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Know and Grow (2 Peter 1:1-11)
By David Feddes

I have shocking and exciting news. After completing First Peter, guess what we’re going to look at next? Second Peter! A stunning development. We’re going to look at Second Peter under the theme Know and Grow.

First Peter was written to prepare people for suffering—suffering and insults that they were already dealing with and worse suffering to come. Peter’s first letter helped people to face the facts of that suffering and to prepare for the glory that God had stored up for them.

But there’s an even greater threat to Christians’ faith than suffering and opposition, and Peter’s second letter addresses that threat. It’s the threat of false teaching—of going after wrong ideas about God and wrong ideas about how we ought to live.

The great way to counteract that, according to this letter, is to know God and to keep growing in the Lord and in his grace and in his knowledge. We need to be ready, then, to know and grow. This will fortify and strengthen us to deal with false teachings and false attacks. It’s worth noting that the very last thing Peter writes, in full awareness that he’s going to die, is not about suffering. The worst threat is that people will be fooled—that they will fall for a different gospel.

Second Peter is another of the General Epistles, sometimes also called the Catholic Epistles, which means they’re not addressed to a particular congregation by the original author but addressed more broadly. That’s why they’re called the General Epistles or Catholic Epistles. James, First and Second Peter, First, Second, and Third John, and Jude are commonly known as the Catholic Epistles.

Today’s message will look at the first eleven verses of Second Peter.

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 confirm your calling and election, 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.

Peter begins by saying more again in one of his hellos than some people can say in an entire book. He shows us that our Lord Jesus Christ is all we need. He’s all we need for a right standing with God, for a status of being acceptable to God, and he’s all we need to have power for godly living.

When Peter says hello, he calls himself Simeon Peter, which would be his original Aramaic name. Then he calls himself a servant of Jesus Christ, an apostle of Jesus Christ. When we entered into First Peter, we gave a lot of thought to Peter as an apostle of Jesus Christ and his life and the mighty ways in which God used him, so I’m not going to repeat all of that here. In his first letter, he said some amazing things about the people to whom he was writing and revealed so much about them and about God just in saying hello, and he does it again in this letter.

He addresses his readers as those who have obtained faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. So in saying hello, you have the doctrine of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ—he’s God. In saying hello, you have the amazing doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ’s righteousness. You have the doctrine that faith is a gift of God, not something that we can work up on our own. That’s all just in saying hello.

That phrase “the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” is a clear statement again of who Jesus is—as divine, as God, as the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. And he is our Savior. The name Jesus means Savior, but Peter just spells out that he’s our God and he’s our Savior, the one who rescues us—the only rescuer we need. He’s Christ, God’s promised Messiah. Throughout this letter, Peter refers to Jesus again and again as “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” or as “our Lord Jesus Christ,” but here in saying hello, he says the highest thing of all: “our God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

He says we’ve obtained a standing with God through the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is Jesus’ perfection, his total obedience to his Father, his absolute holiness and fairness, his justice, his righteousness that is given to us as a gift. We obtain it.

I don’t like lotteries very much. They’re taxes on people who aren’t very good at math, and I’m just not that fond of them. But in some ways, this is almost like saying you’ve won the lottery, because the word obtained is originally just something you got by lot—it was allotted to you. You won the lottery. Now when you win the lottery, you don’t say, “Wow, I worked hard! I really put in a lot of effort, and my overall excellence has turned me into a lottery winner.” In terms of the lottery, you just got lucky. But in terms of God’s gift of salvation, you didn’t get lucky—it was given to you totally without your earning it.

You’ve obtained a faith of equal standing with the apostles, and that’s worth noting. Sometimes it’s translated “like precious faith,” a faith as precious as that of the apostles. That’s ours. When Peter says “ours,” he’s writing as an apostle of Jesus Christ. He’s saying this faith of the apostles is no better than your faith. It’s your faith. It’s of equal standing. When you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the same standing as the apostle Peter, as the apostle Paul, as the apostle John. Your faith is just as precious as theirs.

Peter said in his first letter, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9). You’re just as saved as any apostle, just as right with God as any apostle, because you have the same God, the same Savior, the same perfect righteousness credited to you.

In Ephesians 2 the Bible says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Peter is saying the same thing here: you obtained faith of equal standing with that wonderful faith of the apostles by having Jesus’ righteousness credited to you and receiving it from your very own God and Savior.

When we think also of that faith of the apostles and having an equal standing with their faith, keep this in mind: there is no other faith. The new and improved faiths, the tweaked gospels, and the things that claim to be better than what Paul wrote or Peter wrote or the other apostles testified to—forget it. Peter’s going to talk about that later in this letter. But if you want a faith of equal standing with the apostles, then hang on to the faith that has been revealed by Jesus through his apostles.

When you think about your standing with God, it comes entirely through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Once you have that status with God, you also have this calling to live for God—to become more and more like Jesus Christ. And how do you do that?

It’s easy to look at the things that are against you—the things out there that are against you, but also the things in here that are messed up. How are you ever going to change, to become who God means you to be? Peter tells us: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). Everything you need to live a godly life—to live in the first place, to be alive in Christ, and to become godly, more like the Lord Jesus Christ—it’s all there. God has given everything you need.

By what? By his divine power. It’s not just your oomph and your efforts, but divine power that God gives. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of my favorite preachers, talks about farming. He says, “When you go into farming, it’s a wonderful thing to be given the whole farm, and to be given all the equipment and tractors and implements you need to farm, and to be given all the seed for it. And if you’re a farmer and you’re given the farm and everything you need to do some farming, and then you’re sent the sunshine and the rain to make the crops grow, that’s a wonderful heritage. But you do have to farm.”

When you’re given the farm—now farm. And when God has given you divine power, all you need for life and godliness, now live by that power. Live a godly life. Live the life he gives you. Stop making excuses. Stop feeling defeated. Stop getting down and discouraged, because the power’s all there.

If you’re not living a godly life, it’s not because there is no supply of power available or because the supply is not enough. It’s because we’re not living in that power, in that divine power for godliness.

So Peter’s going to be talking about knowing and growing, but the very first thing we need to know is that Christ is all we need. He’s all we need to have a right standing with God. He’s all we need to live the godly life that God calls us to, because he’s got the power. As the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 3, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). God is able.

So when you start moving into this letter and all the aspects of knowing and growing, the first thing to know is this: you’ve got a right standing with God if you trust in him and in Christ as your Savior, and all the power that you’re going to need for the rest of your life to get you to glory is available by the power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus living in you.

Then, having made it clear where all the standing and all the power come from, Peter gets into his theme. He says we need to know, and we need to grow: “Grace and peace be multiplied to you.” That’s a growth word—keep growing in God’s grace and favor toward you; keep growing in his peace, his shalom, his well-being that he provides for you. That is the blessing, and it comes how? Through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. If you want to grow, you need to know.

A little later, he speaks of “the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,” and later he says, “Now supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,” and so on (2 Peter 1:3, 5). That word supplement or supply or add to is a growth word. “For if these qualities are increasing,” that’s growth—increasing means going up, growing. “And that keeps you from being useless in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:8). At the very end of the letter, when Peter’s doing his wrap-up, he says, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). So he begins with know and grow, and he ends with know and grow. That’s a bit of a hint, even if we’re not too bright, that his letter is about knowing and growing—how he starts, how he ends, and most of what he says in between.

Now, what’s involved in knowing and growing? It involves knowing whom you believe, knowing what you believe, and it also involves growing closer to Christ and growing more like Christ.

These are some of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture. I know my kids always say, “Yeah, every time you preach about something you say it’s one of the most wonderful things in all of Scripture.” But here’s a question: what is the best passage in Scripture? The one you’ve just been reading! Well, okay, that might be an overstatement, but the fact is this is a tremendous statement of what God does for us and how we grow in him.

He says that one thing in knowing is just knowing Jesus Christ and savoring his excellence: “His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3). Knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence—there are different kinds of knowledge, and we’ll think about a couple of them here. But above all, it is the knowledge of the person of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Faith is knowing facts about Jesus, and faith is trusting that Jesus died for you, but faith is also savoring Jesus, delighting in Jesus—his glory, his shining, his splendor, his magnificence, his excellence. Excellence refers to his moral excellence, his purity, how wonderful and perfect a person he is. A big part of faith is being drawn and called to that—to seeing and savoring the glory, the excellence, the delightfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You don’t have a living faith if there isn’t at least a spark of joy and enjoyment and attraction to who Jesus is. So you savor Jesus’ excellence, and you grow by knowing that excellence more and more. As you do that, you’re drawn to knowing Jesus personally, and you’re also embracing his promises, his grace that he keeps on promising. The Bible says that God has given us in Christ “grace upon grace” (John 1:16). He keeps piling on the grace, and that grace is expressed through God’s promises—what God has promised to do for us.

He’s talking about the promises in particular of Jesus, and I don’t have time to talk about all of those. The task of growing in Christ is partially just learning more and more of those promises and taking them to heart for the rest of your life until those promises flower fully in what Jesus gives us.

Just listen to a few of Jesus’ promises—his Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, because great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:3–12).

Jesus promises forgiveness: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25–26). What a promise—you’ll never die if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

He says, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). These are “exceedingly great and precious promises” that Jesus has given to us (2 Peter 1:4). Another great promise—one that false teachers denied—is that Jesus said, “I am coming again.” “You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30). He’s going to come with his mighty angels and all his holy ones, and there’s going to be a great sorting. Some will be condemned forever, but the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43). Isn’t that a wonderful promise? You’re going to shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father.

Peter was with Jesus. He heard all these wonderful promises and more. He heard Jesus speak of the regeneration or the rebirth of all things and of the eternal kingdom. So Peter in this letter speaks of the eternal kingdom and entrance into that eternal kingdom. He speaks of the day dawning and the morning star rising in your hearts. The day dawns when Jesus comes again, and your heart, when it sees him, embraces all that he is and has done for you and all that he’s promised you—and the morning star rises in your hearts.

The scoffers and false teachers are going to say, “Where is this promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4). And Peter says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise” (2 Peter 3:9). “But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

These are the exceedingly great and precious promises. Knowing means knowing not just facts, but knowing these promises that God gives, and by faith taking them personally—accepting them, delighting in Christ and in his promises.

Knowledge and growth in knowledge also involve propositions, facts, statements—true statements about God. You keep grasping more and more Bible truths. You keep grasping more and more about God’s plan, about God’s works throughout history. As you grow in those things—as you grow in the knowledge of those things—you grow closer to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you grow more like the Lord Jesus Christ.

So knowing and growing go together. We’re called by the Lord to know him and to keep growing more like him.

“This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). That’s what the Bible says. Eternal life comes in this saving knowledge, this growing knowledge, this delight in God. As you grow in it, you grow closer to the Lord Jesus in intimacy with him. You grow closer in communion with him. You become more capable of knowing him as you grow, and you’re growing because God keeps on supplying that divine power for life and godliness.

You also keep growing because you’re partaking in the divine nature. The Bible speaks of “with unveiled faces beholding the Lord’s glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18), because God has shown his light in our hearts. As we see his glory, that sight of glory that he gives to our inward heart keeps changing us to make us more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ already in this life. Peter phrases it so strongly as to say you’re a partaker of the divine nature—you’re fellowshipping with the divine nature by the divine power.

This is the essence of Christianity: “Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). The power of Christ is in me already; the personality of Christ is already working in me. There’s a life going on in me, and without that life there is no salvation. It’s on the basis of everything that Jesus did—his perfect life credited to us—that we get a standing. But it’s by being born again into a living hope, being born again by the Word of God, as Peter puts it in his first letter: “You have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).

When we’re born again by the living and eternal Word of God, then we have this life in us, and we have the divine nature at work in us. This is where we need to keep knowing God more and more deeply and intimately, knowing his truth in greater and greater detail, and tasting more and more and realizing what an amazing thing it is that the very divine nature—the life of God himself—is at work in me. “Christ lives in me. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). That’s how the Bible talks. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The Spirit of Christ dwelling in you. Or, as Peter puts it, you’re partaking of the divine nature.

Almost nothing can be said about a Christian that is greater than that—you have divine power for life and godliness, and you’re fellowshipping with and partaking in and experiencing the divine nature at work in you. Now, it’s a mistake to say, “I’ve been promoted to godhood.” That’s not how it works or what it means. But it does mean something much more amazing than some of us are willing to think about—that the very divine life and power are at work in us, and we are partaking in the very life of God.

That’s what the false teachers are clueless about. The false teachers don’t know, and they don’t grow. They don’t know because they’ve fallen into heresy, into false teaching. They reject the true knowledge of Christ. They don’t regard him as God and Savior, or they may just deny God’s interventions. The kinds of people Peter’s writing about are those who don’t recognize Jesus as coming again, and that goes with a broader mindset that’s very common among people today.

I’ll get into more detail when we get to that part of Second Peter, but there are people who say the world has always gone on as it does now. If they want to know about the past, they take current processes as they observe them and project that backward, saying it’s always been the same. You get ideas about creation and evolution that way—you take current observations and say it’s always been that way. You don’t pay attention to what the Bible says about creation or about great interventions like the flood or about God’s mighty answers to prayer that didn’t go along with the idea of everything being one continuous process. “Everything’s always the same,” they say, and they scoff at the notion that Jesus is going to return, that there’s going to be a judgment, that everything will be devoured by fire and then emerge renewed and purified by the power of Jesus Christ.

They say, “Come on, the world isn’t headed anywhere. History isn’t headed toward any goal.” Along with that heresy goes immorality. They don’t know the truth about the future, and so they don’t grow. Peter isn’t very flattering—he says they’re like a sow that gets washed for a few minutes and then goes back to wallowing in the mud, or like a dog that eats its own vomit (2 Peter 2:22). They’re unspiritual. They don’t have the life of God in them. They’re self-centered, power-hungry, money-loving. They’re just like the whole world with its lustful desires. They’re just like everybody else—sex-crazed, boastful, and phony.

Peter’s a lot like Jude; in fact, those two epistles overlap a lot—Second Peter 2 and the book of Jude. But Peter goes into more detail about growth and how to go about that growth and the things that protect us from those false teachers. Jude is basically a two-by-four across the head—“Here are the false teachers and what they’re like.” Peter hauls out the two-by-four in chapter two, but chapters one and three begin and end with the call to growth.

That’s a big reason for knowing and growing. It’s not the only reason—I’ve already outlined what a wonderful thing it is to be partakers of the divine nature and to know the Lord Jesus Christ more and more—but one of the side benefits is that it keeps you from turning out like those pigs.

When we think about knowing and growing, the language of growth is sometimes used by false teachers. They say, “We’re always discovering new things.” Even within Reformed circles people will say, “Reformed and always reforming.” I’ve heard that used as an excuse to keep changing your doctrine every five minutes. Growth is not changing your doctrine every five minutes or allowing in brand new teachings about the Bible and morality. But it does mean that you’re growing in your knowledge of God and becoming more like him.

The danger of some people is to go along with every wind that comes along, and the danger of others is that they’re going to stay the same always. There’s a sense in which it’s good to stay the same, but there’s also a sense in which it’s fatal and terrible to stay the same.

There’s a big difference between being stable and being stagnant. Stagnant means you’re not growing, not changing to become more like Christ at all. Stable means you’re constantly growing more and more like Christ, but you’re unshaken by all the attacks on the faith. The great antidote to being unstable is to grow: “Take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen” (2 Peter 3:17-18). That’s how Peter ends his letter.

If you want to know the whole letter in two sentences, here it is: don’t get carried away with the error of people and lose your own stability, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. That’s the letter in a nutshell. Peter spells it out at the beginning and especially at the very end: “I don’t want you to be unstable, but I don’t want you to be stagnant either. So grow.” That’s the key to remaining spiritually healthy.

Then he says, “Now, I want you—how do you grow? Supplement or supply your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness or endurance or perseverance, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection (philadelphia), and brotherly affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5-7).

Let’s look for just a moment at each of these features Peter brings out. It would be a mistake to treat this as a step-by-step list—a checklist of eight items where you have to get number one nailed perfectly before moving on. It’s not, “Okay, I’ve got faith taken care of; now I’ll work on virtue; once I’m done with that, I’ll move to knowledge.” That’s not how it works. You don’t perfect one item before moving to the next.

But there is a general sense of progression here, and that is that the whole Christian life always begins with faith and always reaches its full flowering in love. Faith is always the foundation, and love is always the richest and highest expression of the life of Christ in you. All of these other virtues are part of the flowering of faith and vital components of love.

You need that faith—we’ve spoken of it already: the knowledge that Jesus is all you need, that the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus has been given to you, and that you trust him totally. You trust in his divine power to help and empower you in this life of godliness.

Then you look for virtue. He called us to his virtue, his excellence, and now we grow in moral excellence. That excellence leads to knowledge. This knowledge is not just the saving knowledge or the knowledge of God that is the foundation of everything else, but also your growing grasp of his truths, his plans. You’re hungry to learn. You want to know more.

Self-control is a strength that helps you deal with the good times, because good times can be dangerous. The attractions your urges want to pursue can be dangerous—whether appetites for food, money, or sex. Self-control means you’re able to rein in your appetites by the power of God and direct them properly, as God intends.

Endurance, or steadfastness, is a similar trait but deals with something different. If self-control is learning to manage the pleasures of life, endurance is making your way through the pains, sufferings, and trials of life and being steadfast in them—continuing and not giving up on your faith.

Godliness—his divine power has given us all things necessary for life and godliness. Now pursue godliness: reverence for God, worship of God, delight in God, a life of prayer, a life in the Scriptures, a life of obedience.

And along with all of that, there’s loving your fellow believers. Philadelphia—family affection—is part of your growth. Keep growing in how much you love your fellow believers, and keep growing in how much you love people who might not be fellow believers, who might even hate you or revile you. Christ’s kind of love is a love that loves even strangers, even enemies, even attackers. The full flowering of the life of Christ in you is a love for your fellow believers and a love for those who aren’t yet saved.

That’s an outline of what Peter says about spiritual growth. This growth depends on knowing Jesus and savoring him more, and at the same time your ability to know Christ and savor him more depends on growth. In a sense, the bigger you get, the larger your capacity, the more you can understand.

Take an example. Some people say that Paul is hard to understand. In fact, Peter said that, so we have it on good authority that sometimes Paul is hard to understand. Is that because Paul isn’t very good at making his point clearly? I don’t think so. Sometimes Paul is talking about things we don’t yet know or haven’t experienced. When someone talks about something that’s strange to you or beyond your experience, it’s hard to make sense of it. But when he’s talking about something you’ve actually experienced and encountered, it clicks—“Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense.”

A lot of the Bible is like that. Sometimes the challenge in understanding Scripture is language or cultural differences, and learning those helps. But part of understanding the Bible is growing into the kind of person to whom some things make sense that didn’t before—because now you’ve experienced more richly who Jesus is.

When you’re immature in the faith, some parts of the Bible may make zero sense to you. When you’re more mature in the faith, some of those same parts will be the ones you love the most, because now you’ve entered into a richer, direct, experiential knowledge and communion with Christ.

Those are some of the aspects of spiritual growth and what we need to know.

Peter says it takes some effort and that growth needs to be supplied: “Make every effort in your faith to supply virtue, and virtue knowledge,” and so on. “Make every effort to confirm your calling and election. In this way there will be richly supplied for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:5, 10–11).

Do you see how the word effort is repeated? The translation doesn’t always capture it because sometimes it says “be all the more diligent” or something similar, but in the original the word is the same—it’s about diligence, effort, energy, working at it. You want to supply growth in your life, and as each dimension of your life grows, you’re supplying that more and more. That’s how God supplies to you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Now, the fact that what we supply as we grow is the way God supplies to us an entrance into his kingdom is very important to notice. I’ve spoken about this kind of thing before using the example of Rosie Ruiz.

Does anybody remember who Rosie Ruiz was? In the 1980 Boston Marathon, there was a surprise winner. She crossed the finish line ahead of everyone else, and it was odd because some of the greatest runners in the world were there. She had set a new record for the Boston Marathon, but those top runners didn’t recall her ever passing them, and video footage didn’t show her running most of the race. It was concluded that she had hopped the subway, gotten off half a mile from the finish line, and then raced across ahead of the others. She didn’t look as lean or as fit as the other runners, but she “won” the Boston Marathon.

Some Christians would like to win the Christian marathon that way. They’d like to show up at the starting point and say, “Well, I’ve been converted. Here’s the day I walked an aisle or did thus and such. Now I’d like to cross the finish line in first place, win the award, and get all the accolades—but please don’t expect me to actually run the race. Just give me a lift on the subway.”

Well, make every effort! Because that’s how you enter. God has appointed not only your calling and election but also the means by which it happens. The means by which it happens is that you keep supplying more and more growth from God’s supply—and that’s how he supplies to you entrance into his eternal kingdom.

Peter says that if you practice these qualities, you’ll never fall: “If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive” (2 Peter 1:8,10). So that’s the first benefit—practicing these qualities and knowing and growing makes you effective and fruitful. Failing to do so makes you ineffective and unfruitful.

We’ve sometimes had struggles in our garden beans. Some years we’ve had a good crop; some years, they just fail. The whole crop—some come up as a little stick, no leaves ever develop, then they just shrivel up and die. We’ve never quite figured out why that happens, but it does. I have to admit, I’m not very fond of those beans that are a tiny little stick that goes nowhere and then shrivels away.

If you claim to have the life of God in you and there is zero fruit, zero impact on you, then the fact of the matter is—you don’t have the life of God in you. You’re fooling yourself. On the other hand, if the life of God is in you and growing and developing and bearing fruit—maybe not perfectly yet, but making a difference—then you’re becoming more and more effective, more and more fruitful. That’s a benefit of growth.

Another benefit of growth is that it opens your eyes. It helps you to see your past accurately and your future clearly. He says it keeps you from being ineffective and unfruitful, but anyone who forgets these qualities “is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his past sins” (2 Peter 1:9). So growth keeps you from forgetfulness and nearsightedness—it helps you see beyond your own nose.

When you’re growing in grace, your eyes are open to your past. You remember what you were. You remember that apart from God’s grace, you were lost in sin, and only by God’s grace have you been rescued. You remember that you were cleansed from former sins. And when you’re growing, you see further into the future than what your urges tell you to do in the next five minutes. You see clearly because you’re growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, aware that he’s coming again. You know that your life was appointed by God for a certain destiny—to become like Christ—and that the whole world was appointed by God to reach its destiny in the new creation. He opens your eyes to what you were in the past, how God redeemed you and saved you, and to the great future that God has supplied for you and for the whole world.

So he calls us to “make every effort to confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10). Your calling, again, is like Jesus saying to Lazarus, “Come forth” (John 11:43), or like God saying, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). It’s the calling that effectively brings you to him and puts his life in you. His election is from before the foundation of the world—his choice of who would be his. Growth in knowledge and grace is how our calling and election become clear and firm, known more clearly by us in our assurance, and more evident in the way we live.

Calling and election aren’t just abstract doctrines to check off: “Yes, I believe in the doctrine of election, therefore it must be true of me.” Having a correct doctrinal proposition without actually having the life and growth of Christ in you is not sufficient.

I coach basketball, and when I see a young player, sometimes I can see a great player. They might be nine or ten years old, but they love the game, they already have some abilities, and they’re working on those every day.

Now, if somebody says to me, “I’m a player—I’m a basketball player! You know what I do? I sit on my couch and play basketball video games. I even watch basketball on TV! Wow, am I a player!” If you expect me to work on my dribbling—what are you talking about? I don’t like working on dribbling. You expect me to learn the proper technique for passing or stepping in to receive the ball? You want me to learn the right method for shooting, and then practice it again and again? What do you think I am? I’m already a ballplayer—I play videos!

If you’ve got someone who doesn’t actually like to play the game and is unwilling to work on it at all, they may be many fine things, but they’re not a basketball player.

If you have somebody who says, “I don’t want to grow in grace. I’m not that fond of reading the Scriptures. I’ve got no time for prayer. Don’t expect me to put in any energy into loving and helping others. I want to take the subway to the finish line”—those are disastrous misunderstandings, and many people have them in our time.

Peter is saying a benefit of growth is that it confirms your calling and election. It shows that it’s real and that you’re actually developing along the line to which you were called and for which God chose you. He chose you to be like Christ.

It also prevents you from falling away. He says, “If you practice these qualities, you will never fall” (2 Peter 1:10). That does not mean you will never again in your life commit a sin or think an incorrect thought. “You will never fall” means you will never fall away. You will never commit apostasy. You will never abandon the faith. You will never go completely away from Jesus Christ. If you are growing in his grace and in his knowledge and in your love for him, you are never going to fall away from him. You will forever be kept safe.

One of Jesus’ exceedingly great and precious promises is, “No one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). You will never fall away if you are growing in Christ. “In this way you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:11).

When you read the end of the book of Revelation, it says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city” (Revelation 22:14). These are the people purified and made clean by Christ. That’s what Peter’s talking about here. You want to go through the gates into that great and glorious city of God? You want to receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our God and Savior Jesus Christ? Then grow. Grow in knowledge of him. Get to know him better every day. Love him more deeply.

And don’t think you have to do it on your own. Remember what Peter—what the Holy Spirit—said to start with: you have your standing in him. You have the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ through faith, and all divine power needed for life and godliness is right there, given to you in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

These are the benefits of growth. But the source of all that growth, the one on whom you depend for all that growth, is our God and Savior Jesus Christ and his divine power for life and godliness.

Prayer

Father, help us to continue to know you better, to love you more deeply, to savor and treasure our Lord Jesus Christ as the pearl of great price, as that treasure worth more than all other things. Help us, Lord, as we keep getting to know you better, to be glad in you, to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, and to experience your life and transforming power in us, becoming more and more partakers of the divine nature.

Lord, bless each one here. Help anyone who may be fooling himself or herself with an empty, dead faith—a faith that makes no difference and doesn’t bring salvation. Help them, Lord, to be convicted and to see their need for you.

And help everyone who is alive in you, born again by your grace, to grow in your grace, to delight in it, to depend upon it, not to become discouraged, but to know the divine power that is at work in them.

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your Holy Spirit. You’ve promised that you will not deny the Holy Spirit to those who ask you, and so we ask for a greater and greater filling of your Holy Spirit—a mighty empowerment in our lives, a greater flourishing of the life of Christ within us, a deeper knowledge of God, for knowing you is eternal life. Lord, help us even now to taste that eternal life, to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8), so that we may grow up in our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Know and Grow (2 Peter 1:1-11)
By David Feddes
Slide Contents

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 confirm your calling and election, 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.

 

All you need

  • Standing with God: obtained faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ
  • Power for godly living: His divine power has given us all we need for life and godliness

 

Know and grow

2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord… 3 the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence… 5 supplement your faith… 8 For if these qualities are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ… 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

 

Know and grow

  • Know whom and what you believe.
    • Person: savor Jesus’ excellence
    • Promises: embrace future grace
    • Propositions: grasp Bible truths
  • Grow closer to and more like Christ
    • By divine power for godly life
    • As partakers of divine nature

 

False teachers
 don’t know or grow

  • Heresy: rejects true knowledge of Christ, denies God’s interventions, scoffs at Jesus’ return and judgment
  • Immorality: unspiritual filthy pigs, self-centered, power-hungry, money-loving, sex-crazed, boastful phonies

 

Know and grow
Stable, not stagnant

3:17 Take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

 

Spiritual growth

  • Faith
  • Virtue
  • Knowledge
  • Self-control
  • Endurance
  • Godliness
  • Affection
  • Love

 

Effort to supply

Make every effort in your faith to supply virtue, in your virtue knowledge… (1:5) Make more effort to confirm your calling and election… For in this way there will be richly supplied for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (1:10-11)

 

Benefits of growth

  • Makes you effective and fruitful
  • Opens eyes to past and future
  • Confirms your calling and election
  • Prevents you from falling away
  • Provides entrance into kingdom

Last modified: Monday, November 10, 2025, 6:31 PM