ವ್ಯಾಖ್ಯಾನ ಪ್ರಸ್ತುತ ಇಂಗ್ಲಿಷ್ನಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾತ್ರ ಲಭ್ಯವಿದೆ. ಕನ್ನಡ ಅನುವಾದ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಲ್ಲಿದೆ.
2 Peter 1 — His Divine Power Hath Given Us All Things
Peter writes in his last days. His divine power has given us all that pertains to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him. Exceeding great and precious promises. Add to your faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, charity. Make your calling and election sure. Peter remembers the Transfiguration. The word of prophecy made more sure.
“His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.”
— 2 Peter 1:3
- v.1-4 Great and precious promises; partakers of the divine nature
- v.5-11 The chain — add to your faith seven virtues
- v.12-15 Peter's shortly-coming death
- v.16-18 The Transfiguration as eyewitness testimony
- v.19-21 The sure word of prophecy
Partakers of the divine nature. A staggering phrase. The believer shares in God's own moral nature — not in His essence as God (we never become deity), but in His character communicated to us by the Spirit.
Through lust — the world's corruption flows from the inward fountain of desire turned wrong. Lust here is broader than sexual — it is grasping desire for what God has not assigned. The believer has escaped it through the new nature.
A chain of growth. Each virtue builds on the previous. Faith is the foundation, but faith alone — without growth — is incomplete.
The verbs matter. Add to — Greek epichoregeo, originally describing what a Greek choregos supplied for a chorus. The believer richly supplies these virtues, one upon another, to his faith.
The chain ends with charity — Greek agape. Love is the consummation of all the other virtues. Without it, the others are incomplete (1 Corinthians 13).
Notice the order. Knowledge precedes love in the chain. Some have love without knowledge; some have knowledge without love. Both are insufficient. The mature Christian has both, ascending from one to the other.
Make your calling and election sure. Not sure to God (He knows His own) — but sure to yourself. The believer establishes assurance of salvation by adding these virtues, by visible spiritual growth.
Ye shall never fall. The same word used of the wise man whose house is on the rock (Matthew 7:25). A growing Christian is a stable Christian. A stagnant Christian is one tremor away from collapse.
Eyewitnesses. Peter is appealing to his personal experience. He was there. He saw the transfigured Christ on the mountain.
The Christian faith is rooted in historical events witnessed by real men. Not myth, not philosophical speculation — eyewitness testimony. The Resurrection, the Transfiguration, the miracles — all witnessed.
No prophecy of any private interpretation. Multiple meanings have been read into this verse. The most likely sense: no prophecy came of any private interpretation — that is, no prophet invented his own message. The next verse clarifies.
The verse is often misused to deny ordinary Christians the right to read and interpret Scripture. That is not the issue. The issue is the origin of prophecy: it came from God, not from the prophet's imagination.
The classic verse on the inspiration of Scripture. Holy men moved — Greek phero, meaning carried along as by wind. The prophets were carried by the Spirit as they wrote.
The mode of inspiration is not dictation (the men were not passive); it is concursive (the Spirit carrying along the writers' own personalities and styles, producing words that are simultaneously theirs and God's).
Add to your faith deliberately. The chain Peter names is not automatic — giving all diligence. Pick one virtue this week. Practice it. Move to the next. The stagnant believer is the unsure believer; the growing believer is the stable one. Make your calling and election sure by visible growth in these very things.
The whole chapter centers on the knowledge of him (verse 3, 8). Christ Himself is what we are growing into. The seven virtues added to faith are not abstract qualities — they are the character of Christ being formed in His follower. Ye shall be partakers of the divine nature — and the divine nature has a face, and the face is Christ.
All things that pertain unto life and godliness. Not most things. Not the basics. All things. The Christian has everything needed for genuine spiritual life in Christ.
The implication is striking. If you lack something for godliness, you have it but have not appropriated it. The supply is given. The appropriation is the discipline.