Now look back with me there at
2 Peter chapter 1 that Brother Mark just read. The title of
the message, as you can see from the bulletin, is Our Calling
and Election, which I'm going to focus on verse 10 mainly. Now let me begin by saying this.
You know, in the Bible, what it is to be a Christian, or what
a Christian really is, and what it is to live the Christian life,
is described in various ways, all basically meaning the same
thing, but just in different words, different aspects, so
that we can get a total view of what it means to be a follower,
a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it is to live
in that light. And if you look at 2 Peter 1,
look at verse 1. This pretty much tells you what
it is to be a Christian. What a Christian is, it says,
Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, and
of course that word servant is a bond slave. And you know the
difference between a slave and a bond slave. Someone who's forced
into servitude or slavery, that's just a slave. That's wrong, isn't
it? Even the Bible says that's wrong
because there's a passage over in the Old Testament that calls
it kidnapping. Kidnapping people and forcing them into servitude
and slavery, and that's wrong. But a bond servant, that was
like someone who ran up a debt that they couldn't pay, and so
they had to hire themselves out as a servant. to the one to whom
they owed the money. And they had to serve for so
many years. And you can read about that,
I think, in the book of Exodus, about a bondservant. A bondservant,
and when they would serve the one to whom they owed the debt
for so many years, it was seven years, I think, and at the end
of the seventh, they could go out free. But if they chose not
to go out free, in fact, the idea there is if they loved their
master, and enjoyed serving their master, they could choose to
stay there, and they would be called a bondservant. You remember
they would bore their ear with an awl, and usually back in the
ancient days, they'd put a ring in their ear, and if they were
a servant, a person could tell, well, this is a bondservant,
not just a forced slave because of that ring. And so what you
see there is a type, a picture of what it is to be a servant
of Christ. God does not force his people to serve him against
their will. They don't have, now listen,
by nature, we don't have a will to serve God, don't get me wrong.
He's not talking about free will-ism here. But he changes our will
by the power of the Spirit, makes us willing. And we don't want
it, we want to serve him. That's what the scripture, and
that's what a bondservant, that's what Peter said. Paul called
himself a bondslave, a bondservant of Christ. That's a willing,
loving bonds, who's serving not in order to pay a debt, but serving
because the debt's already been paid. And of course, we know
in a Christian, Christ has paid our debt in full by his blood
on the cross. and has given us righteousness.
And that's what Peter says here. Look at it. Simon Peter, a servant
and an apostle. Apostle was a messenger of Jesus
Christ. To them that have obtained like
precious faith. Now that's key. Same faith. Not the Baptist faith and the
Methodist faith and the Pentecostal. There's only one faith. And what
does that faith tell us? What does that faith show us,
reveal to us, to bring out us to believe in him? Look at it,
faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ,
or if you have a concordance there, it says, of our God and
Savior Jesus Christ. In other words, faith, saving
faith, gospel faith, God-given faith, and it is the gift of
God, it's not what we have naturally, He gives it through the knowledge
of Christ. Gospel faith looks out of ourselves
and to Christ for righteousness. That's what he's saying here.
How do I know that I have the right faith? How do I know that
what I believe is not a lie? That it's not wrong? That it's
true Christian faith? Well, it comes through the righteousness,
and that's his righteousness imputed. That's what that is.
When the Bible speaks of righteousness, It speaks of the perfection of
the law. Satisfaction of justice. And that can only be found in
the glorious person and finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It cannot be found anywhere else. It's not going to be found in
the pillars of society. It's not going to be found within
you or within me, even Christians or non-Christians. We're not
going to find the perfection of righteousness except as we
look to Christ who is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believe it. And that's what this faith is
all about, looking to Christ, resting in Christ, believing
in Christ, following Him. And so what is a Christian? It's
a person who's seen that they're a sinner, that salvation is totally
by God's free and sovereign grace, it's something that we have not
earned and do not deserve, it's mercy, mercy, mercy, and it's
based upon the righteousness of another, the God-man, the
Lord Jesus Christ. That's it. But he goes on, look
at verse two, he says, grace and peace be multiplied unto
you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, Jesus
our Lord. The grace of God and the peace
which comes from that grace, and you see, we studied this
morning in Romans 5.21 how grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. It comes to us, to
our minds, to our hearts, our affections, our wills, as we
know Christ, as Christ is revealed to us by the power of the Spirit.
He's the Prince of Peace. He's the provider of grace. It's
by his righteousness that we have grace, because whatever
God gives us in blessings and salvation, it's based upon a
just ground, a right ground, and that's to be found only in
Christ. So the more we know of him, the more we see the majesty
and the amazingness of this grace, and the more we have peace with
God. The more we have peace with one another as like brethren,
like precious faith. Verse three, he says, according
as his divine power hath given unto us, and look here, all things
that pertain unto life and godliness. And it's through the knowledge
of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. Think about
that. It's by the power of God, his
grace, his power, that True Christians have everything given to them.
Now that's amazing. We normally think of a child
who has everything given to him to be spoiled, wouldn't we? I've
heard my mother used to say, he's spoiled rotten, everything's
been given to him. Well, in salvation, that's the
way we are. I hope we're not spoiled brats.
But everything we have by way of virtue of the eternal life
and glory and blessings being given freely. But we realize
what it took to give it to us. It's through the knowledge of
Him. Through knowing who Christ is. Who is Jesus Christ? He is God manifest in the flesh. Without sin. God-man. And what did He do to save us
from our sins? He gave of Himself. He obeyed
unto death. having our sins charged to him. He became guilty, cursed under
the law, and took all the wrath of God upon himself that we earned
and deserve, and drank damnation dry. He was buried, he arose
again the third day, because in his death, he brought forth
righteousness that demands life, and that's our life. He is our
life. And so when we talk about life,
we're talking about what we have been given by Christ. And when
we talk about godliness, you know what godliness is. They
say, well, that's god-likeness. It's talking about the communicable
attributes of God. We love Him because He first
loved us. We obey Him out of the motives
of grace and gratitude. But everything that pertains
to that has been given to us and it comes by virtue of a knowledge
that God reveals to us of Him, Christ, who has what? Called
us. To what? Called us to glory. What is glory? That's the essence
of God. That's the bliss of eternal life.
That's what He's called us to. And He's called us to that by
His grace. He didn't call you to work for
it. That's right. God does not call you to work
hard to be saved. God makes His people willing
to bow to His way and He gives it to us. And virtue is excellence,
that's what it is. Excellence in everything. Whatever
we're doing that is pertaining to the glory of God. I'm a preacher. I ought to strive for excellence,
not because of any merit in myself, not because I want to be the
prince of preachers or a golden throat or a great orator or anything
like that, not because I really want to captivate you this morning
with my voice or anything, because of the glory of God. That's what
we're here for, to glorify God. I'm just the signpost. I'm just
the voice crying in the wilderness. Look at verse four, he says,
whereby are given unto us, there's that given again. And what has
he given us? Exceeding great and precious
promises. Promises of what? Of eternal
life and glory and virtue, salvation and all that's attended with
it, blessings. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places. Remember, we say standing on
the promises. All right, all the promises of
God in Christ are yea, sure, and amen, certain. In other words,
these promises are not conditioned on you or conditioned on me,
they're all conditioned on Christ and they're freely given to us
by his grace, based on his righteousness imputed. That by these, these
promises, verse four, you might be partakers of the divine nature. What is it to be a partaker of
the divine nature? Now the word partaker, you need
to understand what it means. It means to be a participant,
a partner. It's a word that is often translated
in the Bible, fellowship. That's what it means. We think
about partaking as sitting down and devouring a meal. That's
not what this word means. This is not something that the
Holy Spirit works in us. Most preachers, and you go back
to most of the old writers, they all say that's talking about
that we have in us a divine nature. Not so. Now, we have spiritual
life within that is created and given by divine, by God, But
the divine nature, you know what the divine nature is? To have
a divine nature means you have a constitution, a makeup, a nature
that is inherently divine. You know what the divine nature
is? It's God. And he's the only one
that has a divine nature. God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit, they are by nature divine. I even hear
one preacher who talks about this. He says, well, when we're
born again, God creates within us a new divine nature that cannot
sin and cannot be contaminated. Now that is heresy. First of
all, if it's a divine nature, let me tell you something about
it, it cannot be created. Anything that is by nature divine
has no beginning and no end. It's not created at all. Now we have spiritual life from
the divine created by Christ through his righteousness. Body
is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
But what does this mean? What it means is that when God,
the Holy Spirit, in our calling reveals the precious promises
of all of salvation conditioned on Christ and sealed for us and
given to us based on his righteousness. You know what happens? We are
brought into fellowship with God. John spoke of it in 1 John. Our fellowship is with the Father
and with the Son. Before we're called into the
kingdom, before we're born again, who are we in fellowship with?
The world, the devil, Satan. Even in our false religion now.
Don't get the idea because you grew up religious that you've
been called into the kingdom yet. You're called into the kingdom,
how? Go back to verse one. You've
obtained like precious faith through the righteousness of
God and our Savior Jesus Christ. I know when I grew up religious
for years, I never even heard anything about his righteousness,
the justice of God. It was just basically my religion
was God's done everything he can do, now the rest was up to
me. And that's false religion. But now when we're called into
the kingdom by the gospel in the hands and the power of the
Holy Spirit in our new birth, we're brought into fellowship
with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit through Jesus Christ. In Him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. It pleased the Father that in
Him should all fullness dwell. You want to see the glory of
the Godhead, the divine nature? Look to Christ, the face of Jesus
Christ. In Him, in the glory of His person
as God in human flesh without sin, and in the accomplishment
of His mediatorial work, substitutionary work to redeem us from our sins
and bring forth an everlasting righteousness that answered the
demands of God's law and justice, which is imputed to us when we're
called into the kingdom to see Him, we're brought into fellowship
with the divine nature. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Our fellowship is with God. And that means this, look at
verse four again, having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust. The corruption that he's speaking
of is summarized in the word lust. Now what is lust? Well, anytime
we hear that term, we always think of inherent or a sinful
sexual desire, but it's more than that, folks. Lust is any
unlawful desire. Any unlawful desire. Any desire
that I have that God forbids is lust. There's another word
for it used in the book of Romans chapter seven. It's the word
concupiscence. We don't use that word much anymore.
That's what it is. And you know, when Paul was talking
about that, he was talking about his past life in false religion. where he desired to be saved
and to please God based upon his keeping the law. And he calls it lust. Go back
to the very beginning, go back to Cain and Abel. Both Cain and
Abel desired fellowship with God. That's what Peter's talking
about, partakers of fellowship with God. Both Cain and Abel
desired fellowship with God. They wanted to be accepted with
God. They wanted to be blessed by God. Both of them did. They
wanted to please God. But Cain's desire was unlawful. because it was a desire to have
God's favor and God's acceptance and God's blessings based upon
his works. You see that? Now, unlawful sexual
desire is lust, and it is against the law of God. But see, if we
relegate it to only that, we can come out sometimes, and I
don't know how, but sometimes feeling pretty good about ourselves.
But here's the point, Cain was a lusty individual. He had unlawful
desires. He wanted to worship God, to
please God, to be accepted with God based on his works and God
forbids that. That's against his rule, his
word. But now Abel's desire was based
on what? The blood of sacrifice. And what
did that blood teach us? What did that blood mean? That
was a picture, a type, of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of
God. My friend, you wanna be accepted
with God? You wanna please God? You want
blessings from God? You want salvation? Don't come
pleading your best. That's lust. Plead Christ. His best. His blood, His righteousness. And you know what? That's what
a Christian does. Now he says, look at verse five,
he says, and beside this. Now literally I believe that
would better read, because of this, or upon the ground of this,
giving all diligence. Now this is speaking of a Christian
seeking to be like Christ. And it's not talking about works
aimed at attaining salvation. In other words, the first four
verses of Peter's letter here establishes the only ground upon
which God saves sinners. And what a sinner saved by grace,
a Christian sees when God brings him into fellowship with himself.
It's not by our works. It's not by our efforts to be
better. But because of what God has freely
and fully given us by his grace in Christ, beside this, give
all diligence. Add to your faith virtue, excellence. Your virtue, knowledge, growing
grace and knowledge of Christ. To knowledge, temperance. That
means don't be a person of extremes. To temperance, patience. That's
endurance. to patience, godliness, that
is, seek to be like Christ, to godliness, brotherly kindness,
be kind to one another, to brotherly kindness, charity, that's love,
that's the agape love, that's the love that comes from the
divine. And he says in verse eight, for if these things be
in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be
barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you know Christ? Do you believe in him? And he
says this is fruitfulness. This is not the cause or the
ground of salvation. This is not the ways by which
we earn our blessings or our position in glory, no. This is
not our righteousness at all, Christ is. This is the fruitfulness
that comes from it. And so he says in verse nine,
but he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see. And
that word blind there is like being nearsighted. You can't
see afar off. and hath forgotten that he was
purged from his old sins. Sometimes we lose sight of the
glory of God in Christ, don't we? You know one of the things,
that's one of the reasons that God ordained and has commanded
us to meet together just like this. And that's why he's told
me to get up here and remind me and you of how much we owe. Remember that song, How Much
I Owe? You see, true Christians do not owe God a legal debt. We're bond servants. But I'll
tell you what we do owe him. We owe him a debt of love, don't
we? Debt of gratitude, which we'll never pay. We'll spend
eternity. And that's what he's saying.
Now, in light of all that, look at verse 10. Wherefore, for this
reason, though rather, brethren, Give diligence. Pursue this to make your calling
and election sure. Where if you do these things,
you shall never fall. Now let me just say a few words
about that, and I'm gonna pick up on it next week too, but it's
interesting here. You know the doctrine of election.
Now you all know how most people who call themselves Christians
react to that. And usually it's very negative,
isn't it? But you know, there's no place
in the Bible where the truth of election is put in a negative
light or criticized. It's always give thanks. Remember
what I read there at the opening? We are bound, brethren, beloved
of the Lord, to give thanks unto God, who hath chosen us from
the beginning. Thank you, Lord, for choosing
us. Election, or God's electing grace,
is always put in such a positive context, never in a negative
at all, as most who call themselves Christian today do. Most people
want to avoid the truth of election. They say it's unfair, it's unjust
that God should, what does election teach? It teaches that God, before
the foundation, chose whom he would save. And they say, well, that's unfair
or unjust. But here's what Peter says by inspiration of the Spirit. He says, God commands us to make
every effort, be diligent, be zealous, in fact, to confirm
our calling and our election. And look at verse 11, he says,
for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You
know what he's saying there? This is the means that God uses
to preserve us unto glory. This is the way God does things.
You're not trying to earn your way into God's favor. Christ
already paid that debt. You're not trying to make yourself
righteous in order to attain or maintain salvation. Christ
already did that. He is the Lord, my righteousness.
But in giving diligence to make our calling and election sure,
this is the way God preserves us. Persevering in the faith. What's he talking about? Make
your calling and election. Sure, he's talking about assurance.
Assurance of salvation. What is godly assurance? You
know, a lot of people, the old Puritans, they were just about
masters in promoting doubt and as humility. Anybody that had any notion of
assurance at all, they would say it was being presumptuous. Years ago, I heard some preachers
talking about that, and they would say, you know, they would
look at somebody like Jerry Falwell, at the end of his messages, he'd
say, now, how many of you are sure for heaven is if you're
over there, raise your hand? And then they would say, well,
that's presumption. Well, is it? What is presumption? Presumption is any assurance
of salvation. that is based on a wrong ground. That's what presumption is. It's
any assurance or any peace you have that is not traced to the
pure word of God in Christ. That's presumption. That's pride. But now godly assurance, that's
the hope that a true believer has of assurance of salvation
based on a right ground found in the word of God. And so what
is our ground of assurance? Well, we could go through the
scriptures and show so many, so many passages with that first
Peter there. Like precious faith with us through
the righteousness of God, our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
What is the ground of my assurance of salvation? It's the righteousness
of Christ. It's the grace of God that reigns
through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ. It's the
grace of God. It's nothing in me. It's nothing
that I do or don't do. It's Christ. He's the author
and the finisher, the completer of my faith. My hope is in Him. Paul said it this way in 2 Timothy
1.12, I know whom I have believed and I'm persuaded what? That
He is able, not that I'm able, that He's able to keep that which
I've committed unto Him against that day, the day of wrath, the
day of judgment. Now what have I committed unto
Christ? My whole salvation. I've committed
it to Him. All my blessings to Him. Not
me. It's all on Him. As I read, all
the promises of God in Him. If they're in me, they're not
sure and they're not certain. In fact, they're sure and certain
to fail. Somebody said, well, I don't
do as much as you do and He doesn't do as much as I do and all that.
Well, none of us do enough. Somebody said, well, what is
enough? Well, according to scripture, the only one who ever did enough
to bring forth an everlasting righteousness is the Lord Jesus
Christ. Isn't that right? And it's through him that the
book of Hebrews chapter six says that God gives his people strong
consolation, strong comfort. It's through him that 1 John
4 says we can have boldness at the day of judgment. Now think
about that. When I was growing up, they used
to give us a little pamphlet called The Burning Hail. And
then it had this little cartoon guy going through life, and he'd
mess up and do things that most of us do or try not to do, but
he'd do it. And then he'd die. He got hit
by a train, I think. And he died, and he went to heaven,
and God was up there showing him a film of his past life. And, of course, he went to hell. The issue in my mind is that
when I get to heaven, or when I get to judgment, God's gonna
show the film, the movie of my life. And I thought, good night.
What am I gonna do? I just sink down and hide, you
know? And I guess you just hope that your good works outweigh
your bad works. Does that sound like boldness
at the judgment, 1 John 4, 17? Boldness at the judgment. You
know, the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 10 that we can come boldly
to the throne of grace. How do we come confidently, freely
to God's throne? On what ground could I have assurance,
boldness? There's only one, the blood of
Jesus Christ that takes away all my sin. His righteousness
imputed to me. That's it. How are we to have this kind
of assurance and it not be presumption? Well, he says here, give diligence
to make your calling and election sure. Notice the order here. You know,
election actually comes before calling if you read the Bible.
Because the Bible says we were elect, chosen by God before the
foundation of the world. But the calling comes afterward
in time after we're born and sometime when God the Holy Spirit
brings us under the preaching of the gospel and he calls us
to himself. That's what Peter talked about
here. He says in verse four, whereby
are given us exceeding great and precious promises that by
these you might be partakers of the divine nature. He talked
about being called unto glory and virtue. That's the calling
of the gospel. So why does he put calling first?
Because we cannot know our election until we're called. How do you
know that? Turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter
one, and I'll hurry here. And like I said, I'm gonna pick
back up on this next week and say some more about it. But look
at 1 Thessalonians one. Now, let me give you something
that I, I want you to see here. I was listening to a preacher
on the radio and he was preaching from John 3, 16. Now you all
know that verse, God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but
have everlasting life. And you know how people interpret
that, that means God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody, now
it's up to you. It's not what that verse teaches.
Because it says the word world, it doesn't mean everybody without
exception. The Bible never means everybody
without exception when it uses that word, and I can show you
so many verses like that. But here's the way the preacher
preached it. He quoted John 3, 16, he said, for God so loved
the elect that he gave his only begotten son. And he looked up
and he said, now that's not what the text says, does it? He says,
for God so loved the world, everybody. Well, now let me put it to you
this way. I'm not going to stretch a point.
When he said, for God so loved the elect, he said, now that's
not what it says. I said, yeah, that's exactly
what it says. How do you know that? Well, it says that he sent
his only begotten son that whosoever believeth should not perish,
but have everlasting life. Now, who are the elect of God?
Look at 1 Thessalonians 1. Look at verse 4. Incidentally,
I heard another preacher talk about it. He said, is there anywhere
in the Bible that God identifies his elect? He said, yes, turn
to Deuteronomy 7. So he went back to Deuteronomy
7 to apply it to the Jews. Well, they were God's elect in
a temporal ceremonial way, but that's not eternal election.
My point is this. When Paul wrote this, he's talking
to believing Jews and believing Gentiles, not just the Jews. Well, listen to what he says
in verse four of 1 Thessalonians 1. Knowing, brethren, beloved,
your election of God, that God chose you, for our gospel came
not unto you in word only, but also in power. and in the Holy
Ghost, and in much assurance, as you know what manner of men
we were among you for your sake." The Gospel. You believe the Gospel.
My friend, that's who God's elect are. Through sanctification of the
Spirit, and belief of the truth, whereunto He called you by our
Gospel, to the praise of the glory of His grace. That's who
they are.