2 Peter 1 - Introduction

ANALYSIS.

This letter is written to those who have obtained a like precious faith with the writer, and that they may be assured of the correctness of the gospel and its God-given source, and thereby the more strongly intrenched in its belief and not easily moved therefrom by false teachers, he assures them of the divine power of the gospel; that by it everything is given that pertains to right-doing in this life, and all that is necessary to secure acceptance in the world to come.

He exhorts them to add to their faith all the other virtues and graces he enumerates; assures them that by so doing a perfect Christian character will be produced; that they will not be either blind or unfruitful in the divine life, but that they would be both blind and unfruitful should they so neglect. He then assures them, by making these additions, that their entrance into the everlasting kingdom will be certain and richly rewarded. He tells them that he will not be neglectful, so long as he lives, to keep these things before their minds, although they know them; that Christ assures him that his end is near, and that he writes these admonitions that after his death they may have them to consult. He then assures them that the subject of his preaching and of his letters, namely, salvation by the gospel of Christ, is not a fable, and was not cunningly devised, but is the truth of God, and appeals to the confirmation given by the Father himself, which the writer himself and his companions saw and heard, and by this statement from the Father the prophetic word wherein all these things were foretold is made firm, which prophetic word shone as a light in a dark place, until Christ came, who is the day star. He gives them further to understand that the words of the prophets were not of their own invention, but that they were authorized and empowered to declare what they did by God's Holy Spirit.