2 Peter 1

2nd Fruit. The unction of the Spirit (1 John 2:20): You have an unction from the holy one. This unction or anointing is nothing else but the work of sanctification in the heart, whereby the Spirit makes us partake of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Such as speak of the philosop…

Quest. But is it not said, that we are made partakers of the divine nature? Resp. By divine nature there, is meant divine qualities (2 Peter 1:4). We are made partakers of the divine nature, not by identity or union with the divine essence, but by a transformation into the divin…

This is good, to grow out of conceit of oneself. 2. The right manner of growth is to grow proportionably, when a Christian grows in one grace as well as another (2 Peter 1:5). To grow in knowledge but not in meekness, brotherly love, good works, this is not the right growth; a t…

When a man adopts another for his son and heir, he may put his name upon him, but he cannot put his disposition into him; if he be of a morose rugged nature, he cannot alter it. But whom God adopts he sanctifies: He does not only give them a new name, but a new nature (2 Peter 1…

1. The first benefit flowing from Sanctification is assurance of God's love. 2 Peter 1:10: Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Sanctification is the seed, assurance is the flower which grows out of it: assurance is a consequent of Sanctification.

Thus faith is the master-wheel, it sets all the other graces running. 3. As faith is the grace which God honors to justify and save: thus, indeed, it is precious faith, as the apostle calls it (2 Peter 1:1). The other graces help to sanctify, but it is faith that justifies (Roma…

9. God shows his mercy in sanctifying us (Leviticus 20:8): I am the Lord that sanctify you. This is the partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). God's Spirit is a Spirit of consecration; though it sanctifies us but in part, yet in every part (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Secondly, our subjection to his will. 1. Our holiness stands in our suitableness to the nature of God: Hence the saints are said to partake of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), which is not a partaking of his essence, but his image. Herein is the saints' holiness, when they are t…

The image of Diana was had in veneration by the Ephesians, because they did suppose it fell from Jupiter (Acts 19:35). This book then of the Holy Scripture is to be highly reverenced and esteemed, because we are sure it came from Heaven (2 Peter 1:21). The two Testaments are the…

2. In the kingdom of Heaven there is a glorious fruition of all good. Had I as many tongues as hairs on my head, I could not fully describe this; I may say as (Judges 18:9-10), Heaven is called, The excellent glory, (2 Peter 1:17). I may as well span the firmament, or drain the…

Though it takes not away the life, yet the love of sin. 2. A positive part, Vivification, which is the spiritual refining of the soul, which in Scripture is called a renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2), and a partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). The priests in the law no…

This grace of faith is Sanctissimum humani pectoris Bonum; of all others the most precious rich faith, and most holy faith, and faith of God's elect. Hence it is called precious faith (2 Peter 1:1). As gold is the most precious among the metals, so is faith among the graces.

That is the natural man coming out of the wilderness of sin, perfumed with all the graces of the Spirit. The new creature must needs be glorious, for it partakes of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). A soul beautified with holiness, is like the firmament bespangled with glittering…

Vers. 4. So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed into, &c. 2 Pet. 1:21. For the Prophecy came not in old time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. It is evident upon the first consideration, that there is not any thing…

But that which nextly and most properly gives us the advantage and encouragement to believe in Christ, is that special revelation which God has been pleased to make of him, in which revelation he gives us to understand, that as he is a complete and all sufficient Savior, so he i…

To perform duties with the inward man half awake and half asleep, as it were; to pray as if we prayed not — as on the contrary we are to use the world as if we used it not — to do the work of the Lord negligently: this provokes God to absent himself, as he did there in Song of S…

Therefore further know that the state of one that fears God and obeys him may be such as he may have no comfortable light or remembrance of what grace he formerly had. 2 Peter 1:9: one that has true grace in him only lacks the exercise of it (for I take it that place is to be un…

These two persons, Isaac & Ishmael, are two types of these two sorts of people whom God doth elect, and reject: Isaac representeth those that are chosen to salvation, who become the true members of God's Church; and Ishmael is a type of those that are rejected. Now in regard of…

In the new testament we have a worthy commandment for this purpose; Saint Paul having instructed and taught Timothy in the ways of godliness and religion, charges him, that what things he had heard and learned of him, the same he should deliver to faithful men, which should be a…

We look for new heavens and a new earth, according to his promise. These be, as Saint Peter calls them, great and precious promises, 2 Peter 1:4. And surely it must be a great and precious faith, that can constantly believe these.

(2) The Lord Christ intercedes that this faith may never fail, or be utterly lost (John 17:8, 11, 15, &c.). (3) The power of God is engaged in the preservation of it (2 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:5; Ephesians 1:19, 20). (4) The promises of the covenant are expressly multiplied to this…

This tabernacle whereby he came an high priest, was his own humane nature. The bodies of men are often called their tabernacles (2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Peter 1:14). And Christ called his own body the temple (John 2:19).

That which he there ascribes to their persons, here he attributes to their works. These Peter calls men's old sins; namely, which they lived in before their conversion (2 Peter 1:9): [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], forgetting that he was purged from his old sins. He has respect to…

[⟨in non-Latin alphabet⟩], We render and: and we desire; but yet, or moreover. The same with what is more largely expressed (2 Peter 1:5), [⟨in non-Latin alphabet⟩], and besides all this, besides what is past. [⟨in non-Latin alphabet⟩], to manifest, that is, evince it to all by…

I shall not give their reasons why it is so, because they are certainly mistaken in their observation. For both is the promise on the one hand mentioned with respect to them, as (Hebrews 11:39), and the promises frequently with respect to us (2 Corinthians 7:1; 2 Peter 1:4). The…

1. It is God alone who promises. He alone is the Author of all Gospel promises; by him are they given to us (2 Peter 1:4; Titus 1:1). Hence in the sense of the Gospel, this is a just periphrasis of God, He who has promised.

The world without the Gospel is the kingdom of Satan; [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] (1 John 5:19). The whole of the world, and all that belongs to it, in distinction and opposition to the new creation, is under the power of the wicked one, the Prince of the Power of Darkness, and…

As Cantilces 6:12. The Word of God is light (2 Peter 1:19). And one principal use of it, to us, is to give us light: even spiritual light, and spiritual discerning of spiritual things (Psalms 19:8 and 119:130).

And we read of the Spirit of wisdom, and of revelation (Ephesians 1:17). The word indeed is full of light (2 Peter 1:19): it is a light that shines &c. But the misery is, our minds are full of darkness: we walk in the thick, dark shades of our natural blindness, until God call u…

The Promises are the Breasts of the Gospel; and is not the Breast for the good of the Infant? They are called Precious Promises, 2 Peter 1:4. They are as Aquavitae to a soul that is ready to faint.

Quintus Curtius writes of one, who digging in his Garden was called to be King. Thus God calls us to Glory and Virtue, 2 Peter 1:3. First, to Virtue, then to Glory.

Yes, undoubtedly. And yet this is the spiritual madness that takes place everywhere among men: for God has prepared for us two houses, one is this our body which we bear about us, which is a house of clay, as Job says (Job 4:19), "We dwell in houses of clay whose foundation is d…

True piety sheds an excellency upon a person, as the sun imparts a luster to the stars. The righteous man has God's name written upon him (Revelation 3:12) and partakes of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Which is not by a transubstantiation into the Divine Essence, but by a tra…

3. A righteous man has more excellent promises belong to him; what a sinner has, is rather by providence than by virtue of a promise; the saints are called heirs of the promise (Hebrews 6:17). The promises are precious (2 Peter 1:4). They are the beams of the Sun of Righteousnes…

It is an holy calling, because of the effect and purpose of it: man's calling may put dignity and honor upon us, but it cannot infuse grace; it may change our condition, but not our hearts. It is an heavenly calling, because of the author of it, God by his Spirit; and because of…

Again, works are to be done in regard of men: that our neighbor may be helped in worldly things — Luke 6:38; that he may be won by our example to godliness — 1 Peter 3:14; that we may prevent in ourselves the giving of any offense — 1 Corinthians 10:32; that by doing good we may…

When a man has a faith, that does him no good, that he is never the better for; the faith that brings no life into the heart, no quickening spirit into the soul; but a man is the very same after he has believed, as he was before; dead to all good works; when there is no working…

For it was not the lot of any of those Primitive Christians (of whom the Holy Ghost here speaks this) [He has wrought us for this thing] that they should be in that manner changed, and so enter into glory: but the contrary. For they all, and all saints since for these 1600 years…

Hence Mount Sinai might not be touched (Exodus 19). And upon this account the mount where Christ was transfigured is called the holy mount (2 Peter 1:18), but this holiness continued only while that extraordinary presence continued, there is no more holiness in Mount Sinai, or i…

According to the measure of our delight in the enjoyment is our grief at the loss of these things. The apostle links the two graces of temperance and patience together in the precept (2 Peter 1:6). And it is very observable how intemperance and impatience are inseparably linked…

All the corruption in the world arises from lust in us, not from the object which God in his providence presents to us. (2 Peter 1:4) The corruption that is in the world through lust. The creature is from God, but the abuse of it from corruption.

Beyond experience, God himselfe threatens death to Adam, as the greatest evill; The day that you eatest of it, you shall dye the death (Genesis 3). Now all that live this life are living men, and have all things pertaining to life (2 Peter 1:2); they have all that pertaines to l…

Secondly, whoever were the pen-men of the Word, it is I that write it, I take it upon my self. The Word is so much his that God claims not only the truths that are in the Word, but the very ordering for the words; and in (2 Peter 1:21) it is said of holy men, they spake as they…

But you will say, That we must not look to it more than if God should reveal any thing to us, suppose it were a voice of God from Heaven. We have warrant to have regard to the written Word of God more than the voice of God from Heaven (2 Peter 1:19). There it's spoken of the voi…

It had advanced so far, that is, as to extend to all flesh, with only Noah excepted (ver. 8, vi. 1). He, moreover, "was a preacher of righteousness" (2 Peter 1:5). In whose ministry the Spirit of Christ "strove with the rebellious" (1 Peter 1:19), for a hundred and twenty years…

VII. For Noah was Saturn. He was the greatest herald of righteousness among the antediluvians (2 Peter 1:5), and the contempt shown to his warnings was followed by the dreadful destruction of the human race. Therefore, so long as his sons and grandsons either stood in awe of his…

We have indeed granted above that the theology of sinners in some sense may be called evangelical. Even as that theology was administered in whatever manner, its primary author was the Son of God Himself — the Spirit of Christ moving the holy men who declared it (1 Peter 1:11 an…

Second, he who is imbued with true theology "is light in the Lord" (Ephesians 5:8); being called, that is, "out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9; Ephesians 4:21-24). But notwithstanding that other science, he in whom it inheres is blind (2 Peter 1:9), and darke…

Furthermore: the things that are said on the one hand about all the unregenerate, and on the other about the communication of this theology, are such as to exclude them entirely from all communion with it; they cry out, indeed: "Every one of you is a stranger." They are "blind,"…

Theology as a complex of spiritual gifts — Extraordinary or ordinary gifts — Ordinary gifts peculiar to the ministry or common to all — Christ the bestower of all gifts (Psalm 68:19; Acts 2:33; Ephesians 4:8) — The Hebrew word signifies both to receive and to give — Christ the a…