Scripture: 2 Peter 3:18
The last recorded instruction to Christians that we have from Peter in the Bible are these words: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 3:18.
If Peter had to choose a life purpose verse, he could use his own words here at the end of his second letter. “The purpose of my life is to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Peter did not meet Jesus sitting around at home or in the long hard work of fishing on Lake Galilee. He met Jesus out in the countryside in one of John the Baptist’s revival meetings (John 1:42). He and his brother Andrew were seeking a closer relationship with God. Andrew heard the baptizer say, “Look. There is the Lamb of God!” as Jesus walked by. They chased after him and he invited them to spend some time with him. Andrew quickly found his brother Simon and introduced him to Jesus. Jesus immediately changed his name to Cephas. The name Cephas means rock and is translated into Greek as Peter.
The Bible contains a lot of stories about Peter as well as two of his letters written 30 or 40 years later to the young churches. What was Peter’s background? Peter was a strong young man who was beginning to run the family fishing business. He was set up for a great life but there was an emptiness in his soul. He needed more than to inherit the family business. He longed to grow in the knowledge and love of the God of his ancestors. God had promised them a Savior. John the Baptizer started preaching that the Messiah was soon to arrive.
This is how it looked to Peter’s neighbors. He was an unthankful dreamer who was neglecting the family business. He skipped work to attend revival meetings in the wilderness, listening to a man dressed in animal hides who ate bugs and called people “snakes.” The civilized religious leaders who totally tried to live out the Bible did not endorse him. This crazy preacher endorsed another man to take over his ministry. Nobody had ever heard of Jesus before then. All they knew was that he came from a tiny village called Nazareth that was famous for, well, nothing. Peter and his brother Andrew and their cousin John all announced, “we have found the Messiah.” While they said, Let the good times roll, all the regular people did was roll their eyes.
This was the man Peter who wrote to tell believers to grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus. OMG. If these words were spoken with a bit of a British accent, they would be more palatable. We would not remember John’s camel hide clothes or Peter’s denial of knowing Jesus because he feared being arrested. It is so common to try to dress up Christianity to remove the embarrassment of how God has worked in the past.
Peter was widely and properly acknowledged by the first Christians as the leader of all believers in Jesus. That is why Jesus named him Cephas, the rock.
Peter’s faults were not a surprise to Jesus. He was confident that his love of God was a rock-solid basis for life. Peter loved Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, and Jesus reminded him to thank God in heaven for that revelation (Matthew 16:16–18). His open heart to believe in Jesus and his desire to be a wholehearted follower were his strengths.
His was not a perfect strength. Jesus was the perfect rock, the keystone rock of the church. Peter was more like the crushed rock that provides a good road base. Jesus said to him before his denial, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
This was the Peter who wrote to us all as followers of Jesus to grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. His last words are a fulfillment of Jesus’s instruction that he should “strengthen his brethren.”
Do you want a stronger faith to be a better believer and a more confident Christian? Follow Peter's example. Remember that Peter walked with Jesus on earth for about three years and then he had to live a life of faith under persecution for 10 times longer than that. He had the experience that qualified him to teach younger believers like us to live a life of faith, just like he did.
Peter wrote “grow in grace.” We can understand that our faith should grow. Once when the disciples failed to cast out a demon, Jesus criticized them by saying they were without faith (Matthew 17:17). Obviously, unbelief in the power of God was a hindrance. He went on to say, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20 ESV). Peter heard that.
Some people will say, “Grace can’t grow in your life because grace is completed. You automatically have everything from God as a gift. Jesus has died and been raised from the dead. Everything is finished.” How do we respond to that way of thinking? Of course Jesus died on the cross. His sacrifice of his own life is “once for all.” The same Peter who told us to grow in grace also wrote that we were “ransomed… with the precious blood of Christ”(1 Peter 1:18,19).
There remains on us a mandate from God not to stagnate but to appropriate that grace. That is what “grow in grace” means. Why else does Peter instruct us to grow in grace? The word ransom or redeemed has as its root meaning to purchase something. We have been purchased by God through Jesus. But we are people and not things, so we don’t get saved and just sit there. Conversion is not as they say, “Once and done.” Jesus called us to be lights on a hill in a continual display of goodness to others. Peter wrote, “as he who called you is holy, you also must be holy in all your conduct.”
We are converted for a calling. Paul wrote that God “saved us and called us with the holy calling” (2 Timothy 1:9 ESV). Peter wrote for believers “to set your hope on the grace that will be brought to you” (1 Peter 1:13). Surely all good comes to us by the finished work of Christ on the cross, but the application of that grace is ongoing. Some theologians might debate about whether we grow in our experience of grace or whether the growth is an increase of grace upon us.
The apostle John did not argue about theological split hairs but rejoiced in salvation through Jesus that overflowed into the world when Jesus came. “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17).
At the beginning I talked about the grace of God given to Peter in the most humbling ways: through a revivalist preacher, through belief in God’s Savior from the tiny town of Nazareth, through his own excessive exuberance, and despite his occasional failures. The correct answer to life is always “grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” But as Peter demonstrated, it is not the ordinary or the common way of living life.
You are going to feel out of place at times. You will grow up along the way. Proverbs 24:16 teaches us, "the righteous fall seven times and rises again… " Shake it off.
Growing in grace is a sobering challenge but also a constant hope. Instead of feeling inadequate for the task, or hiding away because of the embarrassment of living all-out for God, or apologizing for all the mistakes that we have made, let’s remember Paul’s words. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10 ESV). Full throttle ahead!
Amen.
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