Today’s reading is 2 Peter 3.
According to the apostle Peter, God has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness through the knowledge of Jesus. Because God has given all we need in Jesus, we should make every effort to grow in Jesus and avoid the influence of false teachers and scoffers. This matters because the Day of the Lord is coming. Though Jesus did not judge the nations when He first came into the world, the world is reserved for fiery judgment.
Since the world is reserved for fiery judgment, Peter asks, “What sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness” (2 Peter 3:11, ESV). He calls to mind the judgments he mentioned in 2 Peter 2:4-10. Just as God cast sinning angels in hell and is keeping them until the judgment, the present world is being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. As God once destroyed the world with water, He will one day destroy it with fire. Just as God made Sodom and Gomorrah an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly, God will turn the world to ashes and condemn it to extinction, judging the ungodly within it.
However, God takes no pleasure in the death of the ungodly. Rather, He wants the ungodly to come to repentance and live. As Peter explained in his examples of judgment, God knows how to deliver the godly. He knows how to rescue the godly from trials and from judgment. That is, He knows how to deliver those who have repented. He delivered Noah’s family. He delivered Lot. He delivers the godly. What kind of lives do we want to live then? Do we want to indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority? No. We want to lead lives of holiness and godliness.
Since we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth where righteousness dwells, we must be diligent to be found by Him without spot or blemish. That is, we must be diligent to be like Christ. According to 1 Peter 1:19, Jesus was a sacrificial lamb without spot or blemish. We must be diligent to be like Him. We might even say we are to be diligent to participate in His divine nature.
There’s that “diligence” word again. We are to diligently add Christ’s qualities to our faith. We are to diligently confirm our call and election. We are to diligently pursue becoming spotless lambs ourselves without blemish. Since Peter has taught us and reminded us, we must take care that the error of lawless people does not carry us away. We must not lose the stability that can only be found in Christ.
To be clear, Peter does not mean we will earn our way into Christ’s eternal kingdom. Jesus was the spotless sacrificial lamb without blemish who ransomed us by His blood. He died for our sins. Apart from Him, we cannot be spotless and without blemish. Only by His sacrificial blood can we be washed as white as snow. However, Peter does mean when the blood of the spotless lamb cleansed us from our former sins (see 2 Peter 1:9), it did so to set us free from sin, not set us free to sin.
Despite what may be popular in many modern churches today, being a Christian is not about making a momentary decision for Christ. It is about surrendering our allegiance to Christ. Being a disciple is not about getting baptized but then living in our fleshly passions. Being a disciple is about following Christ and becoming more like Him. Will we fumble, falter, fail, and fall? Of course. But must we grow? Absolutely.
We are certainly incapable of being godly by ourselves. We cannot be godly without the sacrifice of Jesus and the strengthening of the Holy Spirit (see Ephesians 3:14-21). But neither can we be godly if we are giving ourselves over to ungodliness. As we’ve stated in previous posts, “Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not.”
God has granted us everything we need. Let us give Him everything we are and have. Let us pursue lives of holiness and godliness.
Tomorrow’s reading is 2 Peter 3.
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PATHS:
Discuss Today’s Meditation with Your Family
How does 2 Peter 3 prompt or improve your hope in God?
Read the Bible 