November 11, 2007 · 2 Peter 1:4

2 Peter 1:3-4 (Team Jesus)

“The Neoplatonist had it the other way around. They would say, OK, first of all, you have to try to escape the physical world. The more you escape the world, the closer you come to participating in the divine nature. See what I mean? Like you, give up the world and you slowly start becoming more and more God like through your mind, become more and more God like. Peter says it's switched. No, he says, first of all, we participate in the divine nature by responding to the glory and the goodness of Jesus Christ. It's only after we do that we can escape the corruption of the world caused by our own evil desires. Participating in God's nature, being saved, accepting the goodness and glory of Christ as our own. That's the beginning to starting to escape the corruption. You don't escape the corruption by becoming more like God, become more like God through Jesus Christ, and then you start escaping the corruption. See, only we once we participate in the divine nature, can we ever hope to see victory, and there's a few struggles in life that we see that he's represented here for us, Corruption versus life, goodness versus evil desires. This is when the Christians always struggle with how, do I be good? I'm always struggling with my evil desires and Peter has announced hope. We have hope because God has given us all the tools necessary for the job, We can't believe that we can somehow escape corruption caused by evil desires without God, If we have God, then we can escape evil desires.”