Ez. 35-36
God had gloriously redeemed His people out of slavery to Egypt. He then led them through the wilderness and gave them possession of a great land occupied by other nations, miraculously driving out those nations before His people. He had taken them from nothing and made them a great people. But God’s people turned their backs on Him and followed in the ways of those other nations. And so God’s judgment and wrath came down on them and He exiled them out of their land.
What did the surrounding nations think about all of that? Based on God’s prophesied judgments against them, they were not the least bit compassionate toward Israel and Judah or reverent of God. Perhaps they even saw the devastation of Israel and Judah as a failure on God’s part. God said of His people, “when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of His land’” (Ez 36:20). He had a plan to give this land to His redeemed people, but it had failed. God’s people were scattered and His land laid desolate, theirs for the taking.
Well, newsflash – God’s plan didn’t fail. His plan was and is for Him to be our God and us His people. He knew from the start that both sides of that equation were on Him, but He needed all of us – those who are His and those who aren’t – to know it too. And so He said, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations…I will vindicate the holiness of my great name…and the nations will know that I am the LORD.” (Ez 36:22-23). Ultimately, He did this through Jesus, who is our heart of flesh and who puts God’s Spirit within us. And this was His plan all along.
2 Pet. 1
Because we know Christ, meaning we have an established and intimate relationship with Him, we have “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4b). Wow – let that one sink in! Because of Christ, we are given the nature of God in place of our own corrupt desires. That’s HUGE!!
But what does it mean? Peter walks us through it. And it starts with faith, which is, of course, what established our nature changing relationship in the first place. Because relationships are living things, they are always changing. If we don’t make an intentional effort to nurture them so that they will improve and deepen, they will, like all neglected living things, die out. And so we are to practice and build up this new nature we have been given, building on our faith to produce other characteristics of God.
Peter gives a list of some of these characteristics that we are to pursue in our lives. I looked at several different translations, including The Message, to get a better sense of what each word means. The list is as follows:
- goodness / moral excellence / good character / virtue
- knowledge / spiritual understanding
- self-control / alert discipline / temperance
- perseverance / passionate patience / patience / endurance / steadfastness
- godliness / reverent wonder
- mutual affection / brotherly kindness / warm friendliness / brotherly affection
- love / generous love / charity
That is quite a challenge! But remember, we have been given the heart of Christ and the Spirit of God to help us overcome ourselves. And Peter encourages us with two additional promises. “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” (2 Pet 1:8). And, “if you practice these qualities you will never fail” (2 Pet 1:10b).