Christian Spirituality 2 Peter 3:11-18

Spirituality is a broad concept which is understood by different people in a host of different ways. It usually includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience - something that touches us all. Even atheists recognise that they have a spiritual side, which is somewhat illogical as they do not recognise anything bigger than themselves!

When people reject God’s rule and deny that there is a future, after their short existence here on earth, it inevitably affects how they live. There is a direct link between how people think and how they behave. Some ancient heathen tombstones have been discovered that epitomise this link. Disbelief in a real future can lead to hedonism now; one inscription reads,

“I was nothing; I am nothing; so you who are still alive, eat drink and be merry.”

Disbelief can also lead to meaninglessness. Another tombstone reads,

“Once I had no existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not concern me.”

Finally it can result in desperation. Another stone reads,

“Charidas, what is below?” “Deep darkness!” “But what of the paths upwards?” “All a lie” . . . “Then we are lost.”

Logically if life is heading nowhere, if the truth about a second coming is lost, then life loses purpose. What are we to live for that will be as real when we are old and infirm as when we are young and active? Peter wrote,

“Since everything is going to be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.” 2 Peter 3:11-12

Christian spirituality has distinctive characteristics

1. People matter more than things.

We tend to think that the world is more enduring than people. The bible rejects such thinking. People will outlast matter. The world will be destroyed but people are eternal, we have been made in the image of God. Peter writes,

“Since everything (the earth and everything in it) will be destroyed . . . what kind of people ought you to be?” 2 Peter 3:11

A man’s character is the only thing we can take out of this life. How foolish it is for the Egyptian Pharaoh’s to have placed in their tombs all that they would like in the next life. At least it showed that they knew there was an afterlife!

A Christian spiritual person will therefore treat all people as God’s creation, they do matter to him and he longs to have them join him in eternity.

When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church he was critical of their tendency to favour people with gifts, whether preaching abilities, money, linguistic skills or whatever over the needs of ordinary people in the church. The real mark of people filled with the Spirit is that they love other people, especially those within God’s family. The famous passage on love, so often read at wedding services, is actually a critique of those who value gifts more than loving hearts (1 Corinthians 12:27 – 13:13).

This doesn’t mean that leaders should be weak and indecisive. They must love not just certain individuals but the church as a whole and sometimes good decisions may hurt individuals in the short term for the greater good of others. It is not easy to get this balance right

2. Righteous living matters

There are many horrendous stories about people who have claimed to be Christian leaders but whose lifestyles betray their real perspective on life.

“Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?” 2 Peter 3:11

“So then . . . make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.” 2 Peter 3:14

Peter used the same phrase about Jesus in his first letter,

“Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” 1 Peter 1:19

If Christians really have the Spirit of Christ they will also adopt the character of Christ. False leaders often portray these faults,

“Their idea of pleasure is to carouse in broad daylight. They are blots and blemishes, revelling in their pleasures while they feast with you. Their eyes are full of adultery, they never stop sinning; they seduce the unstable; they are experts in greed – an accursed brood.” 2 Peter 2:13-14

I have recently read a book called ‘The Popes’ which describes the morals and the lifestyles of several medieval popes. Some of their lives were so far from that of emulating Christ that it is very doubtful that they were Christians.

“So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of sinful nature.” Galatians 5:16

We are told to ensure that when Jesus comes we do no, he doesn’t find us to have uncorrected blemishes in our characters. God’s people must be sensitive to the faults within ourselves. Psalm 15, a Psalm of David, beautifully describes the sort of lives that God wants to see in us, his people. Peter extols the virtues of both Noah (2 Peter 2:5) and Lot (2 Peter 2:7) who lived righteous lives amongst ungodly people. It is an important feature of God’s people that we are vexed when we see ungodly behaviour and moral filth around us. We must never become hardened, Lot wasn’t!

How difficult this is for young people who naturally want to like their peers. This is why strong groups of young people with close friendships within churches are so important. Holiness entails being distinct from others.

The existentialist writer, Jean-Paul Sartre tells the story of a man who was enjoying sitting quietly on a park bench when he suddenly becomes aware of someone in the distance staring at him. The man is startled out of his serenity into a profoundly uncomfortable awareness of himself and thinks,

“What does the stranger think of me? Are they judging me? Do they value me? Are they for me or against me?”

Everyone knows what this is like. When we are wrapped up in ourselves, we can feel no moral or relational obligations. However the stare disrupted his sense of autonomy. In Sartre’s tale he discovers that the stare is coming from a mannequin! He explains how relieved he felt when he understood that the fear was just in his mind. His conscience, about some other being seeing what he is doing and thinking, is unreal. 1 Or is it? If there is a God who created us and entered his world as Jesus Christ then what the Bible teaches about God seeing everything we do and think is real. Peter reminds the Christians,

“You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day and speed its coming.” 2 Peter 3:11-12

3. Patience is needed

Peter repeatedly stresses the need for patience as we look forwards to the return of the lord Jesus,

“ . . . as you look forward to the day . . .” 2 Peter 3:11

“But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth.” 2 Peter 3:12

“So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.” 2 Peter 3:14

Waiting can be so frustrating if we are looking for a job, recovering from an illness or operation, or trying to get into a team. Children find waiting for Christmas and the presents a real trial. For Christians, living in a fallen world with all its ungodliness is also be frustrating. We are looking forwards to something so much better.

The Lord is delaying his return because he is patient and longs for others to be saved.

“Bear in mind that the Lord’s patience means salvation . . .” 2 Peter 3:15

Advertisements repeatedly tell us we can have everything now, whether holidays, possessions or borrowed money. There are even churches who teach ‘Name it and claim it.” These false teachers raise peoples expectations. Blessings from God will come in heaven but until then we all have to live in a fallen world and share in the consequences. We will become ill, we will die, we will be subject to unfairness in this life but we have something much better to look forward to, when our Lord returns. When he does return, then we shall have perfect health, purity, unity among God’s people. Until then we must wait as we are all still sinful.

This patience is a sign of maturity, we learn to accept the difficulties we face with calmness. A famous Christian healer himself suffered from an illness and shared this with many who shared his thinking. Four hundred people said that God had told them to pray for his healing and lay hands on him. The four hundred did just that but there was no healing.. I well remember a Pentecostal church minister who developed ulcerative colitis. Friends prayed for him and assured him he had been healed. He was reassured about this, although his symptoms did continue. He didn’t think follow up or drugs were now necessary. When I met him he had already developed cancer of the bowel that had spread to his liver and he eventually died. Such childish thinking refuses to recognise that God’s will for us is not always our will for ourselves! Prayer is not always answered as we would want. Peace is not always given. Holiness does not always reign now. We should ask God to be involved in everything we do, knowing that he is able to to do above all we ask or think, after all he did raise Jesus from the dead, but learning to wait is part of Christian discipline.

One of the virtues of the early church was patience under Roman rule and persecution. They were not impatient but trusted God. This made them so attractive to those looking on. Tertullian was a church father early in the third century. He wrote a treatise called ‘De Patienta’ which means ‘Of Patience’ and in this he wrote about patience,

“It attracts the heathen . . . adorns a woman, perfects a man. It is loved in a child, praised in a youth, esteemed in the aded. In both man and woman, at every age of life, it is exceedingly attractive.” 2

Today we live in an impatient hurried world that becomes easily upset when things don’t go as hoped. Should we be talking more about this virtue? The prophet Isaiah recognised how important this virtue of patience is,

“For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him.” Isaiah 30:18

James also strongly advocated this virtue,

“Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patients\ and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” James 5:7-8

Anger, impatience and irritability are the very opposite of patience and betray both a lack of trust and portray to others a restless spirit.

4. A Growing knowledge of Jesus Christ

Some interpret such Godly patience as a prescription for being laid back with a ‘laissez faire’ approach to life and its problems. This is not Christian either – the apostles were certainly not passive in their commitment to serving christ in this world. Peter’s final longing is fundamental,

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 3:18

Being a Christian is never a static acceptance of a creed but a growing relationship. A Christian’s love for the Lord Jesus must keep growing. It is significant that this is how peter starts the letter,

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him . . . he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” 2 Peter 1:3-4

This is so important. God speaks to us through his word which contains God’s promises to us. We accept these by living according to what he has taught us in the Bible. We live by faith and this will enable us to grow both in knowledge and righteousness.

There is one fascinating point that Peter includes here when discussing Paul’s letters. They were obviously well circulated before 65-68 AD when 2 Peter was written. Paul’s writings were accepted by that early stage as being on the level of the Old Testament Scriptures.

“ . . . just as our dear brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him. He wrote the same thing in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” 2 Peter 3:15-16

This twisting of Scripture has been all too apparent over the years. Millerism first began in 1831 when William Miller began to share his belief that the second advent of Jesus Christ would occur in 1843-44. He made this conclusion based on prophecies in Daniel. He was an influential speaker and these ideas spread even though they were contrary to the teaching of Jesus. who had said that the actual timing of his second coming is not for us to know. Jesus said,

“No-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” Matthew 24:36–44

Miller established several newspapers that spread his ideas and, by April 1843, six hundred thousand papers were being distributed each week. Even when the deadline of 1844 passed, the majority of those taken up with his ideas maintained their beliefs by changing the date. However when the next date, October 22, 1844 passed without incident a movement called ‘The Great Disappointment’ sprung up. However some Millerites went onto form a new group, the Seventh Day Adventists and out of that group sprang the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Such religious crazes were common in Victorian times and are all too common today. A sure sign of trouble is when the affiliation to an organisation, denomination or church takes precedence over knowing Christ.

The apostles were clear, to grow in Christ we must grow in our knowledge of Scripture. All other paths lead to disaster. No-one grows in their experience of Christ without growing in their knowledge of God’s Word.

This is the last word of Peter.

1 Scott Sauls, ‘Jesus outside the lines’, Tyndale House publishers 2015) p. 101

2 Tertullian, ‘Apology’, in Anti-Nicene Christian Library, vol 11, ‘The Writings of Tertullian’: Vol 1, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, T. & T. Clarke 1869 p. 119