2 Peter 1:4b — Awkwardness

… he has given us his very great and precious promises …

Summary: Peter is writing us a letter, but he is not a writer. His thoughts might seem a bit disconnected to us two thousand years later. (They might have seemed disconnected to his first readers, too.) Yet, if we give Peter a bit of grace, the meaning of his words shines very brightly. 

This is a bit awkward.

Usually, I have some sense of what a passage is talking about. Even if I do not fully understand it, I can find something to write about.

Today’s passage is awkward because I am not clear about what Peter is referring to.

He says that Jesus “has given us his very great and precious promises,” but he does not list those in his letter.

One thing to remember about Peter is that he is not a theologian like Paul. Neither does he have John’s gift for words or Matthew’s training in business. When Jesus found him, Peter was a fisherman.

There is nothing wrong with being a fisherman! We need people who do the fishing, fix the plumbing, farm the fields, take care of the animals, butcher the meat, grind the flour, and all the other hundreds or thousands of things needed to make daily life possible. The point is not that Peter was a lesser person, but that he was not a person you would expect to write his thoughts on paper.

Now me, I am someone who likes to write. My mother claims I was born with paper and pencil in my hand. (Yes, I know that sounds rather painful and awkward, too!) I have always enjoyed writing. But Peter is not one of those people. He has little or no training or practice putting words on paper. Yet, here he is writing his second letter! That he has written these letters for us is a bit of a miracle.

When he writes that Jesus has given us promises, he clearly has something in mind, but what is it?

In his first letter, Peter writes:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:2-5)

Here he refers to the resurrection of Jesus and our new hope and an ‘inheritance … kept I heaven for you.” He does not state it like a promise, but that is what it is. He also mentions “the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” Again, it is not worded like a promise, but that is really what it is.

Later in verse seven, he mentions that Jesus Christ will be “revealed,” and in verse nine he talks about “the salvation of your souls.” Both are phrased like passing references to something you should already know about. They are not stated as a promise, but that is what they are.

Peter’s first letter says we have been “born again” (1 Peter 1:23) which sounds a bit like a promise, and that we have been “healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Then later he mentions “The end of all things is near” (1 Peter 4:7). I do not know if this qualifies as a promise or a threat, but it does refer to the future.

From a worldly point of view, it would be easy to pick at Peter’s writing style and poke fun at it. We could say that he is vague, disconnected, and useless. Yet, if we did that, we would reveal our lack of understanding about how God works. Jesus himself spoke in parables so that:

“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” (Matthew 13:13)

Peter, no doubt, picked up that habit from his Lord.

Looked at through the eyes of love, we see a beloved disciple of our Lord, transformed from a simple and rough-cut fisherman to a sensitive, caring apostle writing down words he knows we need to hear.

Application: The promises in the Word of God are there, but they are hard to see if we close our eyes to them. 

Food for Thought: What other promises do you see in Peter’s writing or Mark’s Gospel that might have been on Peter’s mind?