Wherefore the rather, brethren, use diligence to make your calling and election sure, for doing these things ye will never fall;
Peter has just listed the qualities that should grow in a believer's life, and now he draws his conclusion: be all the more diligent. But if God has already called and chosen us, what can we add to make that sure? (The commentators quote older translations, where "make your calling and election sure" is the ESV's "confirm your calling and election.")
The first thing to settle is where the uncertainty lies. It is not in God.
He speaks next of making our calling and election sure. But is this not sure already? As far as God, who has called and elected us, is concerned, it is sure. To be conscious of our calling and election, and sure of it, needs diligence. We must walk in the path the Holy Spirit has described so beautifully through the pen of Peter. Those who walk this way will not stumble, and at last, "there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
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Peter divides the work. One part is God's, the other is ours — and neglecting ours has a cost.
The calling and election is not of us, but of God; but the making it sure is not of God, but of us. The apostle clearly implies too, that if neglected we cannot wonder should we stumble or fall. Let us then challenge ourselves whether or not we are habitually making good what God has done for us.
Peter names two things, calling and election, but he asks for one kind of diligence. They are not two separate securities to be won one at a time.
Calling and election are united in the one thing to be secured, in the security they sought. They could not secure one without the other. They formed one object in the apostle's mind in the diligence he recommended. God had chosen; God had called them. Since God had chosen and called them, the diligence he recommended was to make this settled in their minds, and not uncertain.
Your own certainty is only half of it. The people watching you have nothing to go on but your life.
"But," you say, "how can we make our calling and election sure?" Who called us? Our Father. Who chose us? Our Father. But this does not do for other people. Who are you to make your calling and election sure with? With the One who called you? The One who chose you? Not a bit, but to yourself, and to everyone who watches you, everyone who could say, "You a called person? You do not look a bit like it. You a chosen person? No one would think so." You are to make it clear to the eyes of everyone else that you have been called of God like this.
The promise attached to the diligence needs care. Peter is not raising the question of losing salvation.
Read these verses carefully and notice that we do not read here of "falling away."
after_note: DELETE It says, "If you practice these qualities you will never fall." The believer may fall, though he does not fall away. Fall from what? From communion with God, from the pursuit of the excellent Christian qualities described in verses 5, 6, and 7 of our chapter. Fall to what? To spiritual blindness, to a dull heart, and to forgetting the wonderful cleansing and forgiveness that grace has made his own.
The man who wrote "you will never fall" had fallen himself, and never forgot it.
In one letter he says, "kept by the power of God through faith to salvation" (1 Peter 1:5). In the next letter he urges us to add to our faith: virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and love... and says, "If you practice these qualities you will never fall." He always had the memory of his fall in his soul. The man who has fallen and been put right by God is just the one who can help those who may be getting a little astray... The one who has fallen, and been thoroughly broken and restored, is just the one the Lord will trust and use.
- God's part. The calling and the election are His alone, and on His side they are already settled — nothing you do adds to them.
- Your part. The making sure is yours. Diligence turns it into settled certainty in your own mind.
- One object. One diligence secures calling and election together, never one without the other.
- Your witnesses. What is sure inside must show outside. No one watching you should be able to say you do not look like a chosen person.
- Your safety. Falling here means falling out of communion into blindness and forgetfulness, not falling away. Peter himself fell, and God restored him to steady others.
for thus shall the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be richly furnished unto you.
Peter has been urging diligence, and he ends with a promise. It raises two questions: what is the "eternal kingdom," and how can one believer's entrance be richer than another's?
The promise is not that some get in and others are shut out. Older translations read "an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly," and writers press the word abundantly rather than the word entrance.
The vitality and fruitfulness which mark the diligent believer not only give proof of his calling and election in the present, but are also full of promise for the future. Ahead of us lies "the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," and though every Christian will enter that kingdom, it is the fruitful Christian who will have an abundant entrance, as verse 11 makes plain.
One distinction shapes this verse: the kingdom and heaven are not the same thing.
The "eternal kingdom" is not heaven. No one gains heaven as the result of diligence or fruitfulness; nor do some gain an abundant and others a meagre entrance there. There is no entrance into heaven except through the work of Christ. That work is perfect, and it is available alike to all who believe. So all who enter at all enter in the same way and on the same footing, without distinction.
The same writer explains the difference with a picture drawn from family life — a father who sorts his three sons into jobs by ability, yet seats them all alike at his own table.
The place we shall have in heaven will not be based upon our qualities or our efforts; we are accepted in the Beloved if we are accepted at all... But there is the kingdom, pictured in my illustration as the business sphere. The Lord Jesus in that day is going to use His saints in the administration of His kingdom. He is going to give ten cities to one, five cities to another, as stated in that well-known parable in Luke's Gospel. Here there is going to be a difference.
Since "these things" of verses 5 to 7 are what the promise hangs on, it matters which things they are. They are not the public gifts that put a person in front of others.
Every believer will be in the kingdom, but only those who live the life of godliness will have an abundant entrance. The Apostle is not speaking of preaching or teaching or the exercise of gifts, which are not given to all, and which may give prominence before others. He is speaking of the secret life of godliness, which is open to all... Those who are gifted, and much before the public eye, have most reason to beware. In the middle of constant engagements, constant preaching, and public work before men, they must not neglect the secret life of godliness before God.
One writer describes what this walk does for the traveller: a clear conscience and an open road.
Walking in the ways of God, we have part in that kingdom. We enter it with assurance and without difficulty. We do not feel the hesitation of soul felt by those who grieve the Holy Spirit, get a bad conscience, and allow themselves things that do not fit the character of the kingdom... The way is open before us: we see into the distance, and we go forward, with no obstacles in our way.
Commentators differ on the timing. One writer sees the entrance as present, not future.
He is clearly not speaking of a future entrance, but of what is present. The kingdom is the public sphere of Christianity. Anyone who truly enjoys Christ enters it in an abundant fulness of reality and blessing. He enters now what is everlasting.
Another writer sees a foretaste now of a kingdom that never ends.
Here again it is not a predicted fact that stands out, but the full realisation even now by the soul that walks blamelessly before God... One is in this way able to anticipate in rich measure the eternal kingdom... It is not pictured as a display of glory in reigning over the earth for a thousand years, blessed as that will be, but as what never changes. Scripture also reveals that His servants will serve Him, see His face, and reign for ever and ever.
One writer turns this into a daily question, using a ship coming into harbour.
Will your entrance and mine be an abundant entrance? Shall we enter like a trim and well-fitted ship coming into port in full sail? Shall we rather enter as a battered and tattered wreck? The answer to that is going to be given by each of us in the spiritual diligence — or the spiritual sloth and carelessness — that marks us day by day.
- Entrance — every believer enters the kingdom. The promise is about how you arrive, not whether you get in.
- Ground — the work of Christ alone brings anyone into heaven, on the same footing for all. This verse does not turn salvation into a wage.
- Character — what makes the entrance abundant is the quiet life of godliness, open to all. It is not public gift or platform.
- Path — that walk keeps the conscience clear and the road open, so the kingdom's door opens wide.
- Arrival — will you come into harbour in full sail, or as a wreck? Today's diligence writes the answer.