2 Peter 1.3

v 3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

The godly life that man is enabled to live as a believer is given, not in part, but in whole by God’s miracle, the revelation of his Name, and the call of his Word. To this, nothing can be contributed before the movement of Grace and salvation (righteousness to earn salvation), nor following (righteousness to repay the price of salvation); everything we need for the living in him and by him and for him is given to us, which is to the believer’s great profit for on his own man will never merit salvation, nor have repaid it in like. This sufficient gift from God, to live the godly life in God and with God in us, is still further from the limited faculties of man in that it is something God already has given; the miracle to suffice for the entirety of the sojourn of man’s life as the now-believer was already provided in the moment, and this not a moment of man’s life, but a moment before. The moment wherein all that which is needed for a godly life is delivered is the moment the knowledge of him who called us, an understanding hidden from the wise and learned as it came only by the reality of Jesus Christ the Son of God on the cross in place of each individual man, is revealed to each individual man as to little children (Matthew 11.25).

How can the man, now a believer in the fullness of God revealed by fulfillment of the Word of God started in the law and the prophets and the psalmists and completed in the Son of God coming in the flesh to die in the flesh that man’s life of sin in the flesh might be put to death, both believe this is the miracle of God and that he may add to the knowledge of him who called by his own working? Man is quite inventive, quite apt to speculation and fantasy. Man can lie with inherited and learned skill of his father, the devil, who when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8.44). Man certainly can add to God’s Word, and can invent new forms to express his cherished knowledge of good and evil, a prize so sought it was deemed worth the price of man’s likeness and nearness to God. And were the progression of maturity in faith anything related to the exercise of man’s latent and natural skills, it is certain that the product would be a mix of God’s Truth and man’s hyperbole, God’s sober Sovereignty and man’s inventiveness by excuse of ignorance. No, God’s will was that his revelation would not be the prize of man’s wisdom or learning, but a gift of Grace by his own glory and goodness, that it should stay pure and stay a Glorification of God alone. Were the Glorification of any but God, the Name declared would include that other than God, and the fulness of his name no longer would be what is declared. Christ publicly praises God the Father for his will to reveal himself by his own glory and goodness to those who unquestionably are receiving the gift they have not earned and appreciate it as a child who appreciates the life given them and sustained in them by their parents.

Accepting that man should not be attempting to add to God’s Name by man’s own revelations and speculations, what then makes that which God has given sufficient to deliver a godly life in the believer? It is sufficient by his divine power, that this revelation is not a shallow kinetic event in the history of flesh and time and space, but is a moment that was foreordained from the moment the Word of God uttered Creation into existence, and which is the fulfillment of this same Word by which Creation is formed. How is the miracle of Jesus Christ so perfectly coherent within the flesh, within history, within the heart of men that even the uninitiated may come to an absolute faith by his call, but by his Word of life being the same Word which formed flesh and draws out history and is the highest expression of love. Christ is so accessible because he is the Word which formed Creation, and yet he is no where within Creation because he is the ultimate call to Unity which is not delivered until he returns in Glory. The Son of God is the Word that calls Creation to be, and the Word that calls fallen Creation to be forgiven, but his Word is not in the created. The Son of God’s Word calls the created to be the new creation; because flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit, he calls flesh to become Spirit by being born again (John 3.3–6). How then has God called man that this miracle can be? He has called us by his own glory and goodness, and as such, with understanding of God’s glory revealed by sending his Son, and submitting to God’s goodness revealed by this means of Grace to provide faith and salvation as a gift, man takes joy in what he can not fully understand, for it is the working of a power and movement he can not have experience with, otherwise than by this call of God.

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