What do you need to get you through these days? They seem to hold unique demands and challenges, unknown by us before, certainly not in their detail. Yet we recognise the broader contours: faith in adversity; hope in God; self-denial and loving service.
Peter has good news for his readers: they have been given all they need for life and godliness. Not life as 'your best life now', nor godliness as life behind a shuttered door, isolated and insulated from the sufferings of this present age. But life as taking up our cross and following Jesus and godliness as likeness to one who came to seek and to save the lost, open and vulnerable, deeply compassionate and redemptive in all his words and ways.
All we need for such a life is ours, says Peter, by "his divine power...through our knowledge of the one who called us by his glory and goodness". Each part of that statement is worth pondering, each word yields further wonders:
- Divine power: God's own power, that ennobles life and empowers to endure suffering (as Paul tells Timothy in 2 Tim 1:8b), power to share in his divine life.
- Called by his glory and goodness: the radiant Jesus calls us in grace, unveils his merciful face, reveals what true goodness and virtue is, and captivates our hearts with the sight. Calls, draws; irresistibly.
But, notice, the divine power that equips us for life and godliness comes "through our knowledge of him". And because this isn't a once-for-all knowing, Peter closes the letter with a plea, an exhortation, to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." His own departure is at hand and he is desperate for them to press onwards - futher up and further in - by knowing Jesus and experiencing his grace.
Which means action on our part; it cannot but do. This isn't knowing by spiritual osmosis or passivity. The kind of action is memorably laid out in Ps. 119:99f "I have insight, for I meditate on your statutes; I have understanding, for I obey your precepts." Insight and understanding through meditation and obedience.
Growing in grace and knowing Jesus isn't the work of seconds or minutes; it can't be Tweeted or Insta'd. It comes from real, settled, open-faced prayer and reflection, worked-out in daily attention to the opportunities to honour and serve the Lord, walking in his ways. And leaning hard into all his "very great and precious promises" (v.4). Promises of mercy, of sustaining grace, of his presence and tender care, of ultimate security and the renewal of all things. Great and precious.
The days are demanding, we all recognise that. But we are not abandoned; we are not cut loose, doomed to drift on a sea of desolation. We have been given all we need, for all that the Lord calls us to, through knowing him and growing in knowing him, embracing all he has so freely promised.
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Lord Jesus Christ, we seek Thy face;
Within the veil we bow the knee;
O let Thy glory fill the place,
And bless us while we wait on Thee.
We thank Thee for the precious blood
That purged our sins and brought us nigh,
All cleansed and sanctified to God,
Thy holy Name to magnify.
Shut in with Thee, far, far above
The restless world that wars below,
We seek to learn and prove Thy love,
Thy wisdom and Thy grace to know.
The brow that once with thorns was bound,
Thy hands, Thy side, we fain would see;
Draw near, Lord Jesus, glory-crowned,
And bless us while we wait on Thee.
Alexander Stewart, 1843-1923
