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We’ve never been to the Top Fuel dragster races at the Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway but we watched a little of it on TV on Labor Day, mainly because our oldest son and his two boys were there. These Top Fuel dragsters are one grand display of power. Their 500 cubic-inch engines produce 11-12,000 horsepower and shoot down the strip to 100 mph in less than a second with a top speed of over 330 mph. That’s power! But there’s a greater power that can’t be compared, a divine power with magnificent promises. Open your Bibles to 2 Peter 1:3-4.
2 Peter 1:3-4, seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. [4] For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
In these two verses Peter lifts the hood of your salvation to show you exactly what God has done to make your Christian life the most amazing creation in all the universe. And the performance God guarantees here will take you infinitely further than any human creation. We’re looking at two massive “pistons” that drive your Christian life, namely DIVINE POWER and MAGNIFICENT PROMISES. Here you have all the power and promises you’ll ever need to live your Christian life to God’s glory.
Let’s make several observations on these two verses. First, everything here comes from God – His power, His promises, His glory, His calling. Salvation is of the Lord. Then God “grants us” gifts in both verses. He “granted” these gifts to us totally of His free and sovereign grace. We don’t deserve them. The verbs “has granted” are in the perfect tense, which means He granted them to us in the past and the blessings continue forever. And notice that little phrase “to us.” “To us” means to our advantage. We deserve nothing but God’s judgment for our sinful, self-centered, God rejecting ways, and yet, God through the gospel has granted to us these two beautiful gifts of POWER and PROMISES to our eternal advantage. If you are a born-again, justified, redeemed, adopted child of God through that precious faith in Christ in verse one, you are an incredibly blessed person. And all God does in saving us is driven by these two massive spiritual “pistons” – God’s power and God’s promises.
WHAT GOD’S POWER HAS ACCOMPLISHED FOR US
2 Peter 1:3, seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.
Power is the capacity to get something done, whether to destroy or to build. What is the most powerful thing man has ever created? Back in the cold war of the 50s and 60s we were in a race with Russia to outdo each other with nuclear bombs. On October 30, 1961, Russia dropped the biggest, most powerful nuclear bomb on a land mass north of Russia. It was called the Tsar Bomba, the mother of all bombs. It was 1500 times the combined power of the two bombs we dropped on Japan in WW2. Shock waves circled the earth three times. That’s incredible but destructive power.
But when God saves a sinner, you are looking at His divine power seen no were else, a power that builds and changes humans for all eternity. I like what Albert Barnes said, “Nothing has so changed the character and destiny of a man like God’s power in the gospel.” It’s a power that transforms drunkards and greedy and depressed and lazy and lusting and irresponsible and angry people into God-pleasing, Christ-honoring saints! That’s a power unmatched. Everything the gospel accomplishes in a human heart is traced back to this power of God. As Paul put it in Romans 1:16, “The gospel is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” God has this unique and awesome divine power to reach into the human heart and forever change its nature and direction. God’s power crushed your pride, self-righteousness, arrogance and ignorance, superstition and false religion, living for your own pleasure, and set up His rule in your heart. That’s God’s divine power in action through the gospel.
God’s Power Gives You Everything You Need
When His power invaded your life, He provided you with everything you would ever need to live for Him now and forever. “He has given us all things.” “All things” at the very beginning of verse 3 is emphatic. Nothing is missing. When you came to Christ, you got all you need. In 1991 John MacArthur wrote the book, Our Sufficiency in Christ. He declared, “Every Christian receives all he or she needs at the moment of salvation. There’s no need to search for something more.” In 2 Corinthians 12:9 Jesus promised Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” MacArthur adds, “In Christ we inherit spiritual resources sufficient for every need, every problem, everything that pertains to life and godliness.”
Pertaining to Life
Like an infant born with all parts attached and everything needed to function for life, when God gives you spiritual life He says, “I’m giving you all you need in Christ; all you will ever need to live your life for His glory.” No supplements needed. You don’t need Jesus plus legalism, or visions, or speaking in tongues, or mystical experiences, or hearing God’s voice outside the Bible, or Jesus plus humanistic psychology or self-help programs. We have to go back to verse 3 again and again. In Christ God has given you all you need for all your issues and struggles in this life.
God has given you all the spiritual life you’ll ever need. When the Spirit takes the gospel message into your heart He makes you alive spiritually and you’ll never be more alive. You have eternal life, fellowship with God, and you’ll never lose it. God’s divine power has given His children all things pertaining to life!
Pertaining to Godliness
When God gives you spiritual life, He gives you everything you need for godliness. This is one way you know God has created life in you – your desires change. You have a completely new desire to please your God. Godliness has the idea of worship or worthiness. Nothing in human experience can bring a man or woman who was running away from God to a place where they are now running toward God, seeking God, and desiring to walk worthy of God. God gives those new desires. Godliness is one word that captures the character of a believer in Christ. We’ll see how to grow in godliness when we study verses 5-7 and see that we add to our faith godly, God-pleasing qualities.
Through True Knowledge (LSB “full” knowledge)
How does this life and godliness come to us? How does this divine power find us? God works His power into your life through bringing you to know Christ. “True knowledge” is an intensive form of knowing (epignosis), not just intellectual facts about Jesus. Many people have mental awareness of the gospel. This “true knowledge” is a God-given knowledge that comes into your mind and grips your heart and moves your will and desires to submit to Christ as Savior and follow Him as your Lord. You sense your sin and guilt and that you are in trouble with God, or as Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it, “You realize you are being dealt with.” Luther said the Scriptures have “hands” that take hold of us. You may have heard many sermons in the past but now something unusual is happening. God gives you this heart-gripping knowledge that stirs you up to respond to the gospel.
But how does this happen? Believers come to this life-changing knowledge in one way. It comes through the effectual call of God to your heart, “through the true knowledge of Him who called us.“ This is God’s divine power at work in conversion. God calls your heart, your inner being. This is what Paul told Timothy.
2 Timothy 1:8-9, Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, [9] who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,
Notice one more thing in verse 3. He called you by His own glory and excellence. God has given you all you need for life and godliness and as Calvin notes, “God gets all the credit for our salvation.” And God is more glorified and seen as excellent in saving a sinner than he is in creating a sun or designing and creating an ear or eye or kidney or a lightning bug. Just like Christ was God’s glory and excellence as He lived here on earth, every sinner saved by God’s divine power is a walking, breathing testimony to God’s great glory and excellence. Nothing man can come up with can do this. Education can’t, psychology can’t, certainly atheism can’t, liberalism can’t, government programs can’t. Only God’s DIVINE POWER can do this and still does today. What about those promises?
WHAT GOD’S PRECIOUS AND MAGNIFICENT PROMISES ACCOMPLISH FOR US
2 Peter 1:4, For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Power and promises go together. Verse 3 says you’ve got all the power you’ll ever need and now in verse 4 says you have all the promises you’ll ever need to handle anything God allows to come your way. Here’s a promise to memorize and put into practice.
1 Corinthians 10:13, No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
Isn’t that a precious and magnificent promise? God’s promises are guaranteed by His character. God never reneges on His promises. He promised the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. He promised a flood 120 years before it came. He promised Abraham a land, seed, and blessing. He delivered on the land, brought the seed through a previously barren woman, and blessed the nations with the New Covenant bringing forgiveness of sins and eternal life to His people. He promised David a seed to sit on his throne and Luke 1 tells its fulfillment. He promised the Messiah would bear the iniquity of us all. He promised the resurrection of Christ. He promised the Holy Spirit. He promised His presence to the end of the age. He promised His peace, His joy, His love in the gospel. What precious and magnificent promises!
So Peter says God has given us these precious promises of high value and greater worth than all the gold of Solomon’s temple. And these magnificent, unparalleled, superlative, exceedingly great, superior in importance to anything else we may acquire promises come with the power of God behind them. These magnificent promises come from a magnificent God through a magnificent Savior to a magnificent salvation that leads to a magnificent future with God forever! We’re all going to live somewhere forever. Do you ever think about that? Everybody you know will live somewhere forever and there are only two possibilities: eternal hell and eternal heaven. Here’s a precious and magnificent promise in just ten words. That Philippian jailor heard it, believed it, and his eternal destiny was changed forever. “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!” A word for each of your fingers. Is that precious to you? Or do you yawn and daydream about picking up a Big Mac for a quick lunch?
Have you ever been at your wits end? Some sailors were at their wits end in Psalm 107:27-28, “They reeled and staggered like a drunken man, and were at their wits end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses. He caused the storm to be still, so that the waves of the sea were hushed.” Maybe you’re facing really hard times or struggling with a sin habit you can’t seem to conquer. You’re at your wits end in a seemingly impossible situation. God has magnificent promises for impossible situations. Here are a few.
- Jeremiah 32:27, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?”
- Luke 1:37, For nothing will be impossible with God.
- Ephesians 3:20, Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.
- Matthew 19:26, And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Sharer in God’s Image (vs. 4)
By these promises Peter says God promises to make every believer a partaker of the divine nature. Martyn Lloyd-Jones describes this statement as “utterly staggering and amazing.” This doesn’t mean we become little gods as Kenneth Copeland says, “You don’t have a god in you. You are a god.” That’s pure blasphemy and why anyone would follow false teachers like that is a sad reality. But God does say that by God’s power and promises our hearts are totally changed and God renews us to the holy, loving image of God. God’s goal is for every believer to become more and more conformed to the image of His Son, which is progressive sanctification. First John 3:2 says when Christ appears, “we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is.”
Rescue from the World’s Corruption (vs. 4)
God also promises to rescue us from our slavery to selfish desires, “having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” Lust in this verse refers to everything about a man’s natural heart in sin, our self-serving desires without God. These lusts are the reason this world is corrupt. A world who loves self, lives for self, wants to please self is a corrupt world. We see it everywhere, including in our own hearts. God says don’t love the world, which includes the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Lusts in various ways corrupted our lives and would have taken us straight to hell except for God’s grace.
But Christ came and through God’s power and promises He rescued us from ourselves. “Our chains fell off; we’ve been set free.” God’s power and promises don’t just bring us human happiness, a better job, a nicer marriage, exciting vacations, secure retirement. No, God made us part of His divine nature and by doing this He snapped the chains of our slavery to lust. While we still fight the remains of sin, we have this new appetite for godliness or holiness. No matter what your sinful lusts or addictions may be, God is able to empower you to grow and change and conquer those sins.
What a salvation we’ve been given. It is driven by these two great “pistons” of truth of DIVINE POWER and MAGNIFICENT PROMISES. Do you know Christ this life-transforming way? Have you embraced Him as your only hope of forgiveness and eternal life? If you have, Peter says continue to grow in grace, as he’ll teach us in the following verses.