Bible Commentaries
2 Peter 1

Verse 5

2 Peter 1:5

The Struggle for the Right.

The journey of life has to be travelled by us all. It must be made, whether shorter or longer between the cradle and the grave, and the point of consequence is to make it well.

I. And now a question arises of the gravest importance: What are the first efforts needed in the journey of life? The way of life, we know from the experience of the saints, if not from our own, from the teaching of Christ, if not from the whisper of our own souls, has many difficulties. It is like climbing the lofty mountain range when the crest, indeed, is white with glittering crystals, and the shining pinnacles take the sunlight at the breaking of the dawn, but to reach the crest there is a long and laborious struggle; there are intervening ridges, sharp and craggy; there are rough stones, which hurt the feet; there are deep gullies, where the water pours in angry torrents, and exposed, unsheltered platforms, swept by the multitudinous legions of the unpitying winds. Clearly have we to fix it in our minds for sake of others, if not for ourselves, that if such an ascent is truly to be achieved, the first steps must be planted well. To advance as we should advance in a Christian's journey, we must early learn the importance of the moral life; we must surely grasp the serious meanings of right and wrong.

II. What is the value, what the safeguard, of the moral law? Moral law is the law of liberty, belonging to conscious and self-determining man. It may be disregarded or set at defiance, for the subjects to it are free; but to disregard or set it at defiance is as sure to entail injury or ruin as a wild rush of some heavenly body, unrestrained by the laws which govern its motion, carrying with it devastation and the breaking up of worlds. The one law is of physical necessity; the other law may be freely obeyed or freely set at defiance; but both belong to the nature of things come from the Absolute, and are of eternity. The Christian religion has revealed the personal life and love of Him who is the source of moral truth. It has shown us the moral law in its complete earthly relation in the perfect example of the life of Jesus Christ. It has helped us to realise its splendour and our own weakness in attaining to its fulness, our need, therefore, of help, and our duty of high aspiration. It has made it vivid, living, sacred, near. It has reinforced motives, and revealed strong sanctions, so that without it the moral law would have less power of influence; without "faith" there would be a weakness of "virtue"; but it has insisted that "faith" was given in germ to the regenerate soul. One of the earliest efforts of the soul on its journey is a deeper sense of the greatness, the eternity, the claim, of the moral law; one of the first nearer steps is to make virtue a reality alongside faith.

III. "Add to your faith virtue." Virtue, whether it be what is called passive or active, whether it show itself in more measurable expressions in the outer scene of things or in the not less difficult but more hidden characters of restrainedness and patience, is essentially some form of manly strength. The pilgrim on his journey of life has ever to remember it that, to a great extent, he is made master of his own destiny, because, to a great extent, the formation of his character is placed in his own hands. We can, if we will, purify or select among our governing motives; we can, if we will, to a great extent, guide our acts. I am not forgetful of our inherent weakness as fallen creatures; I am not forgetful of the large assistances which we need, and which are supplied to us Christians by the grace of God. On these we may dwell in their proper places. But still it remains true that our acts are in our own power. By repeated acts, all moralists are agreed, habits are formed; and from the formation of habits comes the formation of character "Add to your faith virtue." In the difficult path of our pilgrimage, when we have to make serious decisions, when we have to be prepared for sudden emergencies, when we have to resist unlooked-for temptations, when we have to bear unexpected trials, when the well-being of others depends in no slight measure upon our conduct, when our own destiny seems at its very crisis, much, very much, will depend upon our having learned severe lessons of duty, having fixed deep in our souls the value and greatness of the moral law, having, in a word, by grace indeed, but by grace used with habitual faithfulness, added virtue to our faith.

W. J. Knox-Little, The Journey of Life; p. 25.

References: 2 Peter 1:5 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. i., p. 246. 2 Peter 1:5 , 2 Peter 1:6 . Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 208; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Mar thorough College, p. 397; J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, Part I., p. 1.

Verses 5-7

2 Peter 1:5-7

Christian Growth.

The word in the text which has been translated in our version "add" is a very pictorial term, and refers to a choir of well-trained musicians, such as Heman or Asaph led in the days of David and Solomon; and the idea which it implies is that as the different instruments of the great orchestral concert of the Jewish service blended together and produced a noble and harmonious outburst of praise to Jehovah, as the singers and the musicians each performed his special part, and all combined in one perfect unison of sound, so the growth of the Christian character should be accomplished by the harmonious development of each moral quality, and the Christian life, composed of so many different elements, should be one continuous hymn of praise to Him who is our song and our salvation. There are two ways in which we may add to our faith all the graces which the Apostle enumerates. We may add them as a builder adds stone to stone in his wall, or we may add them as a plant adds cell to cell in its structure. Both these modes of increase are used separately or in combination in Scripture to illustrate Christian growth. We are said to be rooted and grounded in love, and to grow into a holy temple in the Lord. We are rooted as plants in the Divine life, deriving our nourishment and stability from it; we are grounded as living stones on the precious Corner-stone; the double image expressing in combination the active and passive sides of Christian faith. And so likewise the combination of ideas borrowed from plant-life and from architecture to express the growth of Christian life unto a holy temple in the Lord denotes the two modes in which growth is made: by active exertion and passive trusting; by being fellow-workers with God, working out our own salvation, while we realise that it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. We have not only to rest, after the manner of a building, on the finished work of Christ, but we have to draw, after the manner of a plant, out of God's fulness, grace for grace.

I. The first thing that we are commanded by the Apostle to "add" to our faith is virtue, meaning by this term vigour, manliness. In our faith we are to manifest this quality. Our faith is to be itself a source of power to us. We are to be strong in faith. It is to be to us the power of God unto salvation, enabling us to overcome the temptations and evils of the world and to rise above all the infirmities of our own nature. It is not enough that the Christian character should be beautiful: it should also be strong. Strength and beauty should be the characteristics not only of God's house, but also of God's people. But how often is the quality of strength absent from piety! Piety in the estimation of the world is synonymous with weakness and effeminacy. The world is apt to think that it is only weaklings who are pious persons who have neither strong intellects, nor strong affections, nor strong characters. Young men are too apt to be ashamed of confessing Christ openly before men, under the fear that they should be regarded as something between milksops and hypocrites. And too many professing Christians are confessedly "feeble folk." It is most necessary, therefore, that we should add to our faith courage, manliness. Our faith should be manifested, as it was in olden times, by a victorious strength which is able to overcome the world, which fears the Lord and knows no other fear.

II. To this strength or manliness we are further commanded to "add" knowledge. In our manliness we are to seek after knowledge. The quality of courage is to be shown by the fearlessness of our researches into all the works and ways of God. We are not to be deterred by any dread of consequences from investigating and finding out the whole truth. The Bible places no restrictions upon an inquiring spirit. It does not prevent men from examining and proving all things, and bringing even the most sacred subjects to the test of reason. God says to us in regard to the holiest things, "Come and let us reason together." He has given to us the faculties by means of which we may find out truth and store up knowledge; and He wishes as to exercise these faculties freely in every department of His works.

III. But further the Apostle enjoins us to add to our knowledge temperance. This had originally a wider meaning, and covered a larger breadth of character. It meant sober-mindedness, a chastened temper and habit of the soul a wise self-control by which the higher powers kept the lower well in hand and restrained them from excesses of all kinds. And this sober-mindedness, which expresses better than any other single word the true temper of the Christian in this world, is an indispensable adjunct to the Christian character. With wonderful sagacity, the Apostle commands us to add to our knowledge temperance; for there is a tendency in knowledge to puff us up and fill our hearts with pride.

IV. To this self-government we must add patience. Our self-government itself is to be an exercise of patience. In our temperance we are to be patient, not giving way to a hasty temper or a restless disposition. As the plant slowly ripens its fruit, so we are to ripen our Christian character by patient waiting and patient enduring. It is a quiet virtue, this patience, and is apt to be overlooked and underestimated. But in reality it is one of the most precious of the Christian graces. The noisy virtues, the ostentatious graces, have their day; patience has eternity. And while it is the most precious, it is also the most difficult. It is far easier to work than to wait, to be active than to be wisely passive. But it is when we are still that we know God, when we wait upon God that we renew our strength. Patience places the soul in the condition in which it is most susceptible to the quickening influences of heaven and most ready to take advantage of new opportunities.

V. But to this patience must be united godliness. Godliness is Godlikeness, having the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, viewing everything from the Divine point, and living in our inner life as fully in the light of His presence as we live in our outer life in the light of the sun. And exercising ourselves unto this godliness, our patience will have a Divine quality of strength, endurance, beauty, imparted to it such as no mere natural patience possesses. In our godliness, as the Apostle says, we must have brotherly kindness; our brotherly kindness must be an essential element of our godliness. We are to show our godliness by our brotherly kindness. Sin separates between God and man, and between man and man. Grace unites man to God, and man to man. It is only when the higher relation is formed that we are able to fulfil perfectly the lower. But brotherly kindness is apt to be restricted towards friends only towards those who belong to the same place or the same Church, or who are Christians. It must therefore be conjoined with charity. In our brotherly kindness we are to exercise a large-hearted charity. We are to mingle with it godliness in order to expand our charity, to make it like His who maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Universal kindness of thought, word, and deed is what is implied in this charity. Such, then, are the graces which we are enjoined by the Apostle to add to each other, to develop from each other, not as separate fruits dispersed widely over the branches of a tree, but as the berries of a cluster of grapes growing on the same stem, mutually connected and mutually dependent. Such are the graces, to use the musical illustration of the text, which we are to temper, to modify the one by the other, just as the musician in tuning his instrument gives to each note not its exact mathematical value, but alters it to suit its neighbour notes, and thus produces a delightful harmony.

H. Macmillan, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 513.

Verses 5-8

2 Peter 1:5-8

The Golden Series.

I. It is no one grace which makes a Christian. A man may have great knowledge, but if he wants charity, it profits nothing, or if he be a man of courage, but without godliness, he is an hero, but he is not a saint.

II. Nor does any number of excellences united make a Christian, unless they be excellences added to faith. It is faith which makes the dead soul a living one, and so susceptible of every excellence. It is faith which joins the worldling to the Lord Jesus, and so makes him concordant with the Saviour, and inclined toward all good. Whatever courses there may be in the structure, faith is the foundation; whatever tints of splendour may variegate the robe of many colours, faith is the mordant which absorbs and fixes them all; whatever graces may move in the harmonious choir, faith occupies the forefront, and is the leader of them all.

III. But where there is faith all that is needful in order to possess any other grace is diligence. Give all diligence, and add. On the one hand, diligence is needful. These graces will not come without effort, nor remain without culture, and there are some of them in which particular Christians never become conspicuous; but, with God's blessing and the help of His Holy Spirit, diligence is sure to succeed. Moral worth may be compared to one of those lofty mountains up the sides of which there is only one path practicable, in other words, which you can only scale if you set out from the proper starting-point. Other slopes may look more gentle and inviting, but they end in impassable chasms or impassable precipices. But the man who takes the Gospel for his starting-point, who sets out in the name and in the strength of the Lord Jesus there is no ascent of temperance, brotherly kindness, or godliness so steep but he may one day find himself on the summit. And with half the effort which some expend on growing rich or learned all of us might become holy, devout, and heavenly-minded.

J. Hamilton, Works, vol. v., p. 329.

Verse 6

2 Peter 1:6

I. The coarser or entirely corporeal gratifications are the more obvious sphere for the exercise of temperance, and in some respects the easiest. We do not canonise a man because he only drinks to quench his thirst, and because his use for food is the restoration of his exhausted powers. And without converting the Christian Church into a convent or making one long Lent of the Christian year, we think it is often by greater simplicity in our tables and in our attire that most of us are to be able to do something for Christ's sake and the Gospel's.

II. The passions also fall within the domain of temperance. As far as they are implanted by the Creator, they are harmless, and it would be easy to show the important purposes subserved by anger, the love of approbation, and such-like. But, temperate in all things, the manly Christian adds to his faith the control of his passions. He neither lets them fire up without a rightful occasion, nor in the outburst does he allow his own soul or interests which ought to be even more dear to suffer damage.

III. All have not the same need of temperance, for all have not the same temptations. From the leisurely life they lead, from the even flow of their spirits, from the felicitous state of their bodily sensations, some are seldom provoked, and therefore seldom in danger of wrathful explosions. In the domains of appetite, passion, or imagination we all have need of temperance; and that man alone is temperate, thoroughly and consistently temperate, whose self-command keeps pace with every precept of Scripture.

J. Hamilton, Works, vol. v., p. 361.

References: 2 Peter 1:6 , 2 Peter 1:7 . J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, Part I., p. 10. 2 Peter 1:8 . W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 159; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 188; vol. ix., p. 341.

Verse 10

2 Peter 1:10

Making Salvation Sure.

I. In order to make sure one's own salvation, our first counsel is, Be sure of the great foundation truths. You believe that there is a God, and that He is the Rewarder of those that diligently seek Him; you believe that He is infinitely wise and good, true and holy; and you believe that you are a sinner, that you entirely lack that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, and that if you are ever admitted to the abodes of purity, it must be on some other grounds than your own fitness or deserving. The best evidence that you know these things and are persuaded of them is that you are acting on them. As the best evidence that yours is the Christian faith, be sure that yours is the Christian character. If your faith is genuine, then, like good material, it will stand a heavy superstructure. There may be added to it temperance, patience, godliness, and every grace.

II. What is salvation? It is health of soul. It is God's friendship. It is a happy immortality. And how is this salvation to become personally sure? The first thing is to apprehend clearly what God has revealed regarding it, and then do as God directs: believe on Jesus. Rest on His atonement as the basis, at once righteous and gracious, of your reconciliation to a sin-avenging Jehovah; believe on Jesus as the gift of the Father's love and the exponent of the Father's character; hear Him in all His sayings, however plain or paradoxical; and follow Him as fast and as far in His beautiful career as weak and faltering footsteps can: and thus, with no barren nor unfruitful knowledge of the Lord Jesus, but with His own characteristics in you and abounding, your calling and election will be a subject of little anxiety to yourself and no anxiety to others, for thus an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

J. Hamilton, Works, vol. vi., p. 326.

References: 2 Peter 1:10 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. ii., p. 159; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iii., p. 370; G. G. Bradley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 177. 2 Peter 1:10 , 2 Peter 1:11 . V. Pryce, Ibid., vol. xxxii., p. 392; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 123; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iii., p. 291. 2 Peter 1:12 . Preacher's Monthly, vol. x., p. 179. 2 Peter 1:13 . H. Jones, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 321; Bishop Ryle, Ibid., vol. xxv., p. 337. 2 Peter 1:16 . W. M. Taylor, The Gospel Miracles, pp. 101, 139; J. H. Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 365; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 372; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 476.

Verse 18

2 Peter 1:18

The Transfiguration: the Three Apostles.

I. What was our Saviour's purpose in making the three Apostles His witnesses? There were trials to which the Apostles would be subjected, and against them they wanted strength and a support for their faith. The Transfiguration was to give them this support. There they should see how the glory of the Lord shone forth from under the veil of His humanity; how life in the Resurrection triumphed over death; how joy and rest in the Lord, such as Moses and Elias enjoyed in this vision, surpassed all worldly pleasure and atoned for all earthly pain. This help to faith is free from the notion of a reward. It Was not the sight of a future reward that was held out to them upon the mount, but the sight of the present truth.

II. Consider the conduct of the Apostles. Of them it may be said that at the time they hardly comprehended what they saw, but that in after-life they felt its influence. At the time they were dazed and confused, like men just fallen into heavy sleep and then awaking to a strange sight. They darkly comprehended the Lord's purpose in taking them up with Him if they imagined they were to remain on the mount. Prayer has its luxury. Though it be hard to pray, it is sometimes at the end as hard to leave off praying. The peace of meditation has such a charm to soothe the unquiet mind, and to quell the unruly passions of the heart. To all who are thus inclined to God a voice will soon be heard to speak into the ear, "Descende, Petre; ora et labora" pray and work. The life which the Apostles experienced after that wonderful night upon the mountain with Christ was the same sort of life into which Christians pass out of their quiet chamber into the business of the day, out of the aisles of the church on Sunday into the work of the world on Monday.

C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond, p. 198.

Reference: 2 Peter 1:19 . Good Words, vol. vi., p. 101.

Verse 21

2 Peter 1:21

An Inspired Definition of Inspiration.

It is a definition of inspiration, a definition simple, precise, exhaustive. "Men spoke" spoke without ceasing (even for the moment of speaking) to be men; spoke with all those characteristics of phrase and style, of thought and mind, of position and history, which mark and make the man; yet "spoke from God," with a message and mission, under an influence and an impulse, a control and a suggestion, which gave to the word spoken a force and a fire, a touch and a contact, a sight and an insight, unlike other utterances because of a breath of God in it, the God of the spirits of all flesh.

I. No testimony could be more explicit to the inspiration of the Bible than this. It is the testimony of the New Testament to the Old. And it is the Old Testament which needs the testimony. Christians have no difficulty in accepting the New Testament. They understand that the Saviour spoke the words of God by an inspiration direct and self-evidencing. "We speak," He said, "that we do know, and testify that we have seen." They understand, on the strength of His own promise, that the Apostles were inspired by a direct gift of insight into truth, whether of fact or faith. For the inspiration of the Old Testament they can only look to the New. The treatment of it by our Lord, His constant appeal to it in controversy, His constant reference to it as fulfilled in Himself, the express assertion of its inspiration by St. Paul and St. Peter, are the grounds on which we, who were never under the Law, believe the earlier and larger half of the Bible to be, in some true sense, an integral part of the inspired word of God. "Men spake" in it also "from God."

II. "Men spake." "Human beings," St. Peter says; the "men" is emphatic. Men spake. And does not St. Peter as good as say, And remained men in the speaking? Where is the authority for supposing that the inspiring Spirit levelled the intellects, obliterated the characteristics, overwhelmed the peculiarities, of the several writers, so that St. Paul, St. John, St. James, St. Peter, might be mistaken one for the other in the finished work? These are the glosses, the fancies, the inventions, with which prejudice and fanaticism have overlaid the subject, and given great advantage by doing so to the caviller and the sceptic. Men spake, and in speaking were men still. Even their message, even the thing they were sent to tell, must be expressed in terms of human speech, through a medium therefore of adaptation and accommodation. St. Paul himself expresses this thought when he says, "At present we see by a mirror, in riddle" see but the reflection of the very thing that is, hear but in enigma the absolute truth "then" in "that world" then at last "face to face."

III. The two halves of the text are dependent upon each other. Men spake, not angels; that is one thought: not machines; that is another. Not angels, or they had no sympathetic, no audible, voice for man; not machines, or speech (which is by definition intelligence in communication) had been a contradiction in terms. These human beings spake from God. For He had something to say, and to say to man. There is something which God only can say. There is something which reason cannot say, nor experience, nor discovery, nor the deepest insight, nor the happiest guessing, nor the most sagacious foresight. There is a world of heaven, which flesh and blood cannot penetrate. There is a world of spirit, impervious even to mind. There is a world beyond death, between which and the living there is an impassable gulf fixed. More than this, there is a world of cause and consequence, which no moralist can connect or piece together. There is a world of providence, which gives no account of itself to the observer. There is a world of Divine dealing with lives, with souls, with nations, with ages of which even the inspired man must say, "Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me; it is high; I cannot attain to it."

C. J. Vaughan, Restful Thoughts in Restless Times, p. 315.