Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Getting IT done

What are we to be about, according to Peter? Growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. How? Start with faith and then add the implication of faith by diligently applying the grace of God to your character.

IF you do = you will live a fruitful and effective life now and be at home as you enter the Kingdom.
IF you do not = you will not see the point of your salvation and will waste your life and be left wondering...

Then Peter goes into detail about why his version of faith is true = he saw it in personally miraculous ways, but ultimately it comes down to scriptural authority. He then warns his people to not be fooled by people who do not understand and teach such diligence. He says they are false teachers who find ways to use their preaching and teaching to justify their desires.

Finally, he says to be patient, that history doesn't always play out the way we expect, but that doesn't mean God isn't before us. There is coming a time of account, and we should therefore be diligent to be sure we have ordered our lives around God's grace and the habitual knowledge of Jesus as the teacher, guide, forgiver, comforter, exhorter and Lord of our lives.

2 Peter 3:13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

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