The Apostle Peter
Peter and John were the first to initiate an organized gospel mission, beginning in Acts 2. They routinely preached together, so the natural flow of the epilogue to John’s gospel lead to Peter’s two epistles.
To read the epilogue Gospel of John” Rumor Put to Rest
From the blog
2 Peter 3: Benediction
After delivering his blockbuster vision, Peter finished his letter with words of encouragement and exhortation.
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2 Peter 3: New Heavens and a New Earth
not that many people know the Apostle Peter also had a heavily eschatological message.
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2 Peter 3: Thief in the Night
Necessarily, thieves do not announce their expected time of arrival, as that would be counterproductive. In the same way, Jesus’s return is certain and imminent, but kept under wraps.
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2 Peter 2: Peter’s Oracle
In Peter’s mind, the creation of the world and the judgment of the Flood acted are proofs of God’s impending judgment by fire.
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2 Peter 2: Actual Versus Potential
It seems regeneration is a combination resulting from the organic intersection of God’s divine choice and action, and our own receptivity and reciprocal action.
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2 Peter 2: Four Soils, One Harvest
The whole point of Jesus’s parable about the sower and the soil was for the farmer to have a harvest. The importance of the seed taking root, growing full heads of grain, and being harvested was the key.
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2 Peter 2: Predetermined? Or Free?
Peter took it in stride that all human beings are enslaved—either to God in Christ, or to Satan and darkness. The apostles taught there was no middle ground. Our question today, however, particularly in the west, and even more particularly in such places as the United States, is, “How much free will do humans actually…
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2 Peter 2: Cain and Korah
This last part of chapter 2 opens up much-discussed topics: human freedom and that grey area between claims of faith and falling away from faith.
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2 Peter 2: Balaam’s Revenge
It is an exact corollary to what Peter—and Jude—were speaking in such strong terms against. It was the Gnostic cancer, threatening to infect the entire church.
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2 Peter 2: Balaam’s Oracles
Maybe the catch word for us, as it surely was for Peter’s readers, who knew this story very well, is
Have No Fear.
Even despite mistakes, wrong choices, sin, and anything else, nothing can derail God’s plans for God’s people.
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2 Peter 2: Balaam the Mountebank
As surprising as it might be for you and I to hear a donkey speak, Balaam seems to have taken it in his stride, for he answered his donkey, as though this were a perfectly ordinary part of his day.
It is actually more astonishing that Balaam should have answered in the way he did!
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2 Peter 2: Balaam the Seer
Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. But Balaam’s pride was in his way, his confidence that he could manipulate Almighty God into cooperating with Balaam’s greed. Balaam could not see God.
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2 Peter 2: When Corruption Completely Corrupts
These were newish Christians, still in the early stages of having their faith anchored in truth. What a precarious time it was for the first century church.
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2 Peter 2: Righteous? Really?
It complicates things, does it not? When scripture specifically describes Lot and Noah as righteous, then carefully records their drunkenness and sexual deviance.
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2 Peter 2: Lot and His Wife
All of us are shaped by the culture we grow up in, and Lot’s wife and family were no different. Though Lot knew God, it seems he had little influence on his family or the society he kept.
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2 Peter 2: Sodom and Gomorrah
Now, Peter would present his second and third examples, God’s cleansing the whole earth of abject wickedness, yet rescuing the tiny remnant of righteous ones.
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2 Peter 2: Fallen Angels
There would be a time of corruption and villainy, but then would come God’s decisive judgment in ways that would summarily dispense with the wicked and would rescue the innocent.
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2 Peter 2: Counterfeit Prophets
the wolves will not be sheep. They will only seem to be sheep, that is the fundamental underlying truth of what Jesus was saying. They will be wolves -appearing as- sheep.
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2 Peter 1: Morning Star
What is fascinating about this particular code word is that it originally queued Satan, as depicted by the prophet Isaiah.
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2 Peter 1: Prophetic Word
Prophets—and notably Peter—did not write their private opinions, they wrote what they were given by the Spirit of God.
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2 Peter 1: This is My Son, the Beloved, Listen To Him
As the apostles described it, Jesus is the image of the invisible God. The Lord is pleased to have all God’s fullness dwell in Jesus. Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of God’s being.
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2 Peter 1: Transfiguration
Jesus’ glory was not reflected light, he was radiating light from within himself. He was a man, yet from his inner being flowed the shekinah glory of Jehovah God.
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2 Peter 1: How To Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
Peter wrote–in a manner of speaking–that the only way to have your cake is first to eat it.
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2 Peter 1: Add To Your Faith
Peter teaches us to hold two truth loosely together–we have everything we need from God, it is now our responsibility to use it well.
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1 and 2 Peter: Between Letters
The second century church accepted this document as having come from Peter’s hands, and almost unanimously accepted Peter’s second letter as well (and, of course, both were included in the canon of scripture).
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2 Peter 1: Born Bondman
Peter was not only the slave of God, but a trained and highly skilled apostle. Here is lowest humbling and highest exaltation braided together.
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1 Peter: Tidy Ups
Just as Jesus was the example for the believers in Peter’s first century world, so Jesus is for us today. As free people, let us hupotasso one unto the other, for Christ’s sake, that God may be glorified.
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1 Peter 5: From Babylon
With the help of Silvanus, who would personally deliver apostle’s letter, Peter concluded his teaching with greetings from those who were with him, a final instruction to extend the love of Christ to each other, and a prayer they would experience the peace Jesus gives.
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1 Peter 5: Prowling Lion
Now Peter closed his letter with words of reassurance and a bracing up of courage. You are not alone! God is with you, I (Peter) am with you, and all the saints are with you in spirit.
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1 Peter 5: Grace to the Humble
voluntary, and their yielding to the teaching and shepherding of the elders was to be willing.
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1 Peter 5: Love, Generosity, Humility
“Whoever would elevate themselves will be brought low, and whoever would lower themselves will be lifted up.” –Jesus
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1 Peter 5: Presbyter and Episcopate
The sense of hierarchical governance and rule are completely wrong in the church setting.
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1 Peter 4: The Path of Suffering
Participating in Christ’s suffering because we follow in Christ’s footsteps is actually a sign of the Spirit’s seal, a mark of authenticity that we ar genuinely joined with Jesus.
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1 Peter 4: Manifold Grace of God
There are three basic things Peter emphasized in this passage for you and I to do as we interact with each other: pray, love fervently, and make our hospitality cheerful.
And there is one thing God calls you and me to stop doing: living in the identity we used to have before we came to…
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1 Peter 4: Have Done With Carousing
God asks no more of believers than was asked of God’s own Son, and our suffering also has purpose, glory, and blessing in it.
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1 Peter 3: Baptism of the Flood
As a life-long waterman, Peter may have preached often using the metaphors of Noah’s ark and the Flood as symbolic for salvation through Jesus.
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1 Peter 3: Spirits in Prison
Peter drew from imagery that could portray the kind of fearless faith, godly character, and much-maligned yet God-affirmed lifestyle that he was seeking to encourage. Noah and his family of eight were a tiny remnant of faithful people in a very hostile world.
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1 Peter 3: Do Not Fear?
The ink in Peter’s quill was metaphorically drawn from his own suffering and sacrifice. He wrote about fear and courage because he was face-to-face with it.
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1 Peter 3: Repay Evil With Good
We may not be able to stop evil, harm, and pain from entering our lives. Corruption and death are still realities. But we can choose to respond in the Spirit of Christ, a supernatural response that is first the result of God’s divine work of transformation within, and is also our willingness to allow that…
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1 Peter 3: The Example of Sarah
I have learned much about the importance of good translation. IN today’s text, the meaning of words makes all the difference in understanding the passage.
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1 Peter 3: Living the Word
Peter’s instructions to Christians husbands and wives married to those who do not share their faith is a continuation of his them of living honorably.
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1 Peter 2: Willing Cooperation
those who have been born anew, who have been born from above, have a higher calling, an eternal perspective. Our willing cooperation with human authorities displays the unlimited grace and mature liberty we now have in Christ.
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1 Peter 2: A Chosen People
You and I, by virtue of our new birth, our birth from above, have become citizens of the kingdom of light.
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1 Peter 2: Peter the Rock
Believers are to see themselves as ones hewn from God, as living rock with a special unity, built upon the Cornerstone of Christ, and as a priesthood whose purpose was to serve and glorify God, remembering his own vivid experience of being named a rock of faith by Jesus.
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1 Peter 2: Living Stone
It is apt, in light of Matthew 16:13-19, that Peter would use the metaphor of living stones fitted to Christ the cornerstone and capstone.
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1 Peter 1: Spiritual DNA
Our spiritual DNA is now from above, and as we live in faith, by faith in Jesus, we experience Jesus’ faithfulness in us and to us; we grow and mature into our new being, a being of love.
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1 Peter 1: Prophetic Mystery
Worship and praise are the natural overflow of God’s perspective, for you and I can experience joyful confidence and triumphant thanksgiving in the movement and purposes of God.
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1 Peter: Elected in Love
If you are feeling a heavy load, or weathering a tempest, then you will be able to resonate with something of what the first century church was enduring.
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About Me
My passion for the Bible began when I was eight or nine years old, somewhere in there, when on occasion my dad would take me to synagogue, where he sang. I remember watching the men in synagogue pray the words of scripture, murmuring and weeping, lovingly touching and kissing the Torah, and I wished I could read what they were reading.
Imagine, then, my wonder when I was given a Bible of my own!
