FINDING FULL POTENTIAL

2 Peter - chapter 1 – part 2

8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

10 So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away. 11 Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (NLT)

Peter in a sense reviews his previous advice in his escalating picture of the kingdom lifestyle and affirms that those who follow these steps can’t help but grow in their spiritual life. Their lives, as a result of their commitment, must inevitably be more productive and useful. Here is one of the basic necessities of humanity, Christian or otherwise, to be productive and useful. The most unhappy of individual are usually those for whom life has no purpose or meaning. Although at times we all look for downtime in which we don’t have to apply the usual energies to life, they are more incidental and temporary, before we get back to the real issue of living meaningfully, and for those in the kingdom lifestyle, that means living for Jesus.

He now turns his attention to those who are unwilling to put in the hard yards and may well end up as ignominious failures. They have been unwilling to apply themselves to the process of spiritual growth that Peter has outlined and, as a result, they have failed to develop to their full potential. Like many people they are shortsighted, looking only for immediate and instant gratification, and when that doesn’t eventuate, they simply drop out and go looking for new novelties. Alternately, they choose to deliberately turn a blind eye to the truth and pretend that it does not exist, or has no relevance to them.

The reality for most of us is not that our memory is poor, but rather our forgetfulness is highly functional, and often those important, spiritual occurrences that were crucial and significant to us fade into oblivion. In the Old Testament, there is a continually re-occurring call to remember what God had done for Israel, lest they fall into a vague forgetfulness and no longer remember or value what God had done for them.

The hymn writer completely understood this phenomenon when he wrote:

Tell me the story often

For I forget son soon.

The early due of morning

Has passed away at noon.

The citizen of the kingdom will build into their lifestyle a system of recall, be it through journaling, personal witness etc. to reinforce the goodness of God to them.

Once again Peter comes to his humble appeal to persuade his readers to put in an honest and concerted effort that they may be able, through the sort of had work he has outlined, to validate that they really are members of the royal priesthood in the holy nation. The prerogative of these people is that they have been called and chosen by the creator God to bring into being this new, holy nation, and it may well be that by their dereliction and apathy they are passing up the privilege offered to them. Theirs is now the choice and decision to up their game and prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen.

The gate is still ajar for these lethargic members of the holy nation to turn their game around, and with the promise that if they do so, they will never fall away.  The promise of a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is still on the table. Once again the resolution lies in human choice and decision.