The Believers Needs
2 Peter 1:5-9 · Roy Smith · Oct 4, 2020
1 & 2 Peter (2020-21), No. 37
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261920264782

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

and Christ's certain return. We've looked a little bit at number 36 there at the introduction, and today we're going to go to 37 in our studies of 1 and 2 Peter, the believer's needs. And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge. And to knowledge, temperance, and to temperance, patience, and to patience, godliness. And to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off. and had forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. In the New American Standard that I'm using from 1995, it says, now for this very reason also, applying all diligence in your faith, supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge.

And I'm going to, because of time, go ahead here and speed this up just a tad. Because we'll be repeating this, the very first verse five there. Now for this reason also is the way the New American Standard gives it. And this is the text as I found it in the Greek. It is a phrase that in Greek into English has an idiomatic form. Now, for this reason also is the way this verse 5 begins.

Diligence, truly applied, are the next three words, and they are very, very important. In Friberg's idiom form, he says, bring every effort to, do one's very best, try very hard. Gingrich says, apply or bring to bear. Denker says, bring in alongside, put to use, or apply. And if you look at the Greek word, it has three forms in it, two prepositions and the verb. para, alongside, ice into, and a very common word, pharaoh, for bear or carry.

Notice that the aorist tense here gives us a factual emphasis, makes this to be correct application of zeal. The accusative case points to the what. for this reason that the verse begins with. What is the reason? It is diligence truly applied. My literal translation here is also the same is this besides. That diligence truly applied is that.

And this is the introduction here in verse five. to something fairly unique. The last part of verse 5 is, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge. This word form is a Greek way of showing that each truth comes from truth. And God used this form to give us his way of showing himself through us.

We have this imperative or this command in the aorist tense, second, first, and plural. It is enable in its literal meaning. Danker gives it that. To a Greek mind, This meant, when they heard this word, that this is somebody paying the price to enable something like a drama or a performance.

And what does God command us here to enable? And where is this thing God wants us to enable? Those two questions I'm going to address First, the what, because it's the accusative case, the next words. Those answer to the what. What is it God wants us to enable? The moral excellence or courage.

Notice the accusative here is the tip off here, and that is what God wants us to enable. This is the command's focus. But that is only a part of his drama that he wants all things in this list enabled. And I believe that this enabled drama is to share and to show God's glory.

If you remember in biblical faith, way back in 2001, God's purposes was to declare his glory, to reveal his glory. He declared it in his creation. He revealed it in his own life, in his son, to share his glory when he gave us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. And that Holy Spirit reveals him through us so that we, seeing him, will glorify him. That's his eternal purpose. And we got that when, how Malloy taught in biblical faith in lesson four, and that's online if you'd like to follow it more closely.

Using that as the basis, this, where is this thing that God wants us to enable? Because in the Greek text, there is something between these two. These words right here, the command and the focus of the command is this moral excellence. There are words in between. And we're going to look at those now. Those words are, in the faith of you. That is where this all begins.

The command is based on the faith that is in you, or in us in this case, because we're looking at it. This faith, Hal also covered in that same lesson, number four, of biblical faith. There are four aspects of faith in scripture, and this is one of them. This is the faith. There is an article here, and notice the dative form there. It is the form of the source that this moral excellence comes out of.

And that is personal faith. It is of you and of me. God couldn't make this any clearer, I don't think, grammatically to the minds that read it. Let me go on now because there's much more. Notice that this moral excellence in the very next phrase is changed from the accusative down to the dative, it becomes now the source of what comes out of it, the knowledge. And I believe that this is the knowledge that has to do with Christ himself. God given moral excellence or courage reveals God correctly. And that's based upon personal, possessed, specific faith. Can you see how this is all tying together? In God using this form to give us the way that he shows himself through us. My literal translation is, you are to enable in the faith of you, the moral excellence. And in the moral excellence, the knowledge.

And in your knowledge, it says in the next verse six here, self-control. Notice that it is building consistently here, folks, from the dative, to the accusative, the what, the source being the knowledge and the what that is formed is the self-control. Calls to mind a lot of verses, but I'm going to go on and stay with our text here and look at the next one. From the self-control comes the endurance. And from the endurance comes the godliness. My literal translation is in the knowledge, the self-control, in the self-control, the endurance, in the endurance, the godliness.

The text in verse 7 continues this, that in the godliness comes the brotherly love. and in the brotherly love, the love. Now folks, I recognize when I went through this that most of you have been through every single one of these words at some time or the other through the teaching here at Holly Hills. Those last two are brotherly love, one for another believer, and the love, God's love being manifested correctly to all men, just like He loved us and gave His own Son to substitutionally and positionally die for us. My literal translation is, in the godliness, the brotherly love, and in the brotherly love, the love. If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful, is the way verse eight begins.

These things for, notice the word order there is in the Greek mind correct, but for us, why in the world did they put the four seconds? It's because the emphasis in the Greek mind is on these things and it is concerning these things in you being present and even greatly increasing that they are neither, notice the neither here and the our making has a space between it. It's because here again we have that form where there is something that describes the actual action. What is these things being present in us not making? Us not being working or not idle nor without fruit is the focus that is here. My translation, these things for in you, being present and greatly increasing, can no more emphasize how strong that is, the greatly increasing. Neither idle nor without fruit are making you.

Notice I've added a little bit of the italic words there, just to carry the significance of the literal tense. and verse 9, or verse 8, the last part of it here, in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. This preposition with the accusative means there is something that we're heading towards. It's regarding what follows. And then we have this accusative word, the, it refers to the in the Greek mind, tying this together with something in between adds significance.

It is this that this is all about, the true knowledge, the full knowledge of the Lord of us, Jesus Christ. That's what the true knowledge is all about. So putting that together, regarding The, of the Lord of us, Jesus Christ, true knowledge. That's what's the focus that the ending of verse eight is all about. Accusative points to what isn't focused. True knowledge, not false knowledge, but the full, the complete knowledge of our Lord.

Verse 9 begins with, he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted. Who here is that relative pronoun? And again, the for is second, because the emphasis in the Greek mind is on the who, the person here that is in view. Not coming to be, whoops, excuse me, not coming to be these things, Blind he is, nearsighted. Two descriptions are given in this text.

Who, for not coming to be these things, blind he is, nearsighted. In positive form, this one who is coming to be in the present tense these things is not nearsighted and has God's perspective of reality. The positive perspective would be that he's coming to know God's ways with us. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, and averse ends, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.

Again, this is in the accusative. It answers to the question, what? The what is, he is forgetful. And there is an aorist verb following it. of his having received the cleansing from sins, the sins, and in between those two, the long ago of him sins. Literally forgetful of his having received the cleansing from the long ago of him sins, he does not remember being cleansed from past sins. The one not becoming the enabler of the things listed cannot see sins occur, can only see sins now because he's short-sighted. He doesn't remember long ago sins being cleansed. So the text now, if we were to read it in the New American Standard, is this. And if we continue on and read my literal translation, I'm going to try to tie it together.

Also the same is this besides that diligence truly applied is that you are and you are to enable in the faith of you the moral excellence. So you're coming out of that group of truth you believe with moral excellence, enabling it. And in the moral excellence, the knowledge, the knowledge about Christ, and in that knowledge, self-control.

This only comes by the Holy Spirit himself controlling us in our fallen nature. and us in our new nature, our nature of God. And in that new nature comes the endurance under pressure, under testing. And in that endurance under pressure comes the God-likeness. And in that God-likeness comes the love for one another, brotherly love. And in that love from one another, comes the true love, the love not just for one another, but for all mankind.

That love that focuses on everything that God has provided, including himself, for us. These things for in you, being present and greatly increasing, neither idle nor without fruit are making you. Regarding you, the Lord of us, Jesus Christ, true knowledge. Isn't that great? To me, that ties it together a lot.

He who, for not coming to be these things, blind is he, nearsighted, forgetful of his having received the cleansing from the long ago of him sins. I use this particular slide to show the relationship of, and I'm going to try to point here, these things all refers back to the love, the brotherly love, the godliness, the endurance, the self-control, the knowledge, the moral excellence, and I didn't underline it, but it all comes out of the faith of you. that has been implanted in you as we know from the very first verses, verse 1 through 4 that we've already covered. As illustrations and reminders, in Acts 2, there's one great example of God's moral excellence being enabled by the believers, including Peter on the day of Pentecost. After having received the Holy Spirit, they spoke powerfully in unknown to them languages of God's character with great courage, and many believed, being cut to the heart with conviction. upon hearing God's message about his son. I mentioned this last week. I'm going to mention it again. Romans 8, 28 through 31 is, we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purposes. And he has preordained or destined us to conform us to the image of his son. that he, his first son, might be the firstborn among many brethren.

And also this verse in 1 Corinthians 3, 17 through 18, the Lord, the spirit is where the spirit of the Lord is. There is liberty. We all with unveiled faces behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. are being transformed into the very same image, from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. There's a few facts in these nine verses I think we need to focus on.

The first four verses in 2 Peter give us two reminders that we have from the righteousness of God all we need for life and godliness. and that we have precious promises to believe that enable us to reveal the grace and knowledge of Christ our Lord, even unto the maturity of Christ our Savior. And secondly, in the five verses we looked at today, we express the will of God and the ways that he will accomplish his will through us as believers.

He commands us to enable his character to be seen in our manner of living. It is his expression of himself through us that is the drama God wants shown to the world. And this is the logical result of believing what he reveals to us of himself. This is the how that we are to respond to his command. When we see in his word his character as shown to us by the Holy Spirit and believe it personally as a reality, we have enabled his character, his nature, to be lived by him through us. And as a result, his glory will be seen by those around us. And that encapsulates it the best I can.

There are six expressions of preciousness in these two letters from Peter. In verse seven of chapter one of first Peter, so that the truth of your faith being more precious than gold, which perishes, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. In verse 19, with the precious blood as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ, he presented his own son, and it is his precious life that was poured out as a substitute for us. In chapter two of verse four, coming to him as a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious. That's the description God's Holy Spirit uses of God's perspective in the sight of God. He is precious. Two times in the second chapter there, six and seven verses, is precious used. First, he is a precious cornerstone. And second, he is precious in value. The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the very cornerstone. In verse 4 of chapter 1 of 2 Peter it says that he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature.

And I believe that is true. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, doesn't he? Having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. Well, that's the end of it. As far as my presentation, folks, I hope that that encapsulates a little and gives us a correct perspective of what God wants us to see here in this text.

That's great, Roy. That looks wonderful. It's a magnet. Yeah, it goes way beyond anything I can describe, I tell you. Hey, Andrew. Hi. I'm looking at the people present and I'm thinking and focusing on these verses. I probably love how we love one another, right? And out of that, how we love those around us besides each other as believers, including our Savior. Yeah. Yeah.

Looks like there's only six of us here. All together. I think there are other people. They just have their video shut off. They're hiding. But they're here. I don't know what time it is. I haven't even been keeping track of it. It's five minutes. Well, are there any questions about this, guys, before we close this with a word of prayer? Anything that stands out here? Mike, in particular, do you remember when we went through some of the other verses? You had some questions. Did you want to bring any up? Ah, no. I thought we had eternity, though. Uh-huh. Not five minutes. Okay. We do have an eternity, but for this class, we... Right, right.

So, Roy, do you want to, you know, the question, Bob asked a question last week about the, you know, it's a term faith that's used early on in verse one. Yeah. And I spent a little time looking at that and, and, um, you know, it's looking at faith in a different way who have received a faith or actually maybe the faith, which is, uh, so it looks at it from a different perspective, not at least from what I can tell, um, then looking at it from the perspective is that we exercise faith in a body of truth.

And actually, um, I listened a little bit to Macaulay too and he kind of he pointed out like in Philippians 3.9 actually let's just read Philippians 3.9 because it takes the it takes a flip view of it so if you contrast Philippians 3.9 with 1st Peter 1.1 I think it helps at least it helped me so if I can get to Philippians flip to Philippians Could someone read? I'll read it. I'm almost there, Roger. Okay. Let me just flip you in three and I says these things. I got to get into my spot. That's four nine.

And may be found in him, not having a righteousness of your own derived from the law, but that which is through faith. So, so basically it says that, that we obtain righteousness through faith, right? This is what this is pointing out. But the verse that we have in 1.1 kind of takes the other perspective. It says that the God in his grace has given us the whole concept of faith.

It looks at it differently. I don't know. That helped me a little bit. So I don't know, Bob, if you wanted to say something else? Oh, just the verse. Yeah. So I think... Yeah, pull it really close. Roger, you can transmit this. It's the verse 1. Active, active faith is not passive. So, the faith is dependent on us. True. To save and prove. That's true. That's my point last week. Right, right. And that's true. But we're not given faith by God to believe that faith.