Look at the Book
Precious and Great Promises: 2 Peter 1:3–4
In this session of Look at the Book, our focus is on 2 Peter 1, 3, and 4, one of the most dense passages of Scripture concerning power for godliness in all the Bible. So Father, help us to be able to sort through the density of the glory of this text and see the parts of it and the whole of it in a way that will produce the intended effect of it from your Holy Spirit. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. The key here is to relate all the different propositions to each other and how they fit together to produce this godliness. So let's read through it and isolate them as we go. 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, 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 desire, sinful desire. Now let's see if we can see some clues as to how these crucial propositions are related to each other. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. So the source is divine power and the goal is life of godliness. Through, and there's the clue as to how this is connected, this power is flowing to us through knowledge. That's amazingly significant. If you ever wondered whether knowledge is significant for godliness, it's as clear as a bell right here. His divine power is giving us what we need for godliness through knowledge. Now what kind of knowledge? Knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence. So a knowledge of God, specifically God who calls summons and draws us to Himself specifically to His glory and excellence, so this is really happy, hope-filled knowledge of one day seeing and enjoying the glory and the excellence of God. And this is happening through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence. How does that happen? By which, and this which here is plural, so probably referring to this excellence and this glory, those immediately preceding antecedents, by which glory and excellence He has granted to us precious and very great promises, because God is a god of great glory and great excellence, there are great promises for us, promises that will in fact prove that this calling is going to come true, we will enjoy the glory of God and the Excellency of God someday, because that glory and that Excellency are overflowing in promises to that effect. So that, another clue, so you've had through here and by or through here, and now you've got so that here, so that through them, that's the promises, through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, and that's this godliness here. This is not us becoming God, this is not His essential being. This is the nature of His holiness. The aim here is for life of godliness, and now through and by, and so that we are arriving at partaking of this divine nature, the godliness, having, here comes a participle, which doesn't have a explicit connector with it, you have to just sort that out, having escaped. So the way we become partakers of the divine nature of godliness is that we have escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of these sinful desires. So evidently, the way these promises of this glory and excellence work is that they come back the sinful desires of the world and conquer them so that we now don't have the desires for sin anymore. We have the desires for God and His glory and His excellence, and that's exactly what the nature of god is. God has that desire, God is so satisfied in His glory and in His excellence that He has no temptation to sin whatsoever, and as we have a knowledge of these more clearly and taste the promises of God of them more firmly than we will have the wherewithal to defeat, escape, escape from the sinful, sinful desires of the world and thus share in His divine nature. So let's sketch it out like this. So first we have what, divine? The power of God, here at the bottom, power of God, I'm going to use a different color. Power of God, which leads to the call to glory and excellence, which leads to precious, hate promises, which leads to escape from desire in the world. And that's the negative way of saying, but positively here, a sharing in divine godliness. And how does it work? This power comes into action through the call, and this we should add here knowledge. We have to know our calling and that it's a glorious calling and an excellent calling towards one who is glorious and excellent, and that gives overflows with precious and very great promises. And those promises then, as we trust them and believe them, which are satisfying because they hold out this excellence to us, enable us to escape from the desires that are in the world. And by escaping those, we then share in divine godliness because that godliness is a cherishing of this precious glory and excellence above all things. So there's no doubt how we should be pursuing godliness through knowing our calling to glory and excellence, through meditating upon and believing the promises of God, and through doing battle with the desires that are in the world by combating promise with promise. The desires of the world promise us a pleasure and they do not produce in the long run. And when we conquer those promises in the world which are deceitful, we share in the divine godliness. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
When studying a paragraph of the Bible, break it down into individual propositions and ask questions about how each line relates to the one before it and after it. Focus in particular on connecting words (e.g. “for,” “so that,” “by,” etc.).