2 Peter1chapter 1

2 Peter 1:1-2

Simon Peter writes as servant before apostle, to them that have obtained, lachousin, a lottery word, faith allotted rather than achieved, and the faith is like precious, isotimon, of equal honor with the apostles' own. The righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ carries the same one-article construction as Titus 2:13, one person bearing both titles, deity stated in the letter's first breath. Grace and peace are multiplied through knowledge, epignosis, the letter's opening word for its whole burden.

2 Peter 1:3-4

The provision is stated as complete before any demand is made: his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, nothing lacking in the issue of equipment. The channel is the exceeding great and precious promises, and their end is that ye might be partakers of the divine nature, a phrase the East has read as theosis, real participation in God's own life, and the West as the communion of grace renewing God's image, both traditions standing with their holders and neither erasing the Creator-creature line the verse itself keeps. The escape from the world's corruption through lust is the negative print of the same change.

2 Peter 1:5-7

add to your faith virtue: And beside this turns gift into diligence: add is epichoregeo, the word for the wealthy citizen who furnished a chorus, lavish supply rather than bare addition. The ladder runs eight rungs, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity, each grace supplied in the one before it, faith the root and charity the crown as in Paul. The order is not accidental: knowledge follows virtue in a letter fighting men whose knowledge served their lusts.

2 Peter 1:8-9

The ladder's presence and abundance make the believer neither barren nor unfruitful, argos, idle, in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; knowledge in this letter is proven by produce. The lack is diagnosed as eye disease, blind, and cannot see afar off, muopazon, the squint of the short-sighted, a man who has lost the horizon, and as amnesia, hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Backsliding begins, on this anatomy, with forgetting the cleansing.

2 Peter 1:10-11

your calling and election sure: Give diligence to make your calling and election sure, bebaian, confirmed, and the confirmation is to the believer himself and before men, since God's own choice needs no shoring; the readings run as at the election passages, the Reformed line hearing assurance evidenced and the Wesleyan line hearing a standing to be kept, each with its holders. If ye do these things, ye shall never fall is the letter's promise to the diligent, ou me with the double negative. The entrance ministered abundantly, richly, into the everlasting kingdom answers the supply verb of verse 5: furnish the graces, and the entrance is furnished to you.

2 Peter 1:12-15

The apostle's last work is remembrance: not negligent to put you always in remembrance, though ye know them, established in the present truth, since a church rarely falls for want of new truth rather than hold of old. The body is this tabernacle, a tent to be struck, and shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me, the John 21:18-19 prophecy of his death now ripening. After my decease, exodon, his exodus, he will endeavor that these things be always in remembrance, a line many old readers connected to Mark's gospel as Peter's preaching preserved.

2 Peter 1:16-18

eyewitnesses of his majesty: The gospel's ground is testimony, not myth: we have not followed cunningly devised fables, sesophismenois muthois, the crafted myths the false teachers traded in, but were eyewitnesses, epoptai, of his majesty. The scene is the transfiguration, cited as plain history by one of the three who stood there: honour and glory received from God the Father, the voice from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. The power and coming of our Lord names the parousia; the mount was its preview, exactly as the Lord promised at Matthew 16:28.

2 Peter 1:19

We have also a more sure word of prophecy is read two ways with holders: the prophetic word made more sure, confirmed by the transfiguration the eyewitnesses saw, or the written prophecy as even surer footing than the remembered voice, and on either reading the letter sends its readers to Scripture as the lamp. Take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, the world a murky room and prophecy its one lamp, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts, phosphoros, the morning star, the Lord himself as Revelation 22:16 names him. The lamp serves until the daybreak; prophecy's end is the appearing it points to.

2 Peter 1:20-21

The inspiration summit stands beside 2 Timothy 3:16: no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, idias epiluseos, and the readings divide with holders, no prophecy arose from the prophet's own unloosing of things, the origin reading the next verse supports, or no prophecy is for the reader's private wresting. The origin is then stated positively: the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, pheromenoi, borne along, the word Acts 27 uses of a ship carried by the wind. The men spoke, the Spirit carried; the letter's doctrine of Scripture is both at full strength.