4. Resourced (2)

Meditations in 2 Peter : 4 :  Resourced (2)

2 Pet  1:2,3  Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness

So we saw, in the previous meditation in verse 2, that God has provided us with all the resources we need to be able to walk the Christian life as a child of God, and those resources come to us in the form of the Holy Spirit within us or, to put it another way, through our experience of God Himself.  In verse 2 it spoke of “the knowledge of God” and now in verse 3 it speaks of “our knowledge of him”. The message is quite clear: our resources come from knowing God, not just knowing about Him but experiencing Him.

Now in case we hadn’t taken in the purpose of these resources that we considered in the previous meditation, Peter now makes it explicit. God “has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” Now perhaps we need to ponder on the two key words in that verse. First ‘life’. We might assume that ‘life’ simply means the “period we spend alive on this earth”, i.e. our lifetime, but actually the Bible indicates that there is a difference between those who are alive but not Christians and those who are alive and are Christians. Both are alive in the sense we usually mean when we speak of someone being alive as a human being, but when Jesus speaks about life he speaks about spiritual life or eternal life, or a dimension beyond simple material living. In fact the apostle Paul spoke of Christians as “those who have been brought from death to life.” (Rom6:13)

There the implication is that there is a completely different dimension to ‘life’ and until we receive it through Christ we are spiritually dead. Paul, speaking to Timothy said “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (1 Tim 6:18,19) There again is this implication that there is a life to be taken hold of that is more than the purely material life we previously lived.

This new ‘life’ is one which is lived in the power of God and knows and experiences God. As this happens – as we seek Him and he works in us, there comes about a state of “godliness” in us. A godly person is simply one who knows, experiences and expresses God, one who has a living relationship with God. Thus the presence of His own Holy Spirit within us, is the power to make us ‘godly’ or as we just said, “expressing God.”

In passing we should perhaps emphasise what Peter says – “His divine power has given us everything we need.”  Sometimes Christians sound very concerned about their state as if God had somehow short-changed them and left them lacking in some way so that they are now weak and defenceless. Nothing could be further from the truth. With His power within us we have EVERYTHING we need to live out this godly life as a child of God. You really aren’t lacking anything!

But, goes on Peter, this wasn’t something initiated by us, this was the call of God. He “called us by his own glory and goodness.”  God drew us to Himself and then everything else followed. Ultimately it was God’s greatness, his glory and goodness, that drew us and convicted us. Perhaps we didn’t see it like that initially; we were more aware of our failure and guilt, but really it was only failure and guilt being revealed by Him, by His own splendour. As I say, I’m sure for many of us it was more like that to start with but as we started to find out about Him, who He was and what He had done for us, we found our hearts being captured and drawn and we knelt before Him in surrender and received His forgiveness and Sonship.

The more you find out about Him the more your heart is drawn to Him. Someone has suggested that if we could see Him as He truly is we would never want to leave His presence and carry on living out the life He’s given us. If is a gift, in a sense, that He hides Himself otherwise we could never be the people He calls us to be, touching and impacting others with His love in this Fallen World.

So here we are, called by His wonderful Presence, equipped by His own Holy Spirit who gives us everything we need to shine as children of God in this dark world. It’s not a struggle on our own but a partnership with the King of Kings – and He provides all we need. All we can do is receive it and live it.