What are some of the exceedingly great and precious promises mentioned in 2 Peter 1:4?

Verse 4. "Exceeding great and precious promises." What are these promises? Certainly not those God had made to the fathers. They were great indeed; but the promises here spoken of are "exceeding great and precious." We must go back into eternity to find out what they are, and they come to us that we might be partakers of the divine nature. Doubtless they include all that God purposed in His own mind to bring us into, all He has promised us in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 3:6; 2 Tim. 1:1.) As you understand these things you are formed by them; it must of necessity be so. To illustrate what I mean. Suppose I take a child who has been born in the slums of a great city, and has never seen the country, with its green fields, flowers, and trees. I tell him about them; he is charmed, but can form no idea as to what they are really like. Now suppose, further, that I wish to wake up a desire in that child's mind to know something of the beautiful things I have told him about as belonging to another sphere, where all is so different from that by which he is surrounded. I could show him a picture of the country and the objects in it; and in like manner the Old Testament saints had the word of promise - the patterns of heavenly things and pictures in the types. And suppose I say to that child, "I will come in a few days and take you there, to dwell in that very place I have been telling you of." The sense of such a promise would make him long to escape from the surrounding corruption, and he would be formed by his knowledge of the place to which he was going. These exceeding great and precious promises are given to us in connection with One who is already entered into glory. Hence He said to His disciples, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know"; and He prepared the place for them by entering there. Thus we become partakers of the divine nature. We are formed according to the mind of God expressed in the promises, and escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.

In connection with this call to glory, God has given to us “exceeding great and precious promises”. Calling and promise are ever found together. If God calls it is in view of some purposed blessing. Later in the Epistle the Apostle refers to these promises, the promise of the Lord's coming, and the exceeding great promise of the “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:4, 13). With these great and precious promises in view we have before us what God has before Him, and, in this way, partake of the divine nature. We look on to a scene where love and holiness will be in display in contrast to the lust and lawlessness of this scene. We partake of the divine nature in hating the evil of this scene and in delighting in the coming scene of holiness, love and joy. Thus we escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Thirdly, to encourage us to live the life of godliness, we are told that connected with it are "exceeding great and precious promises." In the course of the epistle we learn that these promises connect us with the "everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" and the "new heavens and a new earth."

Hence we can understand the bounteous provision of His word that we may enter intelligently into what He has communicated to us in the carrying out of His gracious purpose. Through His own glory and excellence He has granted us the greatest promises, far more elevated than any given to His earthly people Israel. Take as a little example what the apostle himself had said in the early verses of his First Epistle, and of its first chapter. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His much mercy, begot us again to a living hope through Jesus Christ's resurrection from among the dead, unto an incorruptible and undefiled and unfading inheritance, reserved in [the] heavens for you who are kept (or, guarded) in (or, by) God's power through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in [the] last time." He does not, in the verse we are considering, repeat what these precious promises are, now proposed to the precious faith of the Christian. But this one sample may suffice to show their general character, in contradistinction from the earthly hopes, which once sufficed to fill them with satisfaction and pride in the highest degree, and so greatly contributed to their unbelief in the Messiah.

The knowledge of God is in Jesus Christ; through Him we know God in all His gracious fullness. (See 1 John 5:20.) The real heart knowledge of Him produces fruit because it carries with it divine power, which has given to the believer "all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us by glory and virtue." Life and glory are the gifts of grace; life is bestowed in the new birth which fits for glory, but godliness and virtue are the practical results of that grace in the life of the believer. The divine power for godliness and virtue which are to be manifested in the believer's life, that power which is able to act in us and give us the victory, must be laid hold on by faith. "How precious it is to know that faith can use this divine power, realized in the life of the soul, directing it toward glory in the end! What a safeguard from the efforts of the enemy, if we are really established in the consciousness of this divine power acting on our behalf in grace! The heart is led to make glory its object; and virtue, the strength of spiritual life, is developed on the way to it. Divine power has given all that is needed" (Synopsis of the Bible.)

Having called us by glory and virtue, He has in connection with it given us exceeding great and precious promises. These promises relate to both, glory and virtue. Through these promises we are made partakers of the divine nature, by the divine power acting in us, with the glory as the blessed goal. But by the same power promised unto us, we escape and are delivered from the corruption that is in the world through lust. Here is the real victorious life of a believer. It is not in some kind of a fixed "holiness experience" by which the old nature is eradicated, a teaching which is altogether against Scripture. The heart must be occupied with Christ and the glory by which we are called, as a result the divine power, the Holy Spirit in us, acts and victory over sin results.

Now, in connection with these two things — namely, with glory and with the energy of life — very great and precious promises are given us; for all the promises in Christ are developed either in the glory, or in the life which leads to it. By means of these promises, we are made partakers of the divine nature; for this divine power, which is realised in life and godliness, is connected with these great and precious promises that relate either to the glory, or to virtue in the life that leads to it — that is to say, it is divine power which develops itself, in realising the glory and heavenly walk which characterises it in its own nature. We are thus made morally partakers of the divine nature, by divine power acting in us and fixing the soul on what is divinely revealed. Precious truth! Privilege so exalted! and which renders us capable of enjoying God Himself, as well as all good.

By the same action of this divine power, we escape the corruption that is in the world through lust; for the divine power delivers us from it. Not only do we not yield to it, but we are occupied elsewhere, and the action of the enemy upon the flesh is kept off; the desires from which one could not cleanse oneself are removed; the corrupt relationship of the heart with its object ceases. It is a real deliverance; we have the mastery over ourselves in this respect; we are set free from sin.

The promises that God gave to Abraham and to David were wonderful, and the saints of God down the ages looked for their fulfilment in Messiah. Many of these promises were fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus, and many more will be fulfilled when He returns to set up His kingdom. But those whom God has called by glory and virtue have promises of a much higher order than those that belong to Israel as His earthly people. The heavenly promises that associate the saints with a heavenly Christ are indeed "exceeding great and precious".

It is by these wondrous promises that the saints partake of the divine nature. What God has given to us in Christ and through Christ has brought us where we have part in the love, holiness and righteousness of God. These things are ours as having the nature of God, but they are to be manifested in us practically as being the children of God. All that God has brought us into now, and all that yet awaits us at Christ's coming, is the fruit of the exceeding great and precious promises that God in His sovereign love and choice has given to those He has made His own. The promises of Christianity far exceed the promises made to Israel, and they are precious as founded upon the Living Stone, who is "chosen of God, and precious" (1 Peter 2:4).

Ver. 4. We are sometimes apt to forget these "exceeding great and precious promises." What are they? if you have £5,000, you don't want to know if it is all in separate pounds or bank notes. "All the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him amen," and Christ is ours.

In this same life and godliness given us by the knowledge of God are involved exceeding great and precious promises, V.3 has told us that all this is by His Divine power, which can make these things of vital value to the soul. As promises, these must be laid hold of to be enjoyed now, for they are not merely promises as to the future, but the Word given us now, by which we become in practical reality "partakers of the divine nature." This is in precious contrast to the corruption that is in the world through lust, which by His grace we have escaped.

It is interesting to observe in 2 Peter 1 the grounds upon which the exhortations of that chapter are founded. (1) According to His divine power God hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, verse 3; (2) He hath given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, verse 4. These then are the grounds; and the object proposed is that through these we should become partakers of the divine nature. This makes evident that the expression at the head of this paper answers not to the new birth, but expresses a practical state wrought in us as the moral result of the work of the Spirit of God. Wonderfully have we been endowed with God's "all things," for all things that pertain to life and godliness are ours, and not only so, but with all the promises of God, the greatest and most precious, which "in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." And the object He has had in this has been, that we should become like Him by the action of the Holy Ghost in conforming us to Christ, that, being morally more and more after His pattern, we should evidence practically His divine nature of which we have partaken.