2 Peter 1:2

2 Peter 1:2. Grace to you and peace be multiplied. So far the opening benediction is exactly the same as in 1 Peter 1:2; see note there.

in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. This addition to the formula adopted in the previous Epistle is in admirable harmony with the scope of the letter. It defines the conditions on which this increase of grace and peace is suspended. These blessings will abound in the readers only as the readers themselves abide and advance in Divine knowledge. The strong, compound term for ‘knowledge' is used here, which meets us so often in Paul's Epistles, particularly in the Pastoral Epistles and those of the Captivity. How characteristic of Paul the use of this word is, appears from these occurrences Romans 1:28; Romans 3:20; Romans 10:2; Ephesians 1:17; Ephesians 4:13; Philippians 1:9; Colossians 1:9-10; Colossians 2:2; Colossians 3:10; 1Ti 2:4; 2 Timothy 2:25; 2 Timothy 3:7; Titus 1:1; Philemon 1:6. It is almost equally characteristic, however, of the present Epistle (chap. 2Pe 1:2-3; 2 Peter 1:8; 2 Peter 2:20). Elsewhere it occurs only in Hebrews (chap. Hebrews 10:26). It means more than simple acknowledgment. It denotes an intenser, more complete and intuitive knowledge than is expressed by the simple noun. At times it gives the idea of the intimate recognition which love takes of its object. ‘It is bringing me,' says Culverwell, ‘better acquainted with a thing I knew before; a more exact viewing of an object that I saw before afar off' (see Trench, sub voce). This intimate ‘knowledge' is also defined as the knowledge not only of God, but of Jesus our Lord; because, as Calvin suggests, it is only by knowing the latter that we can rightly know the former; cf. John 17:3. The phrase ‘Jesus our Lord' occurs only here and in Romans 4:24. This spiritual knowledge, therefore, which brings us into loving acquaintance with God Himself through Jesus our Lord is exhibited as the secret of grace and peace, and is at once opposed here, at the outset of the Epistle, to that unspiritual, pretentious teaching which seems to have given itself out as the perfect knowledge within the circles addressed by Peter. It is possible that the Apostle of the Circumcision had now to cope with the same boastful, vapid, and unpractical speculations which Paul contends with in his Epistles to the Colossians and Timothy.