2 Peter 1:3-10 is a passage that smacked me in rehab three years ago. It’s one of those where the writer of Scripture lays out a big picture, offering a deep answer to help Jesus-followers frame their lives. It’s also one of those passages that preaches well from the stage but doesn’t always drift into our weekly reality. I, as a recovering pastor, was the epitome of it.
Peter kicks off with the declaration that God has already “granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” This isn’t a minor statement, nor should we glance over it. For the first-century Church, “everything” looked much different than what we want today – “enough” has a whole different meaning to us today. After wrecking my life plenty, this concept finally began to awaken in me—I already had everything I needed to change.
2 Peter 1:3-10 (ESV)
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The Promise of Transformation
The way it hit me wasn’t just some subjective experience. Peter goes on to say that the reason God gave us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” is so that we “may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (v. 4). Peter is talking about present realities with his original audience, things they were working on and experiencing. This passage is rich with the objective reality of spiritual transformation, a concept once reserved for the supernatural unknown is now proving itself to have been a real and “scientific” reality of our human psychology.
To partake in the divine nature is no casual thing to reference – a mere angel brought people to their knees. Peter talks about God as if we could be peers and share in what He experiences. Of course, this idea is not unique to Peter. The writer of Hebrews assures us we can approach the throne with confidence. When Paul speaks of the fruit of the Spirit or Jesus of having life and it abundantly, they are speaking of the same kind of things.
This was part of the audaciousness of the New Testament Gospel within the first venture world – a concept we’ll be exploring more in the future. For the Gentiles, it was Christ in the first Jewish Christians that would upend their perceptions of the divine and human order. It was the Apostle Paul’s mission “to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:25b-27).
The temptation even here is to turn this passage into something about “getting into heaven” or being saved from impending wrath—but that’s not what it’s about. We can turn this into “Christ in them our Hope of Glory” with some careless thinking. Our preoccupation with converting souls, public condemnation of “sin,” and political control, I’d suggest, are psychological projections of an underlying group consciousness at work. Our categories and definitions have shifted over hundreds of years and we’ve crossed some wires.
Beyond a Future Heaven
When we view the Bible from the perspective of a future, disembodied “Heaven,” we miss something crucial – Heaven. Peter’s words here are about the present moment. The radical nature of Jesus’s message and revolution was that Heaven is just not a future reality—it’s a present one. Our hyper-fixations on pet doctrines, neglect of agape love, and need to build our kingdoms often lead to more unhealthy thinking that’s a confusing mix of doctrine and unspoken creeds. We get caught up in equalizing our sin and righteousness in ways that distort Truth for ourselves. 2 Peter 1:3-10 is not about escaping a distant Hell—it’s about escaping the hell we create here, and now.
Peter tells us that we “may become partakers of the divine nature” because we have “escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” An issue for the American Church is our lack of self-awareness. We can assume the world is corrupt and sinful while we remain free from guilt. Peter would have us see things differently. The call isn’t to beat the world into submission – that is sin. The call was to deal with ourselves and love others for real finally. This is a fundamental flaw of many American Gospels.
On the flip side, there are churches, pastors, and evangelicals wrestling authentically with trying to live this way. They authentically love and desire good for the world. They have gotten over much and grown in Christ. They are the reasons why so many people still have hope for the Church.
Everything Evangelicals Need
“You already have everything you need to be partakers of the divine and to be free from the corruption and sin of the world,” we can hear Peter telling us in the American Evangelical circles. We don’t have to be that way anymore. If we spend our energy creating false dichotomies and an “us versus them” mentality, we are contributing to the very corruption and sinful desire Peter speaks against. This shouldn’t surprise us. Scripture is full of stories of people who messed this up along the way. Generational sin lasts for generations, and we have everything we need now.
For Peter, this extra separation modern Christians cling to mirrors the divide from Genesis 3 when our eyes were opened to seeing the world upside down. We wall off, protect, blame, and assume our rightness while judging others as wrong – we’ll even blame God. This isn’t what the Gospel is about—it’s what the Gospel corrects…if we give ourselves to it.
“True knowledge of God is born out of obedience.” – Clement of Alexandria
Facing Ourselves in Recovery & Faith
For an addict in the midst of rehab, Peter’s message tells us to calm down, look around, and realize we already have what we need. The reality he speaks of isn’t something we have to “get” to—it’s here and available now. Here is where our faith makes heaven a reality and it’s here where we can start adding to our faith. The urge to fix everything except ourselves, to avoid, to control, to have more, and to make a name for ourselves are all a part of the problem. It’s the same issue when we point out specks in others’ eyes while ignoring our own planks. Frankly, we should grow up and let them deal with their own specks unless they want help. Sticking our hands in other peoples’ things doesn’t help as often as we like to think.
Back in church society, we often speak on behalf of God, telling people what He wants for their lives without examining our own. If we’re starting from the wrong place, even the Good News we can corrupt it with our own ignorance and arrogance. Jesus, Paul, and John warned of such things. We like to assume we’re on the right side of things. Many pastors feel the temptation to build their own kingdoms, and it’s a temptation we all face, especially today when everyone can be their own god and king, untouchable and unknowable behind their masks.
Leadership and Ego
Leadership, especially in spiritual communities, matters deeply because leaders are meant to guide others toward some goal and transformation. But how many pastors over the last 1,500 years have led people to a Jesus they barely knew, yours truly included? How many have compelled others to bend their knee to a kingdom more like this world than the one Jesus preached? This isn’t about vocational ministry being a “higher” calling—it’s about all of us and the whole of our individual lives.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” It’s about killing our ego, our kingdoms, and our desire to control. That’s how we turn our world right side up – one moment at a time, one person at a time.
The Importance of The Right Fruit
Peter goes on to list qualities we should be fixating on instead of the corruption in the world. He says, “If these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 8). I can attest to this. As a pastor, I knew plenty about Jesus and Scripture, but my identities—my ministry, my roles—were my corruption and sin. Sure, I had “fruit” in my “ministry” – I was a wreck and wrecked people’s lives in the end.
Where is that fruit now? What fruit really mattered to Jesus and Paul when they were engaging people who were first trying to get their lives turned right side up for the first time? What fruit matters to us now?
This isn’t unique to me. Pastors many of us know are in a similar place. Lifelong Christians are feeling torn away from the Evangelical mindset. They hear all about a supposed “biblical worldview” that has no respect for the Bible’s people, origin, situation, context, and intent. We’ve predefined “biblical” in such a way we can’t even hear the Word spoken 2000 years ago. It’s ended careers and they couldn’t understand what went wrong. When we start trusting Jesus, we can be honest with ourselves and deal with what we’ve been running from.
More Than Evangelical
Our effectiveness in Christ isn’t about evangelism. It’s about how you live your life, walking in this Way. It’s about the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of repentance, peace, love, and all the things Peter lists that we should add to our faith. When we’re consumed by the chaos of the world, even if we love Jesus and the church, it’s still chaos and death. It’s definitely not “Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). John also says if we think we love Jesus but don’t love others, we’re deceiving ourselves.
Becoming Unblind
Peter concludes, “Whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (v. 9). This blindness isn’t accidental—it’s the result of our own pride. We put scales on our eyes through the things we’re unwilling to accept. When we try to validate our perspectives by making others wrong, we leave the Kingdom of God and fall back into the hell of sin.
It can stop but it always has to start with the individual, with the self. Jesus’ main command was love and the rest of the New Testament backed it up. We flip the order of Peter’s message, trying to make people know Jesus while forgetting that He might not know us at all so we don’t have to agape them. We let God do that…if He wants. If instead we can get this right, the number of Christians in the world would no longer be “ineffective and unfruitful.” That’s exciting to think about with fresh eyes.
Conclusion: Facing Ourselves
For the addict, the hardest thing you have to face is yourself. If you’re addicted to things like image, control, work, pride, purpose, meaning, sex, or whatever, you can listen in if you’d like. Don’t forget that you already have everything you need. Keep your eyes open and don’t be nearsighted. Don’t assume God is angry or trying to ruin you—far from it. Heaven is here and there’s much to be grateful for. It’s our ego that gets in the way. So, leave it on the Cross. We’ve got work to do.
Read 2 Peter 1:3-10 again. This is for our present lives, for the addicts in their umpteenth rehab, for the small business owners, for baby-daddies and frazzled mothers dealing with loser baby-daddies, for pastors wrestling with their faith and families, for the top executive training the world, and for the homeless man who sleeps in the bushes outside the grocery store in Missoula. This is for now, for such a time as this. This is for you.
Wherever you and I are, let’s remember we have everything we need. It changes things.
