Month: December 2009

It is good to welcome all of you back to Deeper Waters, where we dive into the ocean of truth. We are doing a Trinitarian Commentary now and have thus far reached the book of 2 Peter. I ask for your continued prayers with what is going on in my own life. There is, of course, the continued need to grow to be more like Christ and truly have the fruit of the Spirit like never before in my life.  I also ask for prayer in my continued financial situation, particularly around these Christmas holidays. Finally, there is another situation that I need to have my character refined in and to get past some issues in, but God knows what is going on. To get to the text, we will be having 2 Peter 2:1-3 shown for the whole context, but our interest lies in verse 1:

¹But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ²Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. ³In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

Peter at the end of the first chapter spoke about the prophets and how their word was made more certain. As an aside, I’d like to be noted that Peter spoke of seeing the transfiguration of Jesus but then went and instead emphasized that the word of the prophets was made more certain. For Peter, the experience only served to further give glory to the Scriptures. The Scriptures did not give glory to the experience. Would that we would learn such a truth today in the church.

However, there were false teachers among the prophets and there will always be false teachers. Today, these are ones who are denying the sovereign Lord who bought them. Once again, the eternal security debate is not what this blog is interested in, but we are definitely interested in the idea of Jesus being described as the sovereign Lord.

The title itself should tell us enough as Peter has been challenging Caesar, even using the term majestic to refer to God in the last chapter and the majesty of Christ. Now, Christ is also being referred to as the sovereign Lord, a title that Ezekiel used to describe the Lord. If you recall from our look at Hebrews, Lord is a stronger title of deity than simply God.

Not also that Jesus is the one who bought them. From what? From the penalty of sin. This means Jesus has the power to deliver someone from sin, a power that resided in YHWH in the Old Testament. Even if a priest could be an instrument to do that, a priest could certainly not be called the sovereign Lord for doing such. We find again that Christ is both priest and king, and of course, he is the true prophet as well.

Since he is sovereign and since he is Lord and since he is able to buy from sin, we have then a strong statement of deity on the part of Peter in describing Christ. Again, this has been consistent with Peter’s letter thus far. It has been noted by historians that Caesar and Christ fared off in the arena of Rome and today, it is Christ who emerged triumphant. It happened so much so that as has been said, we name our sons “Peter” and “Paul” and our dogs “Nero” and “Caesar.” Christ conquered because of his superior nature. He is Lord and God.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters as we prepare to dive into the ocean of truth. I thank you for your prayers as I did have a good improvement today and things have been going quite well. I do however ask for your continued prayers as we are all always in need of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I also ask for your prayers in my financial situation, especially as the Christmas holidays are upon us. Finally, I ask for your prayers for the continued situation that I am in. I mainly seek wisdom and courage. For now, let us go to the blog. Tonight, we’ll be looking at 2 Peter 1:10-11 with a focus on verse 11.

¹⁰Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, ¹¹and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The hope that Peter had for his hearers would that they would come into the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ. It is such a powerful phrase, and it is one that is so easy for we to miss. One of our great dangers with Scripture today is that we are familiar with it. We can read over it and not realize the impact of the words that are being said.

Last time, I wrote about how Peter was making a direct challenge to Caesar by affirming Jesus as God and Savior, an unequivocal reference to the full deity of Jesus Christ. Caesar was the ruler of a kingdom however. Christ, if he is an emperor as well, would be the ruler of a kingdom too and indeed he is.

It could be Peter had Daniel 7:13-14 in mind:

¹³ “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

This is one of the most important passages for understanding who Jesus is and we see the same concept. Jesus is given an everlasting dominion. He is the ruler of a kingdom that will outlast the kingdom of Caesar. Keep in mind that Daniel predicted the rise of Rome and that in the time of Rome, a kingdom would come that would never fail. That is the kingdom of God.

What does this say about Jesus. As the ruler of an everlasting dominion, it fits in with his position as deity. Jesus is the ruler of this kingdom because this kingdom is the renewed creation and Jesus is the Lord of creation. Christians belong in this kingdom and the one they serve is the one he claimed to be, fully God and fully man.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Welcome back everyone to Deeper Waters, hopefully a blog you regularly visit and if you don’t, hopefully you’ll start doing so. Here, we intend to get people diving into the ocean of truth. I ask for your continued prayers as always as I find more work that needs to be done in me on the path of Christlikeness. I also ask for your prayers for my current financial situation. There are some loose ends there that need to be worked out. Finally, there’s prayer for something ongoing at the moment that the Lord knows about and that is all that matters. For now, let us begin the book of 2 Peter and where better to begin than at the first verse, which lo and behold, happens to be an important verse in establishing the deity of Christ.

¹Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,
      To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

This verse has a reference to Jesus Christ as God and savior. The question to ask is if the title in this case does refer to both. In looking at this, it is important for us to note what we spoke of back in the blog on Titus 2:13. That passage also refers to the glorious appearing of our God and savior, Jesus Christ. Where does that mean the appearance of God and the appearance of Jesus Christ, or is the term referring to one person, Jesus Christ, as both God and savior?

This rule is applied here where we have the joining of two nouns with kai and one article. Because of that, Greek grammarians by and large, and definitely the majority, will say that this is a reference to Jesus Christ as God and savior. Now this doesn’t mean that all of them believe Jesus is God and savior as there are many non-Christians who are scholars of the New Testament, but they believe that Peter, or whoever they believe wrote 2 Peter, did believe that Jesus was God and savior.

Not only that, this would have been seen as a challenge to Caesar at the time. To speak of “Our God and Savior” would have been a challenge to Rome, which could be seen in the reference to Babylon if 2 Peter is written to the same audience as 1 Peter. In a challenge to the rule of Caesar, Peter would have been interjecting in instead the rule of Christ.

In other words, the Christians had their own emperor and he was one to whom their true loyalty belonged. Now the Christians weren’t going against the government to go against the government. If the government did right, the Christians could willingly submit without a problem. It was when the government did wrong in forcing Christians to choose between Christ or Caesar that Christians had to place their loyalty to Caesar.

The Caesar would have been seen as deity, but to the Christians, there was only one deity and this deity did reveal himself in the person of Jesus Christ. One could not worship both Jesus and Caesar and Peter wanted to remind his readers of where their true loyalty lay. It was with the one Jesus Christ who was both God and savior, unlike Caesar who had the same title. Jesus was the real deal. Not Caesar. For Peter, there was no question at all. Jesus is fully deity.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. I ask for your continued prayers as there is a lot going on in my life right now and a lot of character I need to have built up. This blogger looks inside a lot of times and finds things that he doesn’t like. I pray that the Holy Spirit will be working in my life to make me more of the man that I need to be. Pray also for me in my current financial situation. I need some loose ends worked out, but I believe God can provide. Anything else that is going on in my life, well God knows. For now, let’s get to 1 Peter 5:1-4.

¹To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: ²Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; ³not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. ⁴And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

Peter is writing to the leaders of the church. Note that he counts himself as simply a fellow elder. This is something we see in the apostles in that they have a great humility. They saw themselves as fellow workers along with the rest of us. While James and John wanted to sit at the right and left side of Christ, we see no more of that after the resurrection.

The leaders of the church are known as shepherds. Historically, God’s people have been seen as sheep and YHWH was the shepherd and he had other shepherds underneath him whose job was to tend to Israel. Today, God’s people also have shepherds in the leaders of the church and those of us who are leaders in some capacity should be cautious with what we do.

However, what is most interesting is the reference to the chief shepherd. In the Old Testament, the chief shepherd would have been YHWH. Peter, being a good Jew, would have known that. However, when he writes to the church, he refers to the chief shepherd as Jesus. The implication is that Peter saw the one who was shepherding Israel as Jesus.

How do we know it’s Jesus? Peter speaks of the appearing of the chief shepherd. We have no reason to think that God the Father ever appears to anyone. I ask the reader to look back at the start of this series to when we did the Angel of the Lord as a Trinitarian precursor. We have texts in the New Testament like John 1:18 and 1 Timothy 6:15-16 that indicate that the Father is not seen. Therefore, the chief shepherd is Jesus and Peter here gives Jesus the position that YHWH had in the New Testament as the leader of the people of God. In Psalm 23, YHWH was the shepherd. In the NT, Jesus is the shepherd. The implication follows for Peter. Jesus is YHWH.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. I ask you all again for your continued prayers. There is a lot going on and mainly, I’m wanting to work on being the man that I need to be. There are many flaws I find in my character that I just pray that the Holy Spirit will do his work and transform me so that I will be a better man. I hope he does so soon, but as the Scriptures say, blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. The Holy Spirit can do it and I need to submit to his work. I also pray for help in financial areas. Meanwhile, let’s go to the text. I want to concentrate on verse 25 of 1 Peter 2:18-25. We’re starting at verse 18 for the full context:

¹⁸Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. ¹⁹For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. ²⁰But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. ²¹To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
²²“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.” ²³When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. ²⁴He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. ²⁵For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

We should not overlook the example that Peter used in referring to Jesus as the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls. He was the one who walked with Jesus and was there no doubt when Jesus spoke of being the good shepherd. The Jewish mindset would have seen that to be a claim to YHWH, especially since in that same passage Jesus said “I and the Father are one.”

Peter doesn’t hesitate to use that same language here. Interestingly, he quotes from Isaiah 53 in order to prove his case. What makes this fascinating is that this passage is the one who speaks of Jesus as a sheep led to the slaughter. This is a theme that we will see an interesting twist on once we get to the book of Revelation.

Our wish at this point is that Jesus is seen as the one in charge of our souls, which is a position that would have belonged to God as God could place a soul in a person or call a soul out and if the account of the witch of Endor actually involved Samuel coming up, could mean that it was Samuel’s soul which God would be in charge of us as well.

Yet if Jesus is the one in this position, then the conclusion is that for Peter, Jesus is YHWH.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. I ask for your continued prayers. There are a lot of changes going on around here and a lot of things that I have to work through. I also would like pray for some financial concerns that I have at the moment. There are numerous requests that I wish to have remain confidential, but we all know that God knows what is on my heart and the best way to work with that. Of course, there is no need to keep confidential my continual prayer for Christlikeness. We are going to move to the text for now and start 1 Peter and we’re going to look at the first two verses.

¹Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, ²who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

One aspect of the New Testament that I have spoken of is Trinitarian passages. These are passages where all three persons of the Trinity are referred to. Peter, the apostle who seemed to take the lead in the group the most, is the one who is giving this greeting, so let us see the understanding of the one who walked so closely with the Lord.

Let’s look at this one. The first aspect that we have is the foreknowledge of God. The foreknowledge of God is shown in places in Isaiah especially where he is said to tell what will happen proving that he already knows what will take place. This is also important for realizing the truth of Bible prophecy. (I am in no way an open theist after all.) Once again however, I will leave it for the people of different perspectives on foreknowledge and free will to work that out for themselves.

The next activity mentioned is sanctification and that was done through the Holy Spirit. This is a consistent theme in the New Testament and is what is really spoken of when the text speaks of being led by the Spirit. The Spirit is what encourages us to be like Christ and develops the fruit of the Spirit in us that is in keeping with the truth of the gospel. Once again, the Spirit plays an essential role in the gospel as the whole of the Trinity does.

This is done for obedience to Jesus Christ by the sprinkling of his blood. The sprinkling would bring to mind purification rituals in the OT done with blood. One would not be baptized in blood of course, but one would have blood sprinkled that would purify them and set them apart for service to God. This is also then pointing to the concept of the priesthood that is seen in 2 Peter. Thus, God has the foreknowledge and the Spirit purifies so that we may live in obedience to Christ. A Trinitarian passage all throughout that teaches us the truth of the gospel.

We shall continue 1 Peter tomorrow.