Tag: Holiness

God’s Promises Are So Much Better Than We Think

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

God has made promises to his people, and they are staggering. The fact that we don’t consider them staggering means either that we haven’t taken them seriously or that we haven’t meditated on the first chapter of 2 Peter in a while.

All Needful Things

Peter begins this letter telling his readers that in his power God “has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” All of these things come “through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence” (2 Pet 1:3).

Think of it—there is nothing pertaining to life and godliness that our heavenly father has withheld. We lack no access, no privilege, no resources to live a life which glorifies God. The vehicle through which these resources come is the “knowledge of [Jesus],” which we should understand as the Scriptures and the testimony of the Holy Spirit.

What Promises!

Peter gets more specific after this, pointing his finger at one category of essential resources for godly living: God’s promises.

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. (2 Peter 1:4)

In context, this verse is full of great encouragement regarding the promises of God. Let’s take a look at five characteristics of these promises.

Precious Promises

God’s promises are precious. By this Peter means that they are of immense value to believers. They fill the bank account of our souls with great riches because they point to what is true and eternal.

When something is precious it is also treasured or cherished. God’s promises are words we should hold close and consider frequently. Rather than keep them in a museum-quality display case, they are meant to be picked up and examined with awe from every angle and in every light.

Very Great Promises

God’s promises are very great. These are no small assurances! God’s promises are vast and sweeping, like a roaring river kicking foam up onto its banks.

I love the emphasis Peter puts on this adjective—God’s promises are not just great, they are very great. They are far better than anything we’d wish for.

His Promises

Perhaps this is obvious, but sometimes what is obvious is useful to state: God’s promises are his. They come from God himself, guaranteed by his name and his word. His promises cannot fail because God cannot fail. God spoke all of these promises, and not a single one was an accident, an exaggeration, or a hastily-made effort to appease. God meant every last word of every promise he has made.

Partake of the Divine Nature

If you doubted that God’s promises were very great, hold onto your hat. Through God’s promises he intends for us to “become partakers of the divine nature.”

This may seem like an unattainable (or even an unintended) plane of existence. On its surface, this isn’t anything I’d long for or request.

But what Peter has in mind is likely echoed elsewhere in Scripture. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that God disciplines his children “that we may share his holiness” (Heb 12:10). John also tells us that “when he appears we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2).

God’s promises won’t make us divine, but they do provide strength and light along the path to growing in divine qualities, like holiness, goodness, and love.

Escape from Corruption

Partaking of the divine nature is not the first result of holding onto God’s promises. Rather, this happens as we escape “the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” (The end of the verse lends weight to linking “partaking of the divine nature” to growing in holiness.)

In their best moments, what Christian doesn’t want to escape the corruption of the world and grow in holiness? If you desire these things, Peter is pointing you to God’s promises. Of all the things that pertain to life and godliness which God has provided, his promises are among the most powerful.

Life Through the Promises

God’s promises are far from the only important aspects of Scripture. But they are vital to our faith, and we ignore them at our own peril.

Because God’s promises are central to our faith and hope, we should take care to identify and cling to them. I plan to discuss both of these aspects of God’s promises in future articles.

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The Nearness of God is Not Always Good News

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

A good portion of modern Christian praise songs emphasize nearness to God. They echo (or, sometimes, quote) Psalm 27:

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)

But we don’t often examine what we’re singing—I know I don’t. In particular, when we read the Bible, we find that in many places being close to God was the exact opposite of a good thing.

The Garden

The first two chapters of Genesis show how familiar Adam and Eve were with being close to God. God made Adam by breathing “into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen 2:7). It’s hard to get much closer than that! The Lord “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden” (Gen 2:15). He brought the beasts and birds to Adam to see if any would be a suitable partner (Gen 2:19). God even performed a delicate surgery on Adam to create Eve (Gen 2:21–22).

But after Adam and Eve fell into sin, everything changed. When Adam and Eve heard God approaching, they “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God” (Gen 3:8). They could no longer be exposed so close to the holy God. This is a jarring contrast to the life they lived up to this point.

While this is not the end of the story, a chasm opened at the Fall. God sent Adam and Eve out of the garden and stationed angels to guard the way back in (Gen 3:23–24). The message was as bright as the angels’ flaming swords: Closeness to God will no longer be easy or automatic.

Passover and Sinai

In many ways, the rest of the Bible is the story of a return to God’s presence. Before the situation is resolved, we see several indicators that God’s presence is not always welcoming.

The Passover was an epic occasion of death in Egypt. The firstborn of every house and every beast was killed in one night. The Israelites were spared if they put lamb’s blood on their doorposts.

I’ve always been struck by the Lord’s role in the slaughter. He says:

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. (Ex 12:12)

God passed over his people, but God was also the one who struck down his enemies. Moses warned the elders of Israel that no one should go outside in the night “for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians” (Ex 12:22–23). As God executed his judgment, he also provided a way for his people to escape.

When the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai, Moses went up the mountain to talk to God. With God at the top of the mountain, the people were not to get too close—anyone who touched the mountain would die (Ex 19:12). The mountain was “wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire” (Ex 19:18). The Israelites were convinced that they could not even hear from God or they would die (Ex 20:19).

God’s burning holiness was again on display here; getting close meant trouble. But there is another glimpse of redemption in this story. “The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was” (Ex 20:21). The people could not go close, but one person went near God for them as a substitute.

Sending Jesus Away

The impulse to stay away from a holy God is not limited to the Old Testament. One of Jesus’s closest friends, in fact, knew he should be far away from the Lord.

After he taught a crowd on the shore from Peter’s boat, Jesus told Peter to put down his nets for a catch. Peter protested, having just finished an unproductive night of fishing. When he relented, his nets nearly burst with fish (Luke 5:1–6).

Peter realized he had doubted Jesus. He fell down at Jesus’s feet and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Peter’s reaction to his sin wasn’t to seek forgiveness—it was to get away from Jesus. Before he followed Jesus as a disciple, Peter knew that his sin disqualified him from being in the company of this man of God.

Brought Near to God

We cannot get too close to fire without being burned, and (left to ourselves) we cannot get near God without suffering his judgment. We deserve this judgment, as we’ve broken his commandments again and again and again.

So why is it that worship songs can exult in being close to God?

It’s Jesus, of course! On our own, we’d have no hope. But we do not go to God on our own—Jesus takes us (1 Peter 3:18). We no longer have sin with us that God must judge, for he took care of that at the cross. And we are not just a blank slate—this wouldn’t be enough to get close to God. Because we have the righteousness of Jesus, because we are adopted as God’s children, we are joyfully welcomed into God’s presence. This is the work of our Savior, to deal with our guilt and to make us worthy of going close to God.

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Links for the Weekend (3/1/2019)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

When God Says ‘No’

Melissa Kruger helps us think about why God seems not to hear us, or why he seems not to care, when he doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want.

I’ve seen the Lord teach me these very lessons by withholding the things I wanted so much. And, yet, when a new “no” is given, I stumble around in the darkness of my understanding, wondering again what the Lord is doing and why he withholds the yes I believe I so desperately need. It’s tempting to believe the lie that a yes from God confirms his blessing, while a no is a form of punishment or heavenly disapproval. Or perhaps, we wonder, does God even hear our desperate cries?

Is Your Smartphone Making You Unhappy?

At The Good Book Company’s blog, Emily Robertson writes about contentment and the comparisons we tend to make when using (and over-using) our phones. An article like this could read like a ten-minute scold, but Robertson points us to Christ and leaves us with hope instead. I appreciate that!

Comparison is not a modern phenomenon. (The phrase, “all comparisons are odious” was recorded as early as the 15th century. And you don’t have to read very far into the Bible to see the destructive outworkings of envy.) But, arguably, this age-old struggle has been intensified in the 21st century by the rise of personal technology and social media.

Your Fight Against Sin Is Normal

Brian Hedges offers hope for saints who are weary in their fight against sin: the conflict is normal, the battle is winnable, and the war is coming to an end.

Athletes speak of hitting the wall when they experience extreme exhaustion due to depleted reserves of glycogen in the liver and muscles. Many believers feel similar spiritually. If you find yourself in an ongoing cycle of three steps forward, two steps back; if your prayers, resolutions, and frustrated attempts at mortification still leave you struggling with the same old sins; if you are weary in the race set before you and feel ready to quit, you’ve hit the wall.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published Sarah Wisniewski’s article, God Is in the Fish. Check it out!

Thanks to Maggie A for helping me round up articles this week!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.