“Complete and Unabridged”
2 Peter 1:1-21
2 Peter 1:1–21 (ESV) — 1 Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ: 2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 3 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, 4 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. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 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. 9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. 11 For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 12 Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.
13 I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, 14 since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. 15 And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things. 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” 18 we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. 19 And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Our current series of messages focuses on the theme of Authority. We consider this theme because we live in a world that has rejected the very idea of authority.Landon Gilkey, who was not an evangelical theologian, put his finger on the pulse of our current cultural heartbeat when he observed, “Is not—so the modern spirit declares—revelation the denial of all autonomy in inquiry and rationality; is not divine law the denial of personal autonomy in ethics; above all, is not God, if he be at all, the final challenge to my creativity as a man?”[1]
These questions expose the assumptions of so many in our world. Even more, considering the following, “Since the criterion for truth—correspondence with the external world—is absent, it is entirely a matter of indifference what opinions we adopt. All of them are equally true and equally false. And no one has the right to accuse anyone else of error.”[2] That conviction is the legacy of one of the most influential thinkers in our modern world, Sigmund Freud. The basis for any authority has vanished.
Faith in Jesus Christ demands a response that affirms his ultimate and eternal authority. We have begun to do this in earlier messages.We experience his authority over our lives through the Bible. So understanding the authority of the Bible is vital to our practice of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
What [evangelicals] declare about Jesus Christ—the gospel—they learn from what God has told the world about himself, using human language, in a collection of ancient documents providentially preserved and revered by Christians everywhere as the Holy Scriptures.… The authenticity of the gospel is established by the authority of the Bible.[3]
So we have inserted a mini-series about the authority of the Bible. In previous messages we have explored the content and authority of the Old Testament. We noted how Jesus affirms the Old Testament. We began to look at the New Testament and how Jesus prepares us to receive it. We hold in our hands today a New Testament that contains twenty-seven different books.
But how do we know we have the books that we should have? Should we be expecting God to add to the Bible with additional books for the New Testament?
These questions seem like boring ones until you have people come to your door using another book that they claim “is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible.”[4] If you ask them where it came from they will tell you the story of how in 1823 the founder of their church was told by a dead-prophet-turned-angel to find, uncover, and translate a revelation from God written on golden tablets and then buried several hundreds of years before.They will call this book another testament of Jesus Christ. Should you accept the authority of this third testament?
Maybe a friend at work might recommend you read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. As you get wrapped up in the drama, you encounter the reality of other books called gospels that seem to suggest that Jesus had a wife.Through his characters the author restates a common objection that church leaders long after Jesus rejected these gospels and wrote the ones that now appear in the Bible.Brown claims that the church later in the fourth century invented the idea that Jesus is God and wrote it into the gospels of the current New Testament. The “authentic” gospels do not contain such teaching.
Are you going to replace Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for the gospels of Phillip, Thomas, and Mary?We cannot ignore these kinds of issues. So we address them this morning with this purpose:To strengthen our confidence in the complete Bible as God’s word to us today and wisely evaluate claims that rival its authority.
You have this sentence at the top of the sermon notes section in this morning’s bulletin. Our purpose is to strengthen our confidence in the complete Bible as God’s word to us today and wisely evaluate claims that rival its authority.
This morning, our particular concern is the content of the New Testament. How do we know that we have the books in the New Testament that God intended us to have in order to complete the Bible?I intend to give a biblical answer to the question by first walking through 2 Peter 1. This chapter teaches so much about the nature of the New Testament.
Verse 1 introduces us to one of the human authors of the New Testament.
2 Peter 1:1 (ESV) — Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
Servant of Jesus Christ.Peter is a servant of Jesus Christ. The word servant means slave or bondservant. Peter submitted himself completely to the authority of Jesus Christ.He knew that Jesus had come back to life after death. He is a slave of the one who he says in verse 11 is the King of an eternal kingdom. He is under the authority of the One to whom belongs “glory both now and to the day of eternity” according to the last verse of this letter (3:18).
Apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter is also an apostle of Jesus Christ. As we noted in an earlier message, the apostles received a unique commission from the Lord to communicate to the church the words and works of Jesus through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.These two titles, “slave” and “apostle” remind us that the authority of the New Testament stands on the authority of Jesus himself.
The rest of verse 1 reminds us to whom the New Testament is written:
2:1 (cont) To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
Notice that when it comes to standing before God, Peter is an equal. As an apostle he has a special responsibility to communicate God’s truth. Like all true Christians, Peter views himself as standing before God only because of the righteousness which he has through faith in Jesus Christ.
This underscores that the New Testament is written to bring people into a relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel that is the central message of the whole Bible.The gospel says simply that all of us have turned against the righteousness of God. We are fallen and can do nothing to please God. Nothing. Everything a human being does apart from Christ is an offense to God. Isaiah tells our tragic story.
Isaiah 64:6 (ESV) — We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
Suppose a company commissions some research. It hires all the experts to carry it out. When all the results are in and the conclusions drawn, the head of the project steals the research and sells it for personal gain to another company. The research was still a good thing done well but ends up as an offense to the company who first commissioned the work. The researcher will be fired and sued for damages.
Nothing we do gains us righteousness before God. The only way we have a right standing before Him is through a righteousness that is not our own. If you are here today and you have never personally united yourself to Jesus by rejecting self-righteousness and embracing Him as your Savior, then you have no personal relationship to God.
The New Testament exists to reveal Jesus to you so that you will love Him, trust Him, and obey Him forever. The only way you will have the multiplied grace and peace of 1:2 is if you trust Christ in this way.
Notice also at the close of verse 1 that Jesus is identified as God. He is “our God and Savior Jesus Christ.”Here is proof that the earliest church believed that Jesus was God. Even the liberal scholars who deny that Peter wrote this book accept that it dates back to 160 A.D.Dan Brown’s theory does not hold up to historical evidence. The church did not create gospels that make Jesus God. Rather, the gospels that declare Jesus to be God taught the church to confess that truth.
It is a living and vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ as God that Peter describes in greater detail beginning in verse 3.That relationship involves “life” and “godliness.” Christ’s divine power provides everything we need for both (3).
Eternal life is the possession of every believer from the moment of faith and forever. “Godliness” refers to growing in Christ-likeness once one possesses eternal life.Everything necessary for life and godliness has been given to those who received a direct call from Jesus as they experienced his power and excellence (3). The apostles like Peter were called in this way.
According to verse 4, Jesus granted them his own great and very precious promises. He did this so that they could share them with others so that they could share in Christ and escape the judgment that will come on this world because of sin. Look again at verse 4.
2 Peter 1:4 (ESV) — by which [his glory and excellence] 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.
The promises of Christ come to us in the New Testament through the apostles. We receive these promises so that we might grow in life and godliness.
Verse 5 describes the character qualities that will develop in the person who is growing in godliness.They begin with faith. As one grows he or she supplements faith with virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love (5-7).Notice that this pattern of growth continues all the way until we reach the eternal kingdom in v. 11.
These promises are so critical that Peter insists that he must continue to remind those who have trusted Jesus about them as long as he lives (12), but verses 13-14 make it clear that he is not going to live much longer. That brings us to verse 15.
2 Peter 1:15 (ESV) — And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.
How will this happen? How will it be possible after the death of the apostles to bring to mind at any time the precious truths revealed to them directly by Jesus Christ? What great effort is Peter going to make? The answer is that he’s going to write down these great and precious promises as Scripture.
Verses 16-18 describe one of the events that Peter experienced as an eyewitness of Jesus’ words and works here on earth. We call it the transfiguration. You can read more detailed accounts of the event in Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, and Luke 9:28-36.The important point for our purposes this morning is that Peter gives the believers something more certain than an eyewitness account. He is giving them the prophetic word.
2 Peter 1:19 (ESV) — And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts,
This prophetic word parallels the great and precious promises earlier in the chapter. By paying attention to it they will see the light of truth in a dark, corrupt world and will grow to be more like Christ until He returns and the day dawns.
The reason why Peter’s writing is more certain than an eyewitness experience is described in verses 20-21. It is Scripture. It is not a private journal but a divine revelation given through the Holy Spirit.Peter sees his work as part of the larger revelation of God in the Bible. He is writing the New Testament to document the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
So how do we know that a book belongs in the New Testament? Here are the three most significant criteria common to all twenty-seven books. All three must describe a book for it to be part of Scripture.
First, it originates among the apostles.As we saw earlier, not every book in the New Testament is written by an apostle. But all come from the apostolic brotherhood rich with eyewitness testimony to the works and words of Jesus. And all have the “stamp of approval” from one who received the apostolic commission directly from Christ.
Second, it claims authority over the Church. We know that there are writings from apostles that do not appear in the New Testament (see 1 Cor 5:9-11). Those writings that belong in Scripture bear a tone of authority over the church. For example, Peter here insists that believers will do well to pay attention to his words throughout the church age until Christ returns.
Third, it receives recognition from the Church. Over a relatively short period of time, for a variety of factors, the church recognized which books belonged in the Bible as equal to the Old Testament. I cite as one example a man named Irenaeus. He was born around 120 A.D. in Smyrna 35 miles north of Ephesus. As a boy, he interacted with Polycarp who led the church in that city. Polycarp became the most prominent church leader in Asia following the apostles. Irenaeus would later write about his childhood, “I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp … would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he would call their words to remembrance.”[5]
During his time as a church leader in what is today France, Irenaeus would quote from all but four of the New Testament books as having authority. He quoted from two others that later came to be rejected.As he defends the gospel he writes:
WE have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith…. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.[6]