2 Peter 1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those equal to us in the faith they have received in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: 2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3 his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. 4 Through these he has given us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become sharers in the divine nature having escaped the corruption in the world caused by coveting.
Introduction: Your Relationship with the Future
What is your relationship to the future? Most of us have a love/hate relationship with the future. We enjoy looking forward to favorable things. One of the great pleasures of life is anticipating future pleasure. The way you feel the day before your wedding or right before a great vacation or on the drive to your favorite restaurant. The Bible calls that feeling “hope,” and it’s a gift from God. It’s a gift he didn’t give the animals—the ability to enjoy future pleasure before it happens.
On the other hand, we can also suffer future pain before it happens. That’s called worry, and if you have more worry than hope, life can get pretty dark. When people commit suicide, it’s usually not just because they are in pain right now. People can handle pain right now if they have hope. But when it’s just pain as far as the eye can see, that can feel unbearable.
God didn’t give animals the ability to anticipate the future, but you’re not an animal. God has placed eternity in your heart, and so you cannot make it through life without a lifeline tethering you to future joy. Without a connection to future blessing, future pleasure, future joy, your life will crash and burn. So your relationship with the future (or with what you believe the future will be) has a huge impact on how you feel.
It also has a huge impact on your decision making. If your boss promises you a $40,000 bonus at the end of this year, you’ll probably make some different decisions than if he just said, “You’re fired.” We think and feel and make decisions and set the whole direction of our life based on what we believe the future holds.
So back to the question, right now at this point in your life, what is your relationship to the future? And a bigger question—what kind of relationship does God want you to have with the future? How does he want you to think and feel about what’s coming your way?
The aim of this study tonight is to point you to the answer to that question. And when I say it’s a big question, I don’t know if I can think of a bigger topic in Scripture based on how many statements God makes in the Bible about the future.
There’s a word for statements about the future in the Bible, and it’s not the word “prophecy.” Prophecy can be about the future or present or past. The biblical word for statements about the future is another P word—“promise.”
In English, it doesn’t count as a promise unless you say, “I promise.” But the Biblical word doesn’t mean that. It just means “to affirm something about the future.” Anytime God says anything about the future, the Bible calls that a promise. For example:
Romans 9:9 This was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."
He doesn’t say, “I promise,” or “I swear by myself,” no special vow, he just says it will happen, but Paul still calls it a promise. Whenever God says anything about the future, that’s a promise.
I give you that background about the word because in our study of 2 Peter, we come today to 1:4, which says,
4 …he has given us his very great and precious promises.
He makes a point of saying the promises are very great and precious. That’s like a big, blinking red arrow in your Bible pointing at the word promises. “DON’T MISS THE MAGNIFICNECE AND IMOPRTANCE OF THE PROMSIES!” God’s promises are the lifelines that tether you to real future joy. And it’s those lifelines that will pull you along the path of God’s will for your life. The promises are the key to resisting temptation, communion with God, and every other element of the Christian life. This isn’t a verse we can just gloss over. We need to look at it carefully, so let’s start with the first two words of v.4.
The Source of the Promises: God’s Nature
The first thing he wants us to understand is the source of the promises. At first that might seem obvious—God’s promises come from God. But it’s more specific than that.
2 Peter 1:4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises.
The promises come “through these.” These what? What did he just say in v.3? He refers to God as the one ….
3 … who called us by his own glory and excellence. 4 Through these he has given us his … promises.
God’s promises originate in his own glory and excellence—his nature. The outworking of his moral perfection.
They aren’t just any promises. Most promises we make have nothing to do with our essential nature. I could promise you that if you go south on I25 it will take you to Denver. Or that if you don’t pay your taxes, you’ll go to jail. Or if you eat right and work out every day, you’ll get stronger. None of those promises have anything to do with the core of my nature. They don’t tell you anything about Darrell Ferguson.
But God doesn’t give any of those kinds of promises. He wants you to know that all his promises are formed out of the stuff inside of his heart—his glory and excellence.
Promises from the Heart
So if I make promises about taxes or driving south on I25, those promises reveal nothing about my heart or about my attitude toward you. But can you think of an example of a human promise that might come from a person’s heart? How about a man who writes his own wedding vows? When someone does that, assuming he’s an honest person, those vows are a whole lot more than just providing information about the future. He’s expressing his heart.
That’s the way every one of God’s promises is. You could pencil in the words “from the bottom of my heart” before every promise in the Bible. And that tells us something about the purpose of the promises. When God makes promises, it’s not just to offer us incentives or give us something to look forward to. His promises do that, but if that were the only purpose, just regular promises would do. They wouldn’t have to be promises formed out of God’s inner being. Why only promises made out of divine stuff? Why does God only make promises that are tied to his moral character?
Here’s why: It’s because what God’s after isn’t for us to know the future; it’s for us to know him. When a man writes his own wedding vows, and he’s carefully crafting the wording and phrases, it’s not just to reveal his heart. He’s revealing his heart for the purpose of deepening the relationship. All of God’s promises have that purpose.
Remember the context—knowing God is everything. Verse 2—peace and grace pour into your life in abundance through knowledge of God. Verse 3—his divine power is activated in your life through knowing him. Everything we need for life and godliness comes through knowing him (with that intellectual, relational, and experiential knowledge that we talked about last time). And now we see that the way God accomplishes that, the tools God provides to enable us to know him like that, are promises rooted in his nature. Promises from his heart help us with each aspect of knowing God—intellectual, relational, and experiential.
Intellectual Knowledge - God’s Promises Are a Window to His Nature
Start with the intellectual aspect of knowing God—theological information. How do the promises give us more truth about what God is like? The fact that they all come from his essential nature means behind every promise lies at least one attribute of God. Behind every promise lies at least one attribute, which means each one of God’s promises is a window into God’s nature. The promises reveal what he’s like. If you wanted to write a book on the attributes of God, you could just make a list of every promise in the Bible—every instance of God saying something about the future, and ask, “What does that promise reveal about God’s nature?” You would end up with a very, very long book on the attributes of God.
It would be a little more manageable to just take them one at a time and spend a week or two on each promise. That wouldn’t be a bad way to have your devotions in the morning. Find one promise in the Bible, and think through what it is about God that moved him to make that promise?
Examples
Take the promise in 1 John 1:9.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
If you look through that window, what does it reveal about God?
• The promise is conditioned on confession.
You have to confess or you don’t get the forgiveness. That tells you something about God—he desires honesty from us after we sin. That matters to him.
• The word “confess” is in a continuous tense, so it could be translated “If we are confessing.”
It’s a way of life—we keep on sinning and keep on confessing. The fact that God made that promise to forgive if you keep on routinely confessing sin tells you he knew all along that we would routinely sin against him.
He knew before he ever saved you that in your Christian life, you would continually keep falling into sin, keep disobeying him over and over—he knew all that before he accepted you, and he accepted you anyway.
That tells you that his love for you runs a lot deeper than all your failures put together.
• We learn from this promise that God is faithful and just—it says that explicitly.
• This promise teaches you that God is eager to forgive sin—he doesn’t do it reluctantly.
• The fact that he promises to purify you shows how much he values purity in his people and that he intends to bring it about.
There’s a half dozen attributes of God revealed through one simple promise. And if you put all those together, it reveals a portrait of God’s nature that’s significantly different from the one many Christians have. Every promise is a window.
How about the promise Jesus made in John 14:18?
“I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you”
What are 4 or 5 truths about God you can see by looking through that window?
How about the promise that God will give grace to the humble—what does that teach us about his nature? Or the promise that he will prepare a table before you in the presence of your enemies or that his goodness and love will follow you all the days of your life? God promises his mercies will be new every morning? The number of truths you can learn about God just by realizing that his promises are windows into his nature is probably more than you could study in a lifetime. That’s the force of those first two words in v.4 “through these.” Every promise of God reveals God’s nature.
I told you last time that after a failure, instead of beating up on yourself, a better response is to ask yourself is, ‘What am I not getting about God?’” If all spiritual success comes through knowing God, then spiritual failure is always the result of lack of knowledge of God in some area. So you ask, “What am I not getting about God?” And the answer to that question is always hidden in one of his promises.
Relational Knowledge
So that’s how the promises help with the intellectual aspect of knowing God, but what about the relational aspect? How do the promises draw me closer to him and deepen the relationship? Look at the next phrase in v.4:
2 Peter 1:4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises.
That word given means granted or bestowed. It’s the same word in v.3 where it says he has granted us everything we need for life and godliness.
So the idea is the promises are a gift. They don’t just show you what God is like, they guarantee God will be like that for you. The fact that all his promises come from his glory and excellence, and they are given to you means you could define the word “promise” this way: A promise is the assurance that an attribute of God will be set into motion for you. God’s promises are not only windows that give you a peek at God’s attributes, but God opens the window and lets those attributes out. They come out of the window and surround you and wrap your life in the very nature of God.
Your God
I’ll take it a step further. Not only does each promise set one or more of God’s attributes into motion for you, but there’s one promise that sets all of God’s attributes into motion for you.
Ezekiel 36:28 … You will be my people, and I will be your God.
What does he mean by “I will be your God”? What’s the difference between him just being God, and being your God?
Well, what’s the difference between saying, “That man is a doctor” and “He’s my doctor”? “So-and-so is a great lawyer verses “He’s my lawyer.” It means his abilities will be put to use for your benefit.
So the promise “I will be your God” guarantees that whatever it means to be God, he will be that for you. He won’t just be omnipotent; he’ll use his omnipotent for your benefit. He’ll be omnipresent and omniscient for you. His love, patience, wisdom, creativity, mercy, justice, perfection, holiness—every one of his attributes will all be put to work for you. That’s what “I will be your God” means.
So that one promise, “I will be your God,” explodes into as many different promises as there are attributes of God.
Every promise is a window into God’s nature to see his attributes, and every attribute is a promise that God will be that way for you.
Experiential Knowledge
So the promises deepen our intellectual knowledge of God and our relational knowledge of God. What about experiential knowledge of God—getting closer to God by having interactions with him that enable you to know from experience what God is like? Do the promises accomplish that?
That’s where Peter goes next. Tell me if you can think of any stronger statement in the entire Bible about experiential knowledge of God.
4 … he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may become sharers in the divine nature.
It’s not just so that you’ll know what God is like; it’s so you’ll become what God is like. When those promises come out of the open window and envelop you, they change you. When God cooked up these promises using only ingredients taken from his own internal nature, it wasn’t just to reveal his nature to us. It was to infuse his nature into us. So God’s nature is both the source and the goal. Their source: God’s nature. Their goal: God’s nature in you. The promises boil up out of the cauldron of God’s character for the purpose of conforming us to God’s character. God wants to fill his creation with his own glory, and the way he brings that about is through his promises.
Nature
For Peter to say we share in the divine nature is an incredibly strong statement. The word “nature” means refers to the characteristics that rise from your essential being. I inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. That’s part of my nature. I’m wearing tennis shoes right now—that’s not part of my nature. I could take them off and put on boots and I would still be just as human, I’d still be Darrell, I would be me—what’s on my feet is not part of my nature. My DNA—that’s part of my nature.
“Share” not “Have”
So when Peter says we can become sharers in the divine nature, that’s quite the statement. It’s so strong that the Church has actually been a little embarrassed about this verse through the centuries. Some of the church fathers questioned whether 2 Peter even belonged in the Bible, partly because of this statement. It’s fine to say we escape the corruption of the world, but having a divine nature? Isn’t Peter going a little too far saying that?
It would be too far if that’s what he said, but it’s not. What he says is not that we have a divine nature, but that we share in God’s nature. Having a divine nature means your deity. But the word here is share—koinonos. Koinonia is the word for fellowship, so the idea is we are fellowshippers or sharers with something that doesn’t belong to us—it belongs to God alone.
You will never have a divine nature, you will never become a god, you will never be absorbed into God or any of that. There will always be a him-and-you, Creator/creation distinction between you and God. We will never have a divine nature, but we can share in God’s nature.
Which Attributes?
But which aspects of his nature? One reason people get tripped up by this verse is when they think of sharing in God’s nature, they think of things like God’s omnipotence or his omniscience.
• They think, “God is all-powerful and so he can do whatever he wants. I’d like to be all-powerful so I could do whatever I want.
• God can perform miracles.
That would be awesome! I’d love to be able to just do miracles at will. I could eliminate all my suffering, I could create as much money as I wanted, I could get people to act the way I want. God can see the future—I’d like to see the future.”
Are those the aspects of God’s nature Peter has in mind? No. Look what he says.
2 Peter 1:4 … through (the promises) you may become sharers in the divine nature having escaped the corruption in the world caused by coveting.
In the grammar, sharing in the divine nature and escaping moral corruption are tied together very tightly. The more you escape moral corruption, the more you share in God’s nature.
So what aspects of God’s nature is he talking about? Holiness. We share in God’s moral perfection. It’s not about performing miracles or seeing the future. It’s about escaping moral corruption and participating in God’s holiness.
Being Like God Is a Theme in Scripture
And if you understand that, this verse is really no different from what we read all over the Bible.
Ephesians 4:24 Put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Being like God—that’s exactly the same thing as sharing in the divine nature.
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.
Ephesians 3:19 … that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Is that any less extreme than what Peter said? The whole measure of all of the fullness of God? You can’t even conceive of language more extreme than that.
Knowing God by Exhibiting His Attributes
And that’s an amazing reality, because as much as we might enjoy power for miracles or foreknowledge, the moral beauty of God’s nature is a far better gift, because that helps us know him more. The best way to know God experientially is by sharing in his moral attributes.
For example:
• nothing will enable you to understand God’s forgiveness like becoming a forgiving person yourself because then you know what it’s like for him.
Someone really hurts you and you forgive that person completely—now you know from experience what it’s like for God when he forgives you.
• When you have been compassionate or merciful toward someone, that’s when you really understand God’s compassion and mercy.
• Loving people teaches you from experience what love is like, and then you understand what God is feeling when he blesses you.
The best way to know God by experience is by feeling what he feels and valuing what he values and loving what he loves. You think you have to be close to someone to share a toothbrush with that person, how about sharing in someone’s nature? That’s what the promises will do for you. You’ll share in God’s nature by escaping corruption.
Escape Corruption
Escape
That word “escape”—that’s a pretty dramatic word, isn’t it? People escape from prison. People in L.A. had to abandon their cars in traffic jams and run on foot to escape the fire. You might escape from a mugger or a flash flood. For Peter to use the word “escape” paints a very dramatic picture. The corruption in the world not as something to avoid or to try to cut back on, but as something you must escape, like a mugger or a flash flood. The evil in this world is deadly and life-threatening, and it’s coming after you. If you don’t escape, it will destroy you. But to the degree that you do escape from it, you are sharing in God’s nature.
Peter’s going to go on in the next verse to explain exactly how to make all this happen, but before he does that, it’s important for us to know what causes the corruption that we’re trying to escape. In order to escape it, you have to know what causes it.
Caused by Coveting
2 Peter 1:4 … having escaped the corruption in the world caused by coveting.
Coveting refers to sinful desire—specifically sinful desire that’s stirred up by the way you look at something.
It can be desire for a bad thing or it can be the wrong kind of desire for a good thing. If you look at your neighbor’s spouse in a way that stirs up desire, that’s coveting because it’s something God has forbidden. Or if you look at a house or a car in a way that stirs up discontent. There’s nothing wrong with desiring a house or a car or an amazing pension plan. None those things are evil or forbidden, so you can desire them. But if you look at them in a way that makes you unhappy or grumpy if you don’t get them, that’s coveting. If you have to have that thing in order to be happy, you put your hope in that thing, or you want it so bad that you’ll sin to get it or you’ll sin if you don’t get it—that’s coveting. If you want it want it in a way that causes fear in your heart if you don’t get it, or if you lose it—that’s coveting. If you want something the way you should want God, where you have to have it because your happiness depends on having it—that’s coveting.
And Peter says coveting is the cause of the corruption in the world. All the corruption? Is all sin and evil and moral corruption in the whole wide world caused by coveting? It sounds to me like that’s what he’s saying. And I tried to think of some form of corruption that isn’t caused by coveting and I couldn’t come up with anything.
If you could just wave a wand and eliminate all coveting, what evil would remain? If there were no coveting, then all our desire would be for God. And we all desired only God, what evil would exist?
It’s important to understand that there is nothing in the physical, created world that’s inherently evil. Nothing. But there are a whole lot of things that can be corrupted when they come in contact with human coveting. It’s our bad desires that causes all corruption.
If there were no coveting, you could fill the whole world with cocaine or pornography and there would be no evil because no one would want it. No one would be selfish because showing love would be more attractive to us than being first. No one would be prideful because we would all desire kingdom greatness instead of earthly greatness. All moral evil traces back to coveting.
It’s important to realize that because a lot of times we fall into thinking the evil is out there. The problem isn’t out there. If not for what’s in here, none of that potential evil gets activated.
Understanding the Battlefield
Peter wants us to know where moral corruption comes from because to win the battle, we have to know where the battlefield is. You have fight sin at the level of desire, not action. If you just try to avoid acting the wrong way without addressing the desires that are creating the evil, you’ll get nowhere. You’re just picking fruit off a tree that will produce a whole other crop right behind it. You have to strike at the root of desire.
Sin is like a virus that can only infect you if you want it. No mask can protect you, no vaccine, no air filter or distancing—the only thing that can protect you is not wanting it. That’s how moral corruption is, and it’s crucial to know that so you don’t try to fight the battle on the wrong front. It’s all about desire transformation.
But changing your desires—that’s a whole lot easier said than done. How do you change your desires?
What does Peter say?
2 Peter 1:4 … he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may … escape the corruption in the world caused by coveting.
That’s the message of verse 4—you escape corruption and share in God’s nature through the promises. That’s the secret.
How It Works: Trust
But how does it work, exactly? God made all the same promises to all believers, but some have a lot more success in escaping corruption than others. What do we need to do on our end to make this happen? How does God want us to respond to his promises?
How do you want people to respond if you make a promise? You just want them to believe it, right? Isn’t that why we make promises—we want the person to believe it.
It’s no different for God. He simply wants us to trust his promises. That’s your part.
We read over and over in the Bible, the just will live by faith. You’re saved through faith, you live by faith, you get grace through faith—everything in the Christian life comes through faith, and all failure is due to lack of faith. That’s what the rest of the Bible says, but then Peter comes along and says all success in the Christian life comes through the promises. Is that a contradiction? No. Peter is just being more specific.
When Scripture says, “Live by faith,” by itself, that’s kind of vague. What does that look like in practical terms? Between now and an hour from now, what does trusting God look like exactly? Peter is being very practical. He’s saying, “What it looks like is believing a specific promise.” You take something God promised, embrace it, and become so convinced that it’s true that you act on it. You make decisions in life based on the assumption that that promise is true. That’s what living by faith looks like in practice.
And that’s the heart and soul of knowing God. Every time you trust one of God’s promises, it makes you closer to God and deepens your relational knowledge of him. The relationship becomes more intimate, and that’s what activates God’s power to transform you. No matter where your relationship with him is now, every promise is meant to improve things between you and God.
Intimacy
Remember last time when we studied relational knowledge? What did we find was the key to bringing a relationship to deep intimacy? Trust. Every act of trust deepens the relationship. There’s really nothing more intimate, and more honoring to a person than when you say, “I trust you.” And there’s nothing more demeaning to a person as when you refuse to trust them.
Conclusion
After our last session about knowing God when I said the best response after a failure is to ask, “What am I not getting about God?” a friend had a great comment. She said, “Would another good question be, ‘What promise am I failing to trust?’” That’s an insightful question, but what we learn from this passage is that the two questions, “What am I not getting about God?” and “What promise am I failing to trust?” are not two questions. They are two ways of asking the same question.
Every time you trust one of God’s promises, that is knowing God. That’s what knowing God looks like. Every promise is an invitation into God’s presence. Every promise—positive or negative. When God promises consequences for sin, that’s an invitation into his presence because it reveals his heart and it warns you away from that which will alienate you from God. So, “What am I missing about God—where is the gap in my knowledge of God?”—that question and the question, “What promise am I failing to trust?” are just two ways of asking the same thing.
There’s a lot more to say about how all this works, but it will have to wait until next time. For now, let me just say this: If you are facing a spiritual struggle, you should be able to answer this question: Which promise or promises are you striving to trust? What specific promise has God made that, if you could trust it, you would have victory in that area? If you can’t answer that question, it’s not likely you’re going to have much success. Just saying you trust God in general won’t cut it. If it could, we wouldn’t have all the hundreds of promises God gave us. Every promise is designed to enhance your relationship with God and improve things between you and him in a specific way. Find one that will unleash God’s power in the precise area of your struggle.
And when you find it, peer through that window at the attributes of God that are the source of that promise, then open that window by trusting the promise so God’s grace and peace envelops your life and unleashes divine power to transform your desires.
Summary
Every promise is a window into God’s heart, a door opening the way to his presence, and an invitation to intimacy.
The promises come though God’s glory and excellence. God only makes promises that rise out of his essential nature (like a wedding vow) because the purpose is to enable us to know him intellectually (each promise reveals attributes of God), experientially (enabling us to share in God’s moral nature by escaping corruption caused by coveting), and relationally (as we trust the promises, we are drawn into deeper intimacy with God). If you’re in a spiritual struggle, you should know exactly which promises would give you victory if you trusted them.
