in certain aspects of time management, and brotherly affection. I don’t set out to fail to love others, but I often fall short because I haven’t taken the concrete steps to express my concern for others and intentionally make space for them in my life. With my personality, I have to be extremely intentional or it won’t happen.

I also want to ask a question of all the seminarians here this morning: We see in verse 8 that Peter doesn’t want his readers to be ineffective and unfruitful in their knowledge of Christ. I have said that this refers in the first instance to the knowledge of Christ when we come to know him in our conversion. But when it comes to the other aspect of knowledge, the specifically academic knowledge that you have gained by studying here, what fruit have you seen in your life? When your friends or family or spouse look at your life before coming to the seminary and your life right now, would they say that all of the knowledge that you have gained has produced in your character this fruit that Peter speaks of?

It is easy in an academic environment—for both students and professors— to focus on an alternative chain, where we focus on adding other things to knowledge. One could say that the academic chain goes something like this: to your faith, add knowledge; to knowledge, good writing; to good writing, critical thinking; to critical thinking, academic rigor; to academic rigor, academic degrees; to academic degrees, peer review of your work; to peer review, publications; and to publications, becoming a tenured professor.

There’s nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves. But if your knowledge isn’t also leading down the path to love, it can easily be idolatry.

Peter concludes this section with a final exhortation to perseverance in verses 10-11. Literally translated, he says, “Make every effort to make your calling and election valid (or in force)”. I’m not going to enter here into the debate over perseverance between Calvinists, Arminians, and others on this point, but I will say one thing. Nearly all Christians would agree, whatever their perspective, that perseverance in the faith is necessary for final salvation, apart from their differences about what is implied about one’s initial faith or lack thereof when one doesn’t persevere. It’s not enough to just say a prayer, get yourself covered, and then live however you feel like. A person living like that ought not to have any subjective assurance of their calling and election because they are blatantly ignoring God.

Peter gives us a very strong and very interesting promise here. He says in verse 10 that “if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” In Greek, he expresses it in the most emphatic way possible, using a double negative (ou me) plus the aorist subjunctive followed by another word (pote) to emphasize that this won’t happen. In other words, it is something like, “if you practice these qualities, you will most certainly never ever fall.” This may be the clearest statement in the Bible on how to persevere in the faith. Knowledge can be important, but much more central in the chain of virtues is having deep roots in character. That is the absolutely essential foundation for perseverance.

When one does that, Peter says that “in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” The word for “richly provided” is the same word that Peter used in verse 5 for “add,” but in the passive voice. In other words, when you add these things to your faith, it will be added to you (by God) entrance into the kingdom. It would be easy to read this and fall into the error of thinking that Peter is teaching that our salvation ultimately depends on  us—as the semi-Pelagian heresy teaches, man takes the first step of faith and God responds with his grace. But that would be to forget the context of the passage, for the faith that we are to add these virtues to is a faith that we have received from God “by the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ” (1:1). Our faith is a divine work, not a human one. Moreover, verse 3 told us that everything that pertains to life and godliness has been given us by God’s power. Yes, we are called and responsible to obey. But with that call comes the divine enabling, and for that reason salvation is 100% the work of God from first to last.

Peter, then, is calling us to not be a forgetful people—forgetful of the forgiveness we have received, of the promises we have in Christ, and of the greatness of the salvation that awaits us when experience the total transformation that will make us fully like Christ. For that reason, Peter calls us to holiness based on the reality that holiness is something that is possible by God’s grace and supremely positive, because it is nothing less than a progressive participation in the fullness of salvation, when one day we leave these mortal bodies behind and experience the promise of participating in the divine nature, being conformed to the image of Christ, our God and Savior. 

Preaching in chapel.

Part of the student body, faculty, and staff during the sermon.