2Peter 1:10-11 - The Full Court Press

2Peter 1:10-11

10-11 Therefore, brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election, for if you do this you will never fall; 11 so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Whatever verse 10 means, it does not mean that our salvation depends upon us. Salvation is of the LORD. But our salvation is evidenced through our character - and that through changed behaviour. And our character (not our personality) is being changed from glory to glory into the image of Christ, if God is at work in us.

The Greek word spoudazo translated "be diligent" has connotations of labour, study and exertion. It is a conscious pressing upon God for the very things talked of in the last few verses. It is a pressing into God for them. It is a laying hold of what God has given us in Christ. It is not making ourselves Christ-like.

I hope you see the difference. In the one, it is human effort that changes us and in the other it is God that changes us because we supplicate and press Him for what is our own by dint His grace in Jesus Christ. It is the process of the revelation of Christ in us. We press into the promises that God has given us because we are His - and God, in His infinite wisdom and timing, grants the fulfillment of them in us.

Be diligent to make your calling sure. Are you truly called of God? Have you been invited to the wedding feast? No one that has not been invited can enter and no one who has not been invited has a garment. So be sure that you have been invited by God and that you have not simply jumped on the bandwagon, followed the crowd or snuck in over the wall. Beware of thinking that you are saved because you go to church, you pray, you know the Bible, you do good things, or you are a nice person.

This verse is not in the Bible for fun. It is not here for you or anybody else to pooh-pooh or to give cursory acknowledgement to. It is certainly not there to ignore. Nothing in the Bible is there without a purpose. It is all God breathed. There are people in every congregation in the land who think they are saved when they are not. They are self-deceived. Don’t be one of them. Examine yourself to see if you are in the faith and be diligent to make your calling sure - that is to be sure you have been called.

And here is a wonderful truth...if you are unsure of your calling, and you hear this message with understanding then you will look for the grace to truly repent and believe, and God will grant it to you, just as He purposed to do in opening your ears to the message.

Be diligent to make your election sure. Firstly, a few words by way of introduction. Election is, was and ever will be the prerogative of God. It is according to God’s will and choice alone. It is not based upon anything we are or do. This is the most universally hated truth in the Bible. It is the ultimate expression of the sovereignty of God (His godness) and the depravity of all men. People, including professing Christians, will acknowledge and profess the sovereignty of God as a given, so long as that truth is never actually applied. But apply it just once and the universal hatred of the human soul for the Lordship of the One True God will come to the fore. We want to act as we please, even though we are mere creatures - but we are outraged at the idea of God acting as He pleases.

You cannot ensure your election, but you can be sure you are one of God’s elect. It is not necessarily a one time thing. The way to be sure is to keep pressing in for the grace to grow in Christ. Stop pressing and you will lose your assurance. Your assurance, but not necessarily your salvation. But, stop pressing and you may discover you were fooling yourself into thinking you had been born again, when you had not. It is evocative of the picture of the donkey and the carrot on a stick. It is a continual falling into God. So long as we are falling into Him - so long as we are resting on the everlasting arms, so long as our faith and hope is in Christ alone - for our sanctification as well as our justification - then we can be assured that we are elect of God.

Let us examine ourselves. Is there evidence of Christ in us? Are we growing in grace? Is our character being conformed to His? These matters are too important to brush off without stopping to examine them. Your eternal soul is too valuable to trifle with. What can a man give in exchange for it? So go, sell all that you have, and buy the field in which you have discovered treasure. Press in relentlessly and diligently and you will know that you are both called and elect of God. Ignore the message and you will be unsure about the most important question in the universe for you.

If you do so you will never fall. You will never fall fatally. You will still make mistakes in choices. You will still commit sin. But the one looking to Christ looks to Him for correction of his choices and for training in righteousness. He does not bury his talent in the ground in fear of making an error. God isn’t interested in standing over you with a big stick waiting for the smallest possible mis-step because he relishes the idea of whacking you one. He is much more likely to whack you one when you refuse to apply the grace and gifts given to you simply because you think of Him in that way. And the one looking to Christ will look to Christ even from out of the midst of his sin - from the self-dug pit in which he is wallowing in torment.

So the "never falling" here refers to a permanent shipwreck. If you are pressing heavenward by the grace of God, then you cannot fall earthward, even if you are bumbling and making all kinds of mistakes while you are pressing. It is not the errors that will kill you - it is the not pressing into God. Luke warmness will result in the spewing out of them that abide in it. Absolute coldness will evidence that there was no true spark to start with. Be sure.

... so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If we are always growing in grace, and the evidence abounds in and through us, then we shall be great fruit-bearers as we enter heaven. Of the few that will be saved, some will bear more fruit than others and some will be saved, but as if by fire. Their fruits (works) will be burned up, though they themselves will be saved.

Pressing into Christ to make one’s calling and election sure will provide benefits not only here on earth - in our Christian walk - but, because of our walk, will have great benefit for us in the eternal realm. I have to confess to being personally uncomfortable with this teaching. Not unbelieving - just uncomfortable. In my hyper-spirituality I don’t want my motivation in anything to be what I can get out of it. I am too "good" for that. I want it all to be about Christ. But, in reality, what really motivated me to want to be saved in the first place. It was a selfish motive. I wanted to be preserved from my situation, my condition and my condemnation. So I am not as "selfless" as I pretend to be.

But I cannot yet in my mind utterly divorce the idea of striving for rewards from the worldly concept of competition. This is surely not what God has in mind. The heavenly runner runs against himself - not the other runners. He is striving to be the best he can be, by appropriating the life of His Saviour to do His will, regardless of how others are doing. The standard for all is Christ. All is done unto Him. All is wrought in Him. That is the right picture. Our heavenly rewards are based not on how we do compared to others, but what we make of Jesus Christ. And this is an intensely personal, deeply realized individual relationship in the unfolding of each person’s salvation.

In the end we will arrive commended for some things done that we had given no great importance in our minds, and rebuked for other things we believed were of great service and spirituality, but which were quite unimportant to our Lord. It’s fearful and humbling to know these things.