"Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure" Ash Wednesday 2025

05. March 2025

Ash Wednesday

2 Peter 1:2-11 - Virtue

Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; 11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pe 1:10–11)

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

It’s a shame that Second Peter is often overlooked. Its brevity makes it easy to overlook. It lacks thorough teaching of the doctrine of justification like Romans and Galatians. It does not expound the joyous hope of Christ’s second coming like First and Second Thessalonians. It does not present the doctrine of election like Ephesians. It doesn’t address specific church problems like First and Second Corinthians. The joy of belonging to Christ is muted compared to Philippians.

Its placement later in the canon, next to other disputed books, gives it a “back-of-the-book” character. Yet, like Jude immediately after, it has themes we need to hear today. It deals with false teachers whose influence threatens to lead Christ’s little sheep astray. These false teachers abuse our freedom in Christ to promote promiscuity. They claim a higher teaching and authority than Christ and His Word.

In the face of this opposition, St. Peter confesses that our Savior will keep His people safe and destroy those who oppose the faith. He does so with rich references to OT characters and stories. He draws our attention to the last days. Despite His apparent delay, he does not want us to doubt Christ’s second coming. This delay is due to our Lord’s merciful patience that more might be saved. In the meantime, He gives us all things needed for faith and life, that we grow in grace and knowledge and wait confidently for the new heavens and new earth.

For this season of Lent, we will focus on the little sermon that begins the book you heard tonight. It might be helpful if you have a Bible with you to open to 2 Peter 1, beginning in v. two and follow along. It starts with a greeting that reminds you, the church, of the blessings received in your Baptism into Christ. “Grace and Peace” are yours. God’s favor (grace) is yours because of the saving work of Christ. God makes peace by restoring our relationship to Him in Christ’s sacrifice. Peter then links “grace” and “peace” with “knowledge” of the Gospel of Christ. Grace and peace only come from the true God who sent His Son for you. For now, knowledge is the content of faith, but more on that in the coming weeks.

Because you are in Christ in Holy Baptism, He has already given you everything necessary for life and godliness. You are His. You are forgiven. You are saved. And as you confess, the proper response to God's good gifts are three-fold: prayer, praise, and thanks. But Peter’s articulation is different. Rather than describe the fruits of salvation, He describes the changes to the Christian because of His new identity and in response to those gifts. We usually speak of what Christ has done for us, followed by what we do in response. That’s a shallow view of the calling of the Christian. Instead, Peter exhorts us to confirm God’s gracious calling through a godly life.

So, after the greeting, Peter continues with the typical Christian sermon. He recalls God’s saving acts, urges the Church for a virtuous response to such saving acts, and ends with a declaration of the last day and God’s rescue of His people, along with the condemnation of those who reject Christ. Think of the structure this way: What God has done, what God is doing, and what God will do. But anytime we speak of Christian life, we’re tempted to think “what must I do” and wrestle God’s good gifts and the ongoing work of the Spirit away from Him. Then our Lutheran radars go off, worried that we might be falling into the dreaded disease of the medieval Roman church: “works righteousness!”

This is why Peter takes pains to speak first of the sufficiency of Christ’s saving gifts for His people. “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Then, built on that foundation, Peter continues with the virtues that necessarily flow from the gifts of Christ. “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue…” Faith in Christ's power to save and sanctify is the foundation, and the virtues of the Christian’s life follow. Those who lack these virtues show a sorry kind of blindness and barrenness.

Peter says, “you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” The divine Christ Himself has given us everything for life and godliness, as we are brought to faith in His Gospel of forgiveness of sins in His shed blood. All of Jesus’s miracles, transfiguration, and ultimately His death on the cross is the revelation of His “glory.” Christ’s saving, sacrificial acts, whose benefits the Gospel brings to the people, is the revelation of His “virtue” or “excellence,” nearly a synonym with “glory.” And then, surprisingly, Peter sets forth God’s promise that Christians partake in the divine nature.

What does he mean? Luther explains, “What is the divine nature? It is eternal truth, righteousness, wisdom, everlasting life, peace, joy, happiness, and whatever can be called good. Now he who becomes a partaker of the divine nature receives all this, so that he lives eternally and has everlasting peace, joy, and happiness, and is pure, clean, righteous, and almighty against the devil, sin, and death. Therefore, this is what Peter wants to say: Just as God cannot be deprived of being eternal life and eternal truth, so you cannot be deprived of this. If anything is done to you, it must be done to God; for he who wants to oppress a Christian must oppress God.” (Luther, AE30:155).

Or to say it in the way of St. John, Christians are blessed with the gifts of God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17), who is poured out in Baptism and works through the Word. Or as the Venerable Bede explains: “The greater the knowledge of God becomes, the more you will realize the magnitude of His promises. When God blesses us, He changes our very being so that whatever we were by nature is transformed by the gift of His Holy Spirit, so that we may truly become partakers of His nature” (Bede, ACCS 11:133).

Peter then describes this given-to life in a series of virtues beginning with faith and ending with love. Faith in Christ is the foundation from which all the Christian virtues flow and love is the culmination and “greatest” result of faith (1 Cor 13:13). Each of the virtues between has its classic Greek use but will be repurposed and brought to focus in light of Christ. All this lays the groundwork for Peter to speak of the sanctified life, established and founded upon God’s grace in Christ.

All this truth is packed into just three verses! Incredible. God bestows salvation through the Gospel in Word and Sacrament, specifically through your Baptism into Christ. Through the washing of water and the Word, you are given escape from destruction and saved with the promise of the resurrection on the last day. And having been baptized, you are given to participate in the divine nature: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with the Father, and the promise of resurrection through the risen Christ. And then you are sustained and strengthened in these gifts by the Lord’s Supper. “When Christ’s Body and Blood become the tissue of our members, we become Christ-bearers and […] ‘partakers of the divine nature’” (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 4.3).

Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pe 1:10–11)

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin