Kanishka Raffel is rector of St Matthew's Shenton Park, WA. This is an extract from the first of his Anglican Future Conference Bible Studies.
Peter's second letter is short and full of urgency. It is urgent for at least four reasons: firstly because the apostles and eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus are dying out; secondly because there are false teachers who reject the testimony of the apostles; thirdly because these are the last days, the season of God's patience when he calls on everyone to repent, and finally because Peter himself, the slave and apostle of Christ, is nearing death. As the aging apostle nears the end of his life, he does not give up the commission given to him to feed the Lord's sheep, to feed his lambs.
What is the food to which Peter directs the sheep? Where are they to find pasture for their souls and food for the journey when the apostle is with them no longer? Peter's top priority for believers is the knowledge of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter means believers to feed on Jesus. Through the knowledge of Christ, grace and peace are ours in abundance (v2). Through the knowledge of Christ, grow in grace (v3).
When Peter talks about knowledge he doesn't mean mere information, philosophy, an intellectual stance towards Jesus. He means close and vital relationship with Jesus. To know God through Jesus is to have come into relationship with him through faith and repentance.
Knowing Jesus is of first importance. Can you imagine a church that doesn't know Jesus? Can you imagine a ministry that doesn't know Jesus? Can you imagine a gospel that doesn't know Jesus? What a parody of faith, what a parody of church, what a parody of mission when the knowledge of Jesus is lost! That's the threat that Peter wants to counter in this letter.
Notice here that God is a giver and notice the gifts God gives: Peter writes to those who have received a faith (v1). God's divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life (v3), and throughGod's glory and goodness he has given us great and precious promises (v4).
But now notice how it is that God's people come to receive these gifts. Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord (v2). His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us (v3).
Knowing Jesus is the essential and sufficient foundation of the Christian life. Not having Bible information, not keeping religious rules, not being moral, not ecstatic experience or institutional authorization—no, the gifts God gives come on account of what he has done to secure them, and are given to those who enter into relationship with him. Even the faith that saves is something we receive on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus—it is all of grace, even faith and repentance .
It is the stunning life and ministry of Jesus which is planted like a great flagpole in history, that summons all those who will come, to know God through Jesus and to receive from him all that God has to give—grace and peace, everything needed to live the godly life, his very great and precious promises.
To say that God has given his people a faith is to say he has called them into relationship with himself—through Jesus. To say that he has given them grace and peace is to say that they have received forgiveness and reconciliation — through Jesus. To say that God gives his people everything necessary for the godly life, means that God produces in his people the life that pleases him, produces in his people the likeness of Jesus. To say he has given his people great and precious promises is to say that Jesus is the hope of his people, he has secured their future and they live in the light of what is promised but not yet seen. To say that God's people participate or fellowship in the divine nature is to say that they are no longer prisoners to corruption but adopted children in the divine family, sons and daughters in fellowship with the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
If you are at all like me, you have come to this conference, partly to get a break from the relentlessness of caring and feeding and guarding the flock of the Chief Shepherd. We count it a privilege, we count it the highest privilege—but in the midst of tears and prayers and doubts and death—we wonder, how will we rise to this task and how will we keep at it? But brothers and sisters, take courage! His divine power has given his people everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Jesus who called us by his own glory and goodness. Jesus, for his own glory and in accord with his own inexhaustible goodness saved us for himself. The faith we have, we received—because it was him who chose us before we chose him. And all those who are his have received a faith as precious as that of the apostle himself. We are in no different a position than the first generation of believers in Christ, for he has given us everything we need through our knowledge of him.
So do not neglect the knowledge of Jesus in his righteousness, grace and peace and in God's very great and precious promises. It can happen can't it? We can be so busy with ministry we lose touch with Jesus. Those chilling words that Jesus speaks in Matthew 25: 'Away from me. I never knew you!' Do not neglect the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness, and do not hesitate to offer him to others. We have nothing to offer as ministers of the Lord Jesus other than the Lord himself. But as people receive and respond to him they receive everything they need for a godly life.
And if you are at all like me then you have come to this conference slightly overwhelmed and slightly intimidated by the opposition and the indifference of the world around us to the message we proclaim and the offer that we make. But do not doubt for one moment that in the face of secularism and skepticism and consumerism and hedonism and pluralism his divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Jesus our Lord.
There is one who can lift our eyes to things we cannot see, there is one who can answer the doubts and fears of the human heart, there is one knowledge of whom is such comfort and joy that he makes the pleasures of the world dull and tasteless, there is one whose freely bestowed grace and peace is more valuable and more beautiful and more satisfying than all the glitter and technology with which we adorn our lives, there is one whose singular life lays claim to human hearts, one heart at a time. All we have to offer the world is Jesus; but Jesus is the answer to all the world's longings. The knowledge of Jesus: that's powerful knowledge.