As his divine power has given to us all things which relate to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that has called us by glory and virtue,
Peter opens his last letter with what believers already have. God's own power has given them everything they need for life and godliness. Two questions follow. What does "all things" include? And what does it mean that God calls us by, or to, His own glory and excellence?
One writer names some of what God has given, and stresses that nothing is left out:
We have not only received life. With it we have received all the things needed to show that new life in practical Christian living and godly behaviour... A few moments' thought would remind us of some of the gifts God's power has given us: the Holy Spirit living in us, the Word of God written for us, the throne of grace opened to us, to name only three. We have received not some but ALL things that have to do with life and godliness. So we are sent out fully equipped. Nothing is lacking on God's part.
Another writer counts trial and sorrow as part of that supply:
There is no limit at all in what God gives us... Whatever comes, whether trial, difficulty or sorrow, we as believers can never think it is random. It comes from Him... This is part of what He calls "all things that pertain to life and godliness," because trial and difficulty make up the very path where we must live out that life and keep up that godliness.
These two words are not a repetition:
Life is of course the living spring of spiritual existence, and only the One who gives it can keep it going. Godliness is the practical showing of that life, and so a reflection of God's own character. The first has to do with God's side of things, the second with our own side.
Another writer traces the order: life first, then likeness:
Eternal life is a life that enjoys God and is suited to God... The first thing is a life that comes from Him, and is taken up with nothing but Him. Then comes godliness, God-likeness.
One writer ties this power to what faith knows of God:
But there is a living power with this knowledge — a divine power in what God is to believers, as He is revealed to faith in this knowledge. This divine power has given us all that belongs to life and godliness. Through the real knowledge we have of Him who has called us, this power becomes available and effective for everything that belongs to life and godliness.
Older translations read "by glory and virtue" here. Writers who follow that reading take glory as the goal set before us, and virtue as courage:
So we have here the call of God to pursue glory as our object, winning the victory by virtue — spiritual courage — over all the enemies we find in our path. This is not a law given to a people already gathered together. It is glory set before us, to be reached by spiritual energy.
Another writer draws out the practical pull of both words together, noting they were rendered "by God's own glory and by virtue":
The glory of God in the future has the most powerful influence among the traps of the present. So God has revealed that glory as our hope, through Christ and with Christ, to lift the soul above everything that attracts it or drags it down. He has called us by His own glory, and by the virtue, or moral courage, that refuses to indulge self, which is against the will of God.
Adam, the first man, was never called in this way:
Calling does not apply to an innocent creature, but to a fallen one. Calling means that God speaks to take that creature out of the state he is in, and put him into a better one. Adam was to magnify God by honouring Him where he was, and by enjoying what God had given him all around, not by reaching for something unseen or greater.
Three powers stand against the believer, and one stands far above them:
We have to face the power of the flesh within, the power of the world around, and the power of the devil against us. But the power of God is far above every power set against us, and it is for us. In this power it is possible to live the life of godliness.
- Power — the starting point is God's own power, not ours. It works in us and gives us all we need for life and godliness.
- Provision — the gift is all things, not some: the Spirit, the Word, access to God, and even trial as the road where we live that life out.
- Pair — life is God's side, the spring; godliness is our side, the likeness to Him that shows.
- Path — we reach that power by knowing Him; the call comes by glory ahead and courage for the road.
- Purpose — with flesh, world and devil against us, no believer can plead lack. Nothing is missing on God's part.
through which he has given to us the greatest and precious promises, that through these ye may become partakers of [the] divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Peter has just said that God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Verse 4 shows how that power reaches us: through promises. It also shows what they produce — a share in God's own nature and a real escape from the world's corruption.
One writer traces these promises back further than Israel's history:
What are these promises? They are certainly not the ones God made to the fathers. Those were great. But the promises spoken of here are "precious and very great." We have to go back into eternity to find out what they are. They come to us so that we may become partakers of the divine nature. No doubt they include all that God purposed in His own mind to bring us into, all He has promised us in Christ Jesus.
Peter names some of them later in the letter, and they hang together with God's call:
Calling and promise always go together. If God calls, He calls with some purposed blessing in view. Later in the letter Peter points to these promises: the promise of the Lord's coming, and the very great promise of "new heavens and a new earth" (2 Peter 3:4, 13).
There is a limit to what we share, and one writer draws it:
In 2 Peter 1:4 we are made partakers of divine nature — the words do not say of the divine nature — and by promise this is our own state. But we are not love, for Love is sovereign goodness, and that we cannot be. We love as sharers in divine nature too, but we can never be sovereign goodness.
The same writer refuses the idea of being brought into Godhead, "which is incommunicable as supreme, because we are creatures," while insisting that "the moral elements of what He is God can communicate in giving us life in Christ."
Does the verse describe new birth, or something after it? One writer answers from Peter's readers:
Every true believer is "born of God" and in that sense shares in the divine nature (see 1 John 3:9)... But the meaning of our passage is not that the things given to us make us born again. Peter was writing to people who were already "born again" (1 Peter 1:23). The meaning is that these things lead us into a practical, experienced partaking of the divine nature. In one word, love is the divine nature. So verses 5 to 7 describe the believer's growth as reaching its high point in love.
Another writer holds the two together and describes the daily side of it:
God makes us partakers of the divine nature at conversion, when we are born again. But Peter shows us the sweet result of tasting what the Lord is and walking with Him... He brings us into the atmosphere that suits God. We breathe the air He breathes, and so we become spiritual... First we get the capacity to enjoy God. Then, as we walk with Him, that enjoyment deepens.
The change comes from what fills the soul:
So God makes us partakers of the divine nature in a moral sense. His power acts in us and fixes the soul on what He has revealed. What a precious truth! What a high privilege! It makes us able to enjoy God Himself, and everything good with Him.
Another writer rules out a well-known teaching about holiness:
The victorious life does not come from some fixed "holiness experience" that wipes out the old nature. That teaching is completely against Scripture. The heart must be taken up with Christ and with the glory by which He has called us. Then the divine power, the Holy Spirit in us, acts, and victory over sin follows.
The verse names sinful desire as the root, and there is only one way out:
All the corruption in the world is the fruit of lust. The word "lust" covers every desire that springs from man's fallen nature. The law of Moses came in and put a restraint on those desires. But the law did not hold lust back; men's lusts broke through its restraints... God brings us believers to share in the divine nature, and holiness springs from that nature. So we are lifted out of the corruption and escape it... there is no other way of escape than this.
This escape is more than being held back:
We not only refuse to give in to it. Our hearts are taken up elsewhere, and the enemy's work on the flesh is held off. The desires we could never clean out of ourselves are removed. The heart's corrupt tie to the thing it wanted comes to an end. It is a real deliverance.
- Given — the promises come with God's call. They reach back into what He purposed in eternity, and they go far beyond what He promised the fathers.
- Shared — we partake of divine nature, but we never become God. We love, yet we can never be sovereign goodness.
- Formed — new birth makes us partakers. Walking with the Lord makes it practical, and love is where the growth arrives.
- Occupied — the promises fix the soul on what God has revealed. No special experience wipes out the old nature.
- Freed — lust is the root of the world's corruption, and the divine nature is the only way out. The heart is not just held back; it is taken up elsewhere.