WWUTT 346 Confirming Your Calling and Election?

The church tends to place a lot of emphasis on spiritual gifts or doing nice deeds for people, but do we understand what it means to confirm our calling and election so that we won't be ineffective or unfruitful in the faith when we understand the text?

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When We Understand the Text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the

Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your teacher,

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. My voice is kind of weak today, so I'm hoping that it's going to hold out for a 20 -minute

Bible study with you here. We've got a section that we need to finish up in our reading of 2 Peter 1 verses 3 -11, and then tomorrow we should be able to move on.

So Peter begins this section, verse 3, 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.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self -control, and self -control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall, for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the kingdom of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'm going to come back to verse 3 and kind of summarize some things that we talked about last week since we had to split this up between two different weeks.

So Peter says, His divine power is granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, so it is by the power of God that we understand meaning in this life and a hope that we have for our future, and also the pursuit of godliness.

Before Christ came into our lives, before we were washed by the Holy Spirit, whatever we offered to God was not an acceptable sacrifice.

It is only because we have the Holy Spirit that we are able to do anything that is pleasing to God.

So it is by his power that we have been given all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

So again, we came to the faith because the gospel was declared to us. Yesterday, when

I was preaching out of 1 Corinthians 2 to my congregation, I said, is there any of you who could stand up and tell me that you came to your faith because it just occurred to you one day?

It just popped into your mind. Oh, God exists, and Jesus Christ is his son who died on the cross for our sins, and if I believe in him,

I will have eternal life. Can anybody tell me that that just occurred to them? If anybody can stand up and raise your hand and tell me that,

I will call you a liar and tell you to sit back down. Nobody came to the faith just because they reasoned themselves into believing it.

It's because the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ was declared to us, and we believed it and turned from our sin and followed him.

It is all his work by which we have been protected from the corruption that is in this world and delivered into the pursuit of godliness in Christ Jesus.

Through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence because the gospel was proclaimed to us, 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.

So it's because the gospel was declared to us that we have become partakers in his precious and very great promises.

So we know these things, the promises of God, again because we read them in the word of God.

Verse 5. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self -control, self -control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love.

You could consider this Peter's fruit of the Spirit. So it's kind of like the way that he presents his list of the fruit of the

Spirit. Paul has his list in Galatians 5. This is Peter's version. But Peter's a little bit different because it is a progression.

It's not just something that you're automatically going to have all of immediately or at least be mature at doing.

But in each of these things we see a growth, a maturation in our understanding of the gospel and its exercise in our lives.

Make every effort to supplement your faith. That's what happens first. We have been brought to the faith.

We know Christ is our Savior who rescued us from death into his life.

And we have faith given to us by God. And I referenced Hebrews 12 where it says that Christ is the author and the perfecter of our faith.

He gave us our faith, and he is growing us in that faith as well.

Now, no doubt you are familiar with spiritual gifts. I mean, we talk about them all the time.

Whether you are in a cessationist church or a continuationist church, we put a lot of emphasis on spiritual gifts.

There are several different places where these gifts are mentioned, most notably 1 Corinthians 12.

But we tend to place a greater emphasis on talking about the spiritual gifts than we do what it means to confirm your calling and election.

And I think the reason for that is rather obvious. Spiritual gifts tend to be rather self -serving. At least that's the way that they get used, or should

I say abused, in those churches that believe that you can do miraculous healings or speak in tongues or these other things, and you can do this on a regular basis every

Sunday in church. Those who exercise these things are doing so because it makes them feel important, makes me feel like I've got power.

The Holy Spirit is giving me something. I'm exercising that power to generate prophecy and all these other kinds of things, rather than using those things to benefit the body of Christ and give glory to God if it actually is a gift that you've been given at all.

So we have a greater interest in the spiritual gifts because they're self -serving. We are not as interested in confirming your calling and election because that's something that requires significantly more humility.

You have Peter here saying that we need to make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self -control.

So it's not even just knowledge as we need to learn, but there also needs to be self -control applied to it so that we're not misusing that knowledge or we're not abusing somebody else with the knowledge that we possess, that we need to supplement self -control with steadfastness, remaining steadfast in the faith.

And you have kind of an undertone of exercising patience in the midst of all of this as well.

This is a plotting development. This isn't something that, man, I can do this between this Sunday and next

Sunday, right? It's something that we are growing in as Peter gets to when we get to the end of this list.

We have steadfastness being supplemented with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love.

All of this stuff is being humble and submissive to the Lord and to each other.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. So you're talking about something that takes a significant amount of work. It takes work to even be able to say that I've done this much, let alone that I've got to be growing in all of these things as well.

It's hard work. But we love talking about the gifts of the Spirit because I can have that right now, and I can exercise that in church today or next week and the week after, or even in the community if somebody actually does feel themselves bold enough to do evangelism, but generally a person who claims to have spiritual gifts does not.

But anyway, we place a greater emphasis on those things because of the self -serving way that we tend to view them rather than understanding what

Peter is urging of every believer that you supplement these things, ultimately leading to a growth in love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. That knowledge that he talked about in verse 3, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

So if we have been called to God through the knowledge of Christ Jesus, then in order to remain fruitful and effective in that knowledge, we must make every effort to confirm our calling and election by exercising these things that Peter has given to us, growing in these things, qualities that are increasing, that we are maturing in as we grow as members of the body of Christ.

For whoever lacks these qualities, this is 2 Peter 1 .9, whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed of his former sins.

And I think that Peter is bringing back something here that we read in James. James 1 .22,

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

So this is the person who understands, according to what is said in Romans 3 .20, that it is through the law comes knowledge of sin.

We read about it in the law of God. We see ourselves in our sinfulness against the righteousness and perfection of Jesus Christ, knowing that we are not worthy to call upon his name, let alone be in his presence or share in his inheritance with him.

And the more that we learn about these things, the better worshipers of God we become. So it is necessary for us that when we hear the word of Christ proclaimed, we not just hear it and go, hey,

I've fulfilled my religious obligation for the week and then go throughout the other six days of our week doing whatever it is that we want.

So long as I'm attending church and I'm listening to a sermon on Sunday, then I'm getting cleansed and I'm doing my

Christian duty. But James here is saying that a person who hears the word and then walks away from it and doesn't do what it says is just like a person who looks at their reflection in a mirror and then walks away and forgets what they look like.

That's an absurd illustration, is it not? Doesn't it sound absurd to suggest that a person can look at themselves in the mirror and then walk away and forget what they look like?

Well, James is saying it is equally absurd that you would listen to the word of God proclaimed and not do what it says, if not more absurd, because these are the words for eternal life.

And so we must not be hearers of the word only and not doers of the word or we will deceive ourselves.

We have convinced ourselves into believing that we're saved because we heard the word of God and we said some magic words or whatever else.

We fooled ourselves in that way. We've deceived ourselves. Instead of understanding that true faith in Christ is a continuing process.

It is a growth. There is a maturity that happens here. And it's hard work and it takes time.

And that's something that we just don't want to put into our Christian faith, the time.

Wasn't it good enough that I prayed the prayer and walked the aisle and got dunked in the water? Isn't that all

I have to do? Now, Peter is saying here, you have to confirm your calling and election, growing in these qualities.

And if you don't, you're ineffective and unfruitful. Ineffective and unfruitful, very simply, is another way of saying that you're just not saved.

If you are ineffective and unfruitful in the faith, then you don't have it. Because as James also illustrates, faith without works is a dead faith.

Without works that confirm the calling and election that we have received in Christ, we don't actually have that calling and election.

Paul said to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.

Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves? That Jesus Christ is in you.

Do you not realize that about yourself? Unless, indeed, you fail to meet that test.

It is very important for us as Christians to test ourselves according to the scriptures to see that we are in the faith.

If we practice these qualities and they are increasing and we are growing in them, then we are kept from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. You think also of the illustration of the salt that Jesus gave when he talks about how you are the salt of the earth.

If salt loses its saltiness, what is it good for? Nothing except to be thrown in the dirt and be trampled on by men.

Same concept with unfruitfulness. What good is a fruit tree that does not bear fruit?

Jesus actually said very plainly what's going to happen to that tree. It's going to be cut down and it's going to be thrown into the fire.

And so we must be producers of fruit. We must be salt that is actually salty.

But if salt loses its usefulness, it just gets turned into dirt, gets thrown out into the dirt.

You can't tell the difference between the ground and the salt. And so this urging to increase in these qualities that Peter has listed so that we confirm our calling and election.

Verse 10. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.

For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now you might ask yourself, well, don't we already have that entrance into the eternal kingdom?

Why is Peter suggesting here that we must gain that entrance into the eternal kingdom?

Well, that's not what Peter is saying. Yes, you have entrance into that kingdom. But as Jesus said to his disciples, it is those who endure to the end who will be saved.

Another way that you could word understanding what Jesus was saying to his disciples is those who endure to the end confirm that they have been saved.

So in this concept or this context of confirming your calling and election, if we are growing in fruitfulness, if we are effective in the knowledge of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, then there is provided for us an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our

Lord and Savior. Now, the doctrine of eternal security is a real and true doctrine, according to the scriptures.

Once saved, always saved. Jesus says in John 10, My sheep hear my voice, they know me and they follow me.

And no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one can snatch them out of my

Father's hand. I and the Father are one. And so Jesus talking about how those who are his will always be his.

We won't ever not be his. Read the end of Romans 8 if you want some assurance of this, where Paul talks about that there is nothing seen or unseen, not even life or death, nothing in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our

Lord. If we have been saved, that is a real statement, one that has eternal and lasting value.

You're saved. You're rescued from death. If at any point you fail to be a

Christian or you are no longer a Christian, you renounce the faith, you fall away from God, you were never in Christ to begin with.

You could not have ever called yourselves saved if you're falling right back into a state of being not saved.

Well, then you clearly weren't rescued. You are still dead in your sins and your trespasses.

For those who are in Christ, we are able to say that we were once dead in our sins and our trespasses and never will be again, because God in His great mercy has rescued us from death into life.

It's not that we stopped being sinners, but the stain of sin was no longer on our lives because it is by Christ's atoning sacrifice that we have been cleansed.

And then we confirm this justification that has been given to us in Jesus Christ by living the way that Jesus lived and doing the things that he told us to do.

We confirm that we are his when we do what Jesus did.

And so how important is this to understand? This confirming of our calling and election by these qualities, that by growing in them and increasing, we are kept from being ineffective or unfruitful in the faith.

So I give them to you once again, as we conclude, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self -control and self -control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

Our Lord God, we thank you for the salvation that we have in our

Savior Jesus Christ. Help us to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Direct our eyes heavenward. Let us fix our eyes on the prize, the upward call in Christ Jesus, because we have been raised with Christ.

So help us to seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Lord, help us to set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for we have died.

We are dead to our sins and alive in his righteousness, hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ who is our life appears, then we also will appear with him in glory, for it has been provided to us, an entrance in the eternal kingdom of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We praise you for this, Father, and ask that we would continue to be diligent in confirming our calling and election by maturing in the faith.

In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes.

We feature dozens of videos covering a variety of biblical topics on our website, www .tt

.com. Many of those videos are only 90 seconds long and address subjects like the gospel, election, the trinity, end times, discipline, the church, and much more.

All of these videos are free, available for ministry use. Again, our website is www .tt

.com. And while you're there, send us an email and let us know what this ministry has meant to you.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thanks, Becky. Yes, I have another favor that I would like to ask of you.

On Friday, we were talking about how you can support this ministry, and I mentioned that just by sharing what videos, you're helping to support us.

You're helping to get the word out, and there is a chance that somebody else will find this free resource that could be used in their church.

So just sharing a video on Twitter or Facebook or social media is supporting

When We Understand the Text. But over the weekend, I thought of another way that you could help support this ministry. We are working on putting together a small library in our church.

We have the room cleaned out already. We have shelves put up, but very few books on those shelves.

Would you consider donating a book of a more reformed nature to our library at our church, helping to grow and mature the saints in their understanding of sound doctrine?

Now, it's not something that maybe you'll ever see. Maybe you won't ever set foot in First Southern Baptist Church and be able to check out one of those books, but you're contributing to the needs of the saints, and we would be so appreciative to you if you could do something like that for us.

Our address is, here's where you can send your books to, First Southern Baptist Church, 1220

West 8th Street, Junction City, Kansas, 66441.

And hey, if you're ever through the Junction City, Kansas area, please stop in. We have had people come to our church just driving through because they watched a video online or listened to the podcast.