This week’s promise: God promises that you will work out your salvation
Colossians 4:12 Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.
2 Peter 1:3-11 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 goodness.Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall,and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Today I’d like to finish up by looking at a few other passages from God’s Word about this. To often Christians don’t understand that they have a part to play in their salvation. While we are saved totally by the Grace of God alone and not by anything we do, and while we can not earn our salvation, and we cannot lose our salvation once attained, once we are saved, we DO have work to do! The easiest way to explain it is to view our salvation like a new plant. It must be watered and fed and cared for if it is to grow and survive.
Now let’s look at the passage from 2 Peter. First we are told that the Lord gives us everything we need for life and godliness. He doesn’t give us some of it, but all that we need. Now notice the very next words in that sentence; let me quote it here again:
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 goodness.
Do you see what it is that we need for life and godliness? It is through our knowledge of Him that we gain what we need! Now how do we gain that knowledge? When we were saved the Lord both opened our spiritual eyes and our hearts to His Gospel so we could accept it. He then gave us His Holy Spirit to dwell in us and teach us all that we need to know. He gave us His Word, our Bible to read, study and reflect on with the guidance of His Holy Spirit. He gave us the ability to come before Him in prayer to receive help in our times of need. This then is how we gain what we need for life and godliness! There is no other way!
I take that back. In undeveloped countries, the Lord I’m sure puts His Word in peoples minds like He did back in the days before we had a written bible in our language. Back in the disciples time, people memorized the entire Word of God. Today that sounds like an amazing feat, and yet back then it was the norm for everyone. The Jewish people began teaching their children to memorize the Old Testament when they were just toddlers. Regardless of how we get God’s Word though, it is through His Word that we gain what we need for life and godliness. We have been very blessed to have His Word so readily and easily available for us.
I would like to clarify something though. It is not just through the study of His Word, but it through our close personal relationship with Him AND our study of His Word that we get what we need. He and His Word is our strength. Nor can someone who is not saved gain the same things by studying God’s Word. The Lord tells us that only those of us who have been saved and have the Holy Spirit within us understand His Word. Worldly, unsaved people can study God’s Word all their lives and get as many degrees as they want and they still won’t really understand the first thing about it. They can’t. (1 Corinthians 2:10-14 )
Let’s now look at the next sentence in this passage:
Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Through what? For that we have to look at the preceding sentence. When we do we see it is through His Word that He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them—through His promises, His Word, we may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
Does this mean that we become divine like Jesus? No it does not. We are not God and never will be. The word for “participate” actually translates to “become partners”. We become partners with Christ, and when we do that, we become more and more like Him, but we do not become God ourselves. That is a false teaching.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When he says, “for this very reason”, he is referring to being partners with Christ and becoming more like Him, so he is saying, “To be more and more like Christ, add to your faith….” He then gives a list of spiritual fruit that we need to strive for. When he says goodness, he is talking about moral excellence. We are not to be like the world, but instead are to order our lives the way God would have us do. To that we are to add knowledge. He is not speaking here of knowledge that you would attain at school. The word gnÅsin refers to spiritual knowledge attained through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. So once again we are told where to get what we need for godliness. He then goes on with more things that are all basic fruit of the spirit that are born from a close relationship with Christ. These he says will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of Jesus, if we possess them in increasing measure. In other words, it is a never ending journey. We are to be always striving to be closer to the Lord, to be more like Him, and to always do His Will. As we persevere and do this, we produce the crop that the Lord tells us those who are truly saved will produce. ( Luke 8:15 )
Then Peter continues and tells us about those who do not have these qualities:
2 Peter 1:9-11 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall,and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Those who don’t have these qualities are still babies in Christ because he says they have been cleansed from their past sins. Peter then encourages them as well as us to make our calling sure, to work out our salvation, to become mature in Christ and not stay little babies who cannot be sure of their salvation and will get no reward and will not ever earn the words we all long to hear, “Well done thou good and faithful servant!” I can’t think of a better way to end this study then the way Peter did, urging us to eagerly make sure of our calling so that we will one day hear these most wonderful words:
Matthew 25:21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
