2 Peter 1:3-11

The writer starts at once, and in a somewhat abrupt and nervous fashion, with the great theme of advance in the spiritual life. He regards this as essential. He takes it for granted that it can be made good only from the standpoint of faith. He exhibits in detail the process of such an advance, and urges it by considerations drawn both from the advantage which it carries with it and the peril and loss involved in its neglect. We can the better understand why he should insist with such rugged force upon the necessity of a constant increase in gracious attainment, and that specially in relation to the knowledge of God, if we are right in supposing that he had in view a spurious kind of knowledge, or gnosis, which developed in the next century into the heresy of the so-called Gnostics or ‘knowing ones.' For that party pretended to reach a religious height from which they looked down in proud pity upon the ordinary life of faith and the ordinary requirements of a growth in grace. Peter uses words as lofty as the loftiest language of that party. He speaks of the destiny of the Christian as nothing short of participation in the Divine nature. He describes in the strongest terms the grandeur and affluence of the gifts conferred by Christ. But he makes both the magnitude and the intention of these gracious endowments the ground of his exhortation to aim at spiritual advance, and the reason why believers should practise all diligence. Though the style seems involved and the grammar irregular, the paragraph is distinguished by the rich elevation of its style, its dignified march, and the orderly progress of its argument.