2 Peter 3:18

2 Peter 3:18

Divine Grace and Human Effort.

I. Whenever we have to consider any joint action of God and man, we are in danger either of thinking of God to the exclusion of man, or of man to the exclusion of God. If we think of the Bible as a Divine book, as given by the Spirit of God, we dwell upon the Divine element in it, until we almost forget that all the writers of these books were human beings like ourselves, until all the reality of the human side of the book fades away; and we forget that the love of John, and the logic of Paul, and the fervour of Peter, and the rapt, visionary mind of Isaiah, and the tender and sorrowing heart of Jeremiah that every one of these was just as real, and is just as real, in this book, as the mind and the heart of the author are in the last book that was published and advertised yesterday. We forget the reality of the human element in the Bible while we dwell upon the Divine. And so, on the other hand, there is the danger that in attempting to make this book a real, and living, and human book to us, dwelling upon the human element, men forget the Divine, and they think and speak of these books and writings as the work of Paul, and Peter, and John, and Jeremiah, and Isaiah, and Moses, and forget that in and through all these the living and Eternal God is speaking words of eternal truth to men.

II. The word "grace" in the text gives us, of course, the idea of the Divine power. What is the idea that the word "growth" gives us? It gives us an idea of the Divine power and life, developing itself naturally and subject to natural influences. When you put a seed in the ground or plant a root in the ground, what happens? You have two things working together: you have the human hand that sets the seed and the human skill that trains and watches the seed. But in the seed what happens? Something that no man can give: you have a Divinely given life and power in that seed, and it is by virtue of that power that the seed grows up into the perfect plant, or the root into the full-grown tree. In the heart of every one of us is planted at his baptism the seed of grace, in which is the whole future life and growth of the Christian man. Just as in the acorn lies folded up the summer glory and beauty of the oak, so in the first sowing of the seed of grace in the human heart lies all the possibility of the perfect Christian life. But this life, if left to itself, perishes. This life, like all other life, must have its food, must have its suitable soil and clime, must have its careful tending, and watering, and pruning. Neglect these, and although the life that is in it be Divine, the human sin, the human carelessness, will stunt and stamp out eventually that very life itself. There is no Divine gift in man that may not be utterly lost by man's treatment of that gift.

Bishop Magee, Penny Pulpit,New Series, No. 531.

References: 2 Peter 3:18. A. Raleigh, Quiet Resting-places,p. 145; J. Edmunds, Sermons in a Village Church,p. 263; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 80; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 100; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. viii., No. 427; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 46; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. ii., p. 296; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 27; Ibid.,vol. xxviii., p. 33; T. V. Tymms, Ibid.,vol. xxxiv., p. 45.