Jesus saves us with His “power” and offers us to “partake of his divine nature.” What does this mean? How does it relate to us growing as Christians? Join Pastor Tim as we dig into 2 Peter 1:3-4.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Peter uses the airplane parachute illustration to help us understand where we’re escaping to. What are some ways you’ve experienced God calling you away from something destructive and toward His presence and promises?
The sermon describes how we often feel God’s promises don’t apply to us—like a car manual’s asterisk saying “only package three.” When have you doubted that God’s promises were truly for you, and how does understanding His love and grace change that perspective?
Peter went from denying Jesus to boldly proclaiming Him at Pentecost. What does genuine transformation look like in your own life, and what role does “gazing into God’s glory” play in that change?
The sermon emphasizes that we become “partakers of the divine nature” not by earning holiness or gaining worldly power, but through relationship with God as our heavenly Father. How does this understanding challenge or reshape what you think spiritual growth should look like—and how is it different from trying to become holy on your own?
The speaker asks: “What kind of power do I want?” versus “What kind does God offer me?” In what areas of life are you most tempted to chase worldly forms of power or security, and how can reflecting on God’s glory and promises redirect those desires?
How can we as a group help one another set aside intentional time this week to reflect on God’s glory and His promises so that we continue to grow in godliness together?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to Steadfast. It is so good to be with you again tonight. I am really excited about tonight’s continuation of our brand new series, “Growing.” We’re going to be thinking about how God grows us by looking into His glory. What could be a better topic than that? So let’s go ahead, we’ll open in prayer, and then we’ll dig right in.
Father, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the opportunities you give us to study your word. Would you be with us tonight? Would you help us to see what you would have us to see in your word? When you apply these truths to our hearts, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I want you to imagine before we go any further for a moment that you’re getting on an airplane tomorrow—or if you want to social distance a little longer, maybe in a few months—but you’re flying someplace. You’re all excited; maybe it’s a vacation you’ve been looking forward to for a long time. You are so excited to go see the sights, be in this wonderful place. You get on the plane, and it goes up in the air, and maybe you’re reading your phone or a magazine, and all of a sudden the thing that we all would dread most comes on. Over the PA, the captain says, “I hate to say this, but I’m afraid this plane is not going to be able to land, at least not the way we wanted it to.”
You immediately feel that panic because this is why anyone who doesn’t want to get on an airplane doesn’t get on it: “It’s not going to land. What am I going to do?” And the captain says, “Don’t worry. We have plenty of parachutes. If we’re going to crash over dry land, you can jump out, and if we’re going to crash over the sea—as you heard in the announcements when we were taking off here—seat cushions are flotation devices. You can just hold on to it.”
And when you finally slow down your breathing, you think, “Okay, well, that’s really nice. I need to know where I’m landing. Where am I escaping to?” Because you don’t want to hold on to that seat for a flotation device and then crash into dry ground; it’s just going to smash into you. But on the other hand, if you’re going into the ocean, you need to know where you’re escaping to.
Peter, here in Second Peter chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, wants us to think about where we’re escaping to. We look at a world that’s hurting and painful, and I think all of us look at it and know that there is something that isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. He says now, “You need to know where you’re escaping to.” So let’s go ahead and turn back to chapter 1 of Second Peter and hear more about our escape.
He writes, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.”
His power, His glory, does what we cannot. That’s what we see here: we’re escaping into God’s power. That’s where we’re going, and Peter says here, it’s not just that we’re escaping to a God who’s incredibly powerful. We’re escaping into a God who is His own glory and excellence, and He uses that glory and excellence to save us.
Peter here actually uses the same phrasing for glory and excellence—or praiseworthiness—that the prophets used throughout the Old Testament to talk about God’s rescue of His people. For example, if we turn to Isaiah chapter 63, we read, “I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that He has granted them according to His compassion, according to the abundance of His steadfast love.”
We hear about this salvation that God offers, and He does it through the very praiseworthiness that He deserves. When we think about the salvation that He offers us, which we talked about last week, He offers that to us, and through our lives as He restores us, people see Him and how much He deserves to be praised.
And this is not just for a moment. It’s not just to save us and then say, “Okay, great, you’re set; now go off and live a better life.” No, this is a salvation and a power given to us that pertains, Peter says, to life and godliness. Whatever we need to live the life ahead of us and into eternal life, and to live it in a fashion that is godly and pleasing to our God, He gives it to us through His divine power.
There’s never going to be a moment like opening that box and realizing that you need batteries still; they’re already there. God has given us everything we need to do what He’s called us to do.
And I think as Peter writes this, Peter is thinking back to his own experience of being called by Jesus because he surely has that etched in his mind. He thinks back to when he was a fisherman, and there he was in his boat. And this rabbi comes along and says, “I need your boat. I need to go out in front of the crowd for the message I’m going to share.”
Peter maybe had heard of Jesus and thought He sounded interesting, so he agrees and moves out into the water, with Jesus standing there, and Jesus preaches. As He does, Peter probably thought, “Well, this is nice.” Maybe he thought of other great rabbis he’d heard and thought that’s going to be the end of it, and then he can go back to his work. He’s done his good deed; God will pat him on the back.
But then, as Jesus wraps up, He tells Peter where to cast his nets for fish, and as Peter does, he brings in so many fish that his boat nearly sinks. That’s where we turn to in Luke chapter 5, verse 8. Luke reports that when Simon Peter saw the huge overflowing nets, he fell down at Jesus’s knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” For he, and all who were with him, were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, and so also were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon.
And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid. From now on you will be catching men.”
Did Peter fully understand what was happening then? No, I think we can say definitively no. We see the rest of Peter’s life; we know that he doesn’t get it immediately. But he sees something. He sees this miracle of all these fish, and his first reaction is, “I don’t know who this Jesus is. I’m not sure quite what to make of Him, but I know this: I am not anywhere near holy enough to be around someone who is so clearly demonstrating miracles from God.”
And Jesus could look at him and say, “Peter, let me tell you, you may not think you’re very holy right now. You may not think that as you’re saying these words, but let me tell you, you’re really not holy because by the time that I die, you will have betrayed Me. You will have denied Me in front of other people for your own protection. You will turn away after I have befriended you and entrusted everything about My ministry with you.”
“You think that you’re not holy and that I’m holy? Well, let me tell you, you are far more sinful than you could imagine.” But that’s not what Jesus does.
Instead, Jesus looks to Peter and says, “You’re done catching fish. That’s a fine career, but I have something new for you. I am calling you to catch men, to proclaim the gospel to them. You’re going to follow Me, and as you do, you’re going to do far more wonderful things than you ever could imagine.”
He sets aside Peter’s imperfection and calls him, and Peter, perhaps as he starts to follow Jesus, can sort of imagine some of God’s power that is with Jesus, even before he realizes that Jesus is truly God.
But we can see in the disciples, they’re wrestling with who this Jesus is and what His ministry is about and what kind of power they might gain. And they go right to the things that we crave: stability, authority, and wealth. They’re thinking about how their lives are going to be better.
And I think that’s revealing to us. What kind of authority, what kind of power do we crave? Do we crave the sorts of power that God gives us, or do we chase after the things that the world says are the powers that will give us comfort and security?
As Peter follows Jesus, Jesus allows him to learn from Him and to be in His presence and ultimately to gaze into the very beauty of the glory of God. And as Peter reflects back at the end of his life on God’s calling to him, he thinks about that. Jesus has allowed him to actually look into His face, to see the very beauty of God.
Jesus has allowed him to actually look into His face to see the very glory of the God of the universe and to call him a sinful man, and to allow him, as he gazed into Jesus’s face, to be transformed.
The very Peter who would flee and deny Jesus so that he might be safe would write this letter at the end of his life as he knows he’s facing certain execution for his confession of who Jesus is. And in that, he can look back at what God has done, not what he has done. He doesn’t look at how strong he’s been; he can look at all of his failures and say, “Look to Jesus, look into His glorious face, because that’s not just for me. I’m not just some special apostle. It’s for you too.”
To the people that he has known and ministered to and loved, he can say, “Look into the glory of God and be transformed by it. You’re escaping into God’s power and His praiseworthiness,” and he can say that to us too today.
That’s why Peter writes these words. The Spirit inspired him to write them for you and for me. Peter received Jesus’s calling in order to serve others, to go catch men, to allow them to hear of God’s salvation, and He does the same for us.
We’re escaping to more than just God’s power; we’re escaping to a place of God’s promises—His good promises.
Perhaps you’ve had the experience I’ve had: we read through Scripture, and we read all of God’s promises. We read about them here in this very chapter of Second Peter. We read about them throughout the New Testament. We read them in Jesus’s ministry as He talks about the kingdom of God. And then we go back to the Old Testament, we see the prophets testifying to God’s love and His promises for His people.
And maybe, for one reason or another, at some moment in your life you think, “This sounds wonderful. I would love to experience God’s promises, but they’re all for someone else.” They’re for someone like Peter said when he was in that boat: someone more holy. “I’m not holy enough to be in God’s presence. They’re for someone else. They’re promised to people long ago who experienced miracles and saw the working of God, not to me.”
And we start to feel like, “I just wish I could experience this, but it’s all for someone else.”
Maybe you’ve had the experience of opening an instruction manual to a car. I have here the manual for my grandpa’s old van. You open up the manual, maybe you just bought a car, and you start flipping through, and you read about all the things your car can do. How to adjust the stereo, what tire pressure you need, how to adjust the windows, and you start reading, and you think, “Oh, wow, that’s a really neat feature. I didn’t know that I had automatic headlights that will turn on when it gets dark.”
And you get really excited. “This is great. I didn’t even know I wanted to do this,” and you get really excited. Then you get to the bottom of the paragraph about that, and it has a little asterisk, and it says, “Only applies to cars with package three.” You realize, “That’s not my car.”
Wonderful promise, but it doesn’t apply to you.
But when we look at Scripture and we read about the wonderful things God provides for His people, and we start to think, “But this doesn’t apply to me. I’m not holy enough, or I’m not part of the ancient people of God,” or all these different things run through our heads, and we start to feel separated from it, we get to that bottom, and we see the asterisk, and we read it, and it says, “Applies to all who believe in Jesus.” Everyone who trusts in Him, everyone then is adopted as a son or daughter of God in Jesus.
And you, and we, realize those promises apply to us.
And as we do that, you know, one of the things that means the most to me about this manual is the fact that it was my grandpa’s. When I see it and I hold it, I can see that he looked over it so many times, what I’m reminded of is his love for me.
As we read over the words of Scripture, we’re reminded of God’s love for us. That’s what Peter wants us to see here: that glory and that excellence that saves us testifies to the God who loves us—the God who called Peter out of that boat and calls us from whatever boat we are in and into His kingdom and into His family.
These promises, they’re for you and for me, and we see that in verse 4a. Peter says that these things that have been done—by the power by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises—so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.
God lets us experience His working as He leads us. He doesn’t just save us and then disappear as a distant God. Every time that we have an opportunity to show His love to someone else and we do, every time we turn to His word and we’re encouraged by it, every time we see God working in our lives, what are we reminded of? We’re reminded of the God who calls us and invites us to gaze into His glory, into His praiseworthiness. Into His praiseworthiness. Into His praiseworthiness. I know that He saved us and promised His love to us.
I think as Peter talks about these promises and their fulfillment, He probably is thinking back to another really memorable moment in his life that we see in Acts chapter 2.
On the day of Pentecost, the disciples come out, and they’re speaking all kinds of different languages, and people start to wonder, “How do these men that don’t have all kinds of training speak all these languages? What in the world’s going on?”
Peter—scared Peter who had not that long before denied Jesus three times in order to avoid being associated with Him in a way that might endanger him—stands up in front of this huge crowd and says these words.
Acts chapter 2, starting with verse 14: “But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, ‘Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.’”
Peter probably had thought back to promises like that one from Joel many times. He would have heard them in the synagogue, probably thinking, “That applies to somebody else at some other time.”
But as he saw God working in his life, as he received the Holy Spirit on that day and felt God’s power working in him and calling him further along in that transformation that Jesus had sent him on the path for, he says, “No, these promises that God has given—they’re for me and they’re for you.”
And Peter at the end of his life thinks back to times like that and wants to make sure that those he’s writing to, both then and now in our time, know the same thing: God’s promises are for us. God’s promises are for us.
And he says something really incredible if you think about that verse. He says, “We become partakers of the divine nature. We actually get to come into God’s presence, into His glory, and partake of His nature.”
Now, there were teachers at the time that would talk like this. Teachers at the time would talk like this.
Greek teachers would talk about how if you could just let go of the material world and renounce it and rise to a higher level of consciousness, that you could become essentially a god.
There were other false teachers, that were Jewish, that were teaching from the Scriptures but distorting them into just a checklist of things you could do to please God, as if we could actually be holy enough.
And both of those false teachings, in some way, were missing what God had actually testified to in His word about His love and His grace.
And Peter, as he has experienced God’s love, wants us to understand what it really means to be a partaker in the divine nature. And as he walks us through this, it becomes clear what it means is that we’re a part of God’s family. We don’t become little gods. We become something far more incredible, which is we actually get to call the creator of the universe, the one who spoke everything into existence, our heavenly Father. And He loves us and He fulfills promises to us that we can delight in His glory.
So, what false calls, what false promises do we turn to so often? Again, we hear people today saying, “Well, if you just do enough good things, then God will sort of like you or love you.” We hear other people say, “Well, if you just have enough faith, you’ll become incredibly wealthy or healthy, or you’ll have the job you want, or everything will go well.” And all these are chasing after forms of power and security.
Whether it’s how we do it or what we get, they’re missing what we truly need, which is to escape into God’s presence, into His promises, and in His power.
God calls us to know Him. That’s what we see repeatedly in this passage—that we’re not just called to know about God, but to truly know Him, to relate to Him as our Father. And as we do that, as we look into His glorious presence, He transforms us because we get to experience His nature. We get to partake of the divine nature.
And that brings us to our last point, which is tucked in here because Peter isn’t saying it isn’t important to do what’s pleasing to God, but He wants us to know all this is the foundation. This is what comes first: God loves us. And because of that, then we turn to the end of verse 4.
Peter writes, “Having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” That’s where we’re situated when we partake of the divine nature. And He says we’re escaping from that corrupt world; we need that escape. We know that airplane is coming crashing down.
But imagine if that airplane is coming crashing down, and the pilot hands you that parachute. As you put it on and you jump out and it deploys, everything’s going great. But you happen to look over, and in a very bizarre twist, there’s another plane that’s coming crashing down, too, and it has flames coming out of it. And you think, “That ground is really far down there.”
That’s why I’ve never gone on a parachute.
That ground is really far down there. And that plane over there, yeah, it’s burning, it’s on fire, and crashing, but I’m going to just land on it instead. That’d be horrible, right? We wouldn’t want to do that because we’re going right back into that which destroys us.
Or imagine you, the—I talked about the car with the car manual. Imagine you buy a brand new car, it’s all shiny, you take it out for the first time, you go right into a giant bunch of mud, and it gets caked all over the car. You pull it into your driveway and you park it, and you drive it every day. You leave all that mud on; you never get to see the shiny paint.
And Peter ends this part of chapter 1 on this note of being rescued not just from the world but from sinful desire.
Because, as we’re going to explore over the next weeks, part of that growing is God chips away at that sinful desire and allows us to turn more to Him so that we can actually reflect His glory.
Just like that car can’t reflect its shiny paint unless you take off the mud, God wants to remove that mud of sinful desire from us—not that we would be saved and then He’s done this, He’s made us partakers of His divine glory—but so that we can truly delight in it, not have anything distracting us from it.
Because while we’re saved, we often turn and think, “Oh, this looks like a good place to go,” and we go right back into our sin. What Peter is telling us here: he says, “At the end of my life, I have experienced this transformation. I have gone from a fisherman who just wanted to catch some fish to a very scared man who denied the very God of the universe. And God has transformed me. It’s not my doing; I have come into and seen God’s glory.”
And here’s what you need to know as I reflect back on that: Peter says, “The only place that we can truly be the people that God has made us to be is as we partake of His glory, as we see His presence.” And that’s as true for us today as it was for Peter, and it was for every person who heard what Peter had to say and read what Peter had to write.
Because so often, we turn to other things, but that—that is where we rest.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, thank You that You invite us into Your presence, into Your glory. Lord, if any of us as we’re watching tonight haven’t yet trusted in Jesus, Lord, I pray for that person that he or she would tonight begin to experience that transformation. And for all of us, whether it’s the very first day or our long journey with You, Lord, would You help us all the more to throw away that caked-on sinful desire and be able to reflect Your glory that You allow us to witness and rejoice in.
How can we thank You enough, Father, for allowing us to call You our heavenly Father? Lord, would You help us to be overwhelmed and to rejoice in that right now and every day, and would You help us to reflect that joy to the world? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we wrap up tonight, I have a few questions just for us to think about this week. Maybe you’d like to write these down and mull them over.
The first one is this: What kind of power do I want? We talked earlier about sorts of powers that we find intriguing or alluring. What kind of power do I want in those sorts of moments, and what kind does God offer me? What does God want me to want? And how much better is it?
Two: How can I take time to reflect on God’s glory this week? How can I truly know the joy of being in God’s presence? How can I set aside time to do that this week?
And finally, three: How can I remind myself of God’s promises this week? Because we see that when we reflect on God’s promises and His glory, He uses that to transform us and allow us to partake of Himself.
What a wonderful thing that is. I’m so glad that you’ve been with us tonight. You’ve joined me as we’ve been digging into God’s word, and we’re going to continue next week. We’ll pick back up and dig right in at 7 p.m. on Monday night as we continue Steadfast.
We’ll be looking more at how God transforms us to escape those sinful desires and to show His love to the world, and I hope you’ll join me for that.
Also, if you’ve been encouraged by this series and this message, would you consider liking it or sharing it? As you share it both on social media and beyond, you can help us to get the word out about God’s good news. I’d be personally grateful for your help because as we share together in the hope that we find in His word, others can hear that and rejoice in it and get to rejoice in that presence of God that we get to come into.
Also, if you have any questions about tonight’s message or anything else, feel free to shoot me an email. I would love to hear from you, or you can post it right in the comments of this video stream, and we can talk about it there.
Or if there’s any way I can be praying for you, you can also email me or post it below. If you email me, let me know if I can share it with the whole Little Hills team, and we’ll all pray for you. Or if you’d like it to be a private prayer request, I’d be glad to do that as well.
It’s been a joy digging into God’s word with you, and I look forward to doing it again next week. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week. Thank you again for joining me tonight.