2 Peter 1:4

διʼ ὧν. Reference is to δόξῃ καὶ ἀρετῇ (so Kühl, Dietlein, Wiesinger, Brückner, Mayor) ἐπαγγέλματα = “promised blessings”. No doubt what 2 Peter has chiefly in view is the particular comprehensive ἐπάγγελμα of His Second Coming (cf. 2 Peter 3:4, ἐπαγγελία and 2 Peter 3:13). The Parousia will be the vindication of all moral and spiritual effort. Christ promised forgiveness to the sinful, rest to the weary, comfort to the sad, hope to the dying and life to the dead. If the reference adopted above of διʼ ὧν is correct, the sense would be that in the character and deeds of the Incarnate One, we have a revelation that is itself a promise. The ἐπαγγέλματα are given, not only in word but also in deed. The very life of Christ among men, with its δόξα and ἀρετή is itself the Promise of Life, and the Parousia expectation is also a faith that He lives and reigns in grace, having “received gifts for men”. δεδώρηται. Passive, see note on 2 Peter 1:3. ἵνα διὰ τούτων … φύσεως. τούτων refers to ἐπαγγέλματα. The hope and faith kindled in us by the promises are a source of moral power. “The history of the material progress of the race is the history of the growing power of man, arising from the gradual extension of his alliances with the forces which surround him.… He arms himself with the strength of the winds and the tides. He liberates the latent energy which has been condensed and treasured up in coal, transforms it into heat, generates steam, and sweeps across a continent without weariness, and with the swiftness of a bird.… Moving freely among the stupendous energies by which he is encompassed, he is strong in their strength, and they give to his volitions powerless apart from them a large and effective expression. The history of man's triumphs in the province of his higher and spiritual life is also the history of the gradual extension of his alliance with a Force which is not his own.… In Christ we are ‘made partakers of the divine nature' ” (Dale, Atonement, pp. 416, 417). θεία φύσις is originally a philosophic term, cf. Plat. Symp. ii. 6, Philo (ed. Mangey), ii. pp. 51, 647; ii. 22, 143, 329, 343. θεῖος is found in a papyrus of 232 A.D. = “imperial” (Deissmann, op. cit. p. 218, note 2). Probably 2 Peter is here again making use of a current religious expression (cf. note on θεία δύναμις, 2 Peter 1:3). ἀποφυγόντας … φθορᾶς. The aorist participle is used of coincident action. Moral emancipation is part of the κοινωνία θείας φύσεως. The idea of participation in the Divine Nature is set between the two pictures, one of hope, τὰ τίμια ἡμῖν καὶ μέγιστα ἐπαγγέλματα, the other of despair, τῆς ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἐν ἐπιθυμίᾳ φθορᾶς. The way to God is through the Redemption of Christ. The approach to God is an “escape,” and not an act of intellectual effort. φθορά in philosophic writers is the counterpart of γένεσις, cf. Plat. Rep. 546A, Phaed. 95E. Aristot. Phys. 5, 5, 6. It expresses not sudden but gradual dissolution and destruction. The scriptural meaning alternates between destruction in the moral, and in the physical sense. In the N.T. the significance is physical, in 1 Corinthians 15:42; 1 Corinthians 15:50; Colossians 2:22, Galatians 6:8, 2 Peter 2:12; moral here, as in 2 Peter 2:19; Romans 8:21. Man becomes either regenerate or degenerate. Either his spiritual and moral powers are subject to slow decay and death, the wages of sin (ἐν ἐπιθυμίᾳ), or he rises to full participation in the Divine. ἐν ἐπιθυμίᾳ, a compact phrase. The corruption consists in ἐπιθυμία, which may be interpreted in the widest sense of inordinate affection for earthly things. ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ; cf. Romans 8:21. φθορά becomes personified as a world-wide power to which all creation including man is subject. In Mayor's edition there is a valuable study of φθορά and cognates (pp. 175 ff.). The idea contained in φθορά, moral decay, is illustrated in Tennyson's “Palace of Art,” and “Vision of Sin”; also in Byron, e.g., “Stanzas for Music”.