Kootenai Church Morning Worship

Much of the Christian life is lived by God's promises. We trust in God's promises for salvation. His promises are contained in His Word. And to trust a promise is not to trust something really that is disconnected from God or something that is outside of God, it is to trust God Himself. What we do with God's promises reveals a tremendous amount about what we believe about Him, because if we don't trust one of His promises or if we doubt what He has said in His Word, what we are really saying is that we regard God Himself as untrustworthy. It is another way of calling God a liar. And though we may not say that with our lips, we might say that with our life when we do not depend upon His promises and believe them for what they are. But when we lay hold of God's promises and believe them, we are really trusting Him. And we are, in doing so, issuing a verdict about what we think about God Himself, that He is faithful, that He is trustworthy, that He is able.
And all of the saints that are listed in Hebrews 11, the heroes of faith, it is said of them that they obtained promises, for they believed the promises of God, men like Noah and Moses and Abraham and Joseph and so many others. In fact, Paul says of Abraham in Romans 4:20–21, “With respect to the promise of God, he [that is, Abraham] did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and [listen] being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to do.” Now if Abraham had doubted what God had promised regarding his seed and his offspring and a nation and all of the covenant that God had made with him and promised to him, if Abraham had doubted that, that would have been Abraham saying that God was not able to do what God had promised to do. It would have been Abraham making a verdict on God's character, His faithfulness, and His truthfulness. But when Abraham believed that God was able to do what He had promised to do and was fully assured of that, then Abraham grew strong in faith and gave glory to God because he was saying regarding God, “He is a trustworthy God.”
What we do with God's promises reveals a great deal about us, and what God promises reveals a great deal about Him. In fact, we come to know the nature and character of God through the things that He has promised to us. His promises make known to us His redemptive plan and His nature and His character, and His promises are revealed in His Word, for His Word reveals Him. And what He has promised to do for us and all that He has promised for the future and in the past, all of His promises reveal something profound about God—His very essence, His nature, His character, who He is, what type of a God it is that we worship. And those promises are contained in His Word.
In fact, Peter calls them precious and magnificent promises in our text, 2 Peter 1:4. And that is our passage for today. Peter begins this passage, this letter, by describing the sufficiency of our saving grace. And we have sort of studied out a little bit about what Peter means by that, what he means by sufficiency, what it means by the grace that he is describing here that saves us. In verses 1–2, Peter tells us that God has supplied even the faith by which we believe. In verses 3–4, it describes the sufficiency of this saving grace. And so far in verse 3, we have looked at the power that God has that has supplied us with everything we need for life and godliness. And then we have looked at His person, His moral excellence, His glory and excellence that summons us to Himself. So He has supplied us with everything we need to live godly lives in this world. And then He has summoned us to Himself, called us for that very purpose to live godly lives in this world.
And now today we're looking at the promises that He has given in verse 4, the promises that motivate us to holiness. Let's read together again verse 4: “For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” These promises motivate us to the very godliness and holiness that Peter calls us to.
And I want you to notice two things about these promises today, and this is going to be our outline for this morning. First, they reveal to us the character of our Lord. And second, they rescue us from the corruption that is in the world. By these promises, we become partakers of the divine nature. And by these promises and believing them, we are delivered from the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Let's look first at how His promises reveal His character. Notice that verse 4 begins with “for by these.” Now our question is, By what? By these. It's not the promises because that would be redundant. Instead, Peter is pointing back to something in a previous verse, and he is saying that it is by these things that He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises. And in saying “by these,” Peter is meaning by His glory and His excellence. Look at the end of verse 3 again: “[He] has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these [that is, by God's glory and by God's excellence] He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises” (vv. 3–4). He has effectually called us to Himself, like a shepherd calls his sheep, infallibly and perfectly to Him. He woos us by the glory and the excellence of His divine nature. He woos us to Himself, and then that same glory and excellence are the fountainhead out of which all of these precious and magnificent promises flow.
So, the precious and magnificent promises come out of His glory and excellence. By these—by His moral goodness and by His glory and the essence of His nature—flow out all of these precious and magnificent promises. His promises are in keeping with His nature. And by the way, I would remind you that even His promises to judge the wicked, those are in keeping with His nature as well. His promise to judge the wicked, the impenitent, and His promise to save the penitent, the righteous—those promises express His nature. So the promise to judge the wicked is a promise that God is going to express His justice, His righteousness, His goodness, and His wrath, those things that characterize Him. Those promises to judge the wicked, those are in keeping with God's perfect nature. And God's promise to save and to redeem the penitent, those promises flow from His nature as well. His goodness, His grace, His mercy, His love, His loving-kindness, His long-suffering, His tenderheartedness.
I want you to think back, and I'm just going to give you a selection of promises just from the Gospel of John. And as you listen to me read these, I want you to think about what they reveal about who God is. We’ll begin with a common one that you're already familiar with. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, [here's the promise] that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” That's a promise. It is a promise that a God who is loving and loves sinners is willing to save any and all who come to Him, and that all those who believe, He will save, and that they will not perish but have eternal life.
John 4:14: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst—ever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” There's a promise of eternal life and sustenance, living water.
John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” That's escape from judgment. By the way, that verse is an answer to the question of assurance. Do you struggle with assurance, the confidence that you are actually saved? I typically point people back to this verse. Jesus's promise is that if you hear His Word and believe “Him who sent Me,” you have eternal life. And you have passed—past tense—you have passed out of death and into life. So do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and have you placed your faith in Him, turning from your sin? If that is the case, then here is your assurance. The promise of Jesus says you have passed out of death and into life and that you will not come into judgment.
John 6:37:
37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me [that describes His sovereignty], and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
39 Now this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.
40 For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:37–40 LSB)
That is a promise to resurrection. That is a promise that having believed in Him, you will never be cast out, you will never be cast off, you will not be forgotten, but you will be raised up everlastingly on the last day.
John 7:37–38: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” An unending sustenance.
John 8:12: “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”
John 10:27–28: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish—ever; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” That is a promise of not only salvation but also security. What a blessed promise that is, that the Savior is able to keep all of those who have committed themselves to Him and whom the Father has committed to Him. He is sovereign, He is saving, and He secures His sheep. So that promise tells us something about our Shepherd.
John 11:25–26: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die—ever.” That's a promise.
John 14:3: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” Forever.
That's quite a list of promises. Where do those promises come from? Out of His own glory and excellence. By these things, out of God's goodness, out of His love, out of His virtuous, valorous, excellent nature, flow all of these promises to His people who believe upon Him. So His promises reveal something of the nature and the character of our Savior.
Notice, second, that His promises rescue us from corruption. This is in verse 4. By these promises we “become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” Notice there are two results of us trusting these promises. We partake of the divine nature and we escape the corruption that is in the world by lust—those two results. All of that comes through this full knowledge that we have, this saving knowledge of God revealed in His Word whereby He has delivered us from the world and its death and its corruption. This salvation that God has given to us has made us partakers of the divine nature.
And before we consider what these promises accomplish, we want to unpack these two questions. So first we want to ask, How do the promises of God accomplish this? How does it make us partakers of the divine nature and rescue us from the corruption that is in the world by lust? Before we answer how the promises do this, we need to make sure that we understand what we mean by “partakers of the divine nature” and what it means that we have escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.
So what does it mean to be a partaker of the divine nature? Notice the contrast, by the way, in the verse. We partake of God's nature and we do not partake of the corruption that is in the world by lust. So we are rescued from one thing so that we may become partakers or sharers in something else. But what does it mean that we are made partakers of the divine nature? I'm going to give you three examples of what this does not mean—all of these ideas exist today—and then it will tell you what it does mean.
First, it does not mean what the Mormons say that this means. Now, if you're familiar with Mormon theology, then you know that Mormonism teaches that men can become gods. In fact, in Mormon theology, the God that we worship today was once a man just like we are, who, through the Mormon process of salvation, earned deification, Deity, and became a god, and he lives on a planet now with his many wives, populating our planet with all of his spiritual offspring. In fact, and I don't know which Mormon prophet said it, but there's a Mormon adage that says, “As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may become.” That's Mormon theology. That's not what Peter is talking about. That would make, obviously, many gods. Scripture says there's only one God, and I don't even need to refute that.
A second idea is that held by the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the Eastern Orthodox view, there is something that they call theosis or deification. And though Eastern Orthodoxy tries to sort of steer away from the implications of what they teach, they clearly teach in their writings that men become gods or God. Let me give you an example of this. By the way, Eastern Orthodoxy is a works-based salvation theology that makes us divine, though they would say it doesn't give us the same essence. We don't take God's essence, though we do take God's nature. Is that confusing to you? Yeah, it should be because it is confusing. So Irenaeus in his book Against Heresies describes this doctrine this way: “The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, through His transcendent love, became what we are that He might bring us to be what He is in Himself.”
Maximus the Confessor, who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries—that, by the way, is a fantastic name, Maximus the Confessor. If I were still having kids and naming kids, that would be on the short list of names. Maximus the Confessor, an Eastern Orthodox teacher, says this. Now listen carefully, and I'll pause in the middle of this quotation so you can understand the full implications of Eastern Orthodox theology. “A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God Himself became man.”
Let's stop for a second. I'm not quoting him. Listen, to what degree did God become man? How much of human nature did He assume? He assumed the fullness, 100 percent humanity. It wasn't 50 percent, 20 percent, 10 percent humanity. Without ever ceasing to be what He had always been, the second Person of the Trinity became something He never was before, namely deity, perfect deity, full deity, united with humanity. So in what degree did Christ become man? He became man, assuming the fullness of our nature, without ever divesting Himself of Deity, so that we can say of Christ that He was fully God and He was fully man. He was truly God and He was truly man. Those two natures united in the one Person, the Lord Christ Jesus.
So back to Maximus. By the way, because he was a heretic, I probably wouldn't name a child after him. You might be thinking that now. You would name your child after him? It's a good name. I might drop “the Confessor,” do something different. Maximus the Osman, something like that. All right. Let me start over.
A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God Himself became man. . . . Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will divinize [that is, make divine] human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man's sake. This is what . . . Paul teaches mystically when he says, “that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing riches of his grace” [Eph. 2:7].
Now he says that God is going to divinize human nature without changing it into the divine nature. So He's going to make your nature divine without making it a divine nature. Does that sound confusing?
Now when you try and sort of corner somebody who adheres to Eastern Orthodox theology, what you will get is a long chin boogie by which they dance around the point like a shaman conjuring a rainstorm in order to make you think that you didn't hear them say what you just heard them say. Because they don't like the implications of this. But this is Eastern Orthodoxy. Men are deified. This happens in three stages: purification, illumination, and then deification. This is the doctrine of theosis. Purification—we purify ourselves of all earthly things, go through all of these rituals and all of the forms and formalism and all the liturgy that Eastern Orthodoxy has as part of its religious system. And then in that process we are illuminated, we have a vision, we have a revelation, whatever it is. And then ultimately we are deified and God changes us into the divine nature without ever changing us into the divine essence.
That is heresy. That is heresy. That is the core of Eastern Orthodox theology, deification or theosis. That's not what Peter is describing.
Third, Peter is not describing the Word of Faith view, the Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar crowd. He's not describing that. And the Word of Faith theology and New Apostolic Reformation theology says that God created us as gods and we are just as much divine beings as God Himself. So they just skip over the Mormon process, they skip over the Eastern Orthodox process, and say that all of us, because we are created in God's image, are really little gods, and therefore we partake of the divine nature. That is not what Peter is describing. He's not describing the Mormon view, the Eastern Orthodox view, or the Word of Faith or New Apostolic Reformation view.
So what is Peter saying? The word partake here is the word that is often translated as “fellowship.” It means a sharer in something. And by fellowship, the Bible doesn't mean that we sit around and talk about sports or that we sit around and draft our fantasy football team or that we sit around and talk about the weather. That's not what the Bible means by fellowship. What the Bible means by fellowship is a partaking or a sharing in something, a participation one with another in something that is of common interest. So the word would be used to describe two business partners who both invested something into something else and then worked and participated in that thing that they had a vested interest in. That's the idea of fellowship. We are sharers or partakers, participants, companions in something, and we share something in common.
So what does it mean then that we become participants in the divine nature? Notice that Peter is not describing something we become. He's not describing something we become. He's not describing something that we are changed into through a salvation process. He is describing our participation in things that characterize the divine nature. He's not describing something we become, that we're changed into. He's describing something we participate in.
In fact, Peter uses the same language two other times. First Peter 4:13: “But to the degree you are sharing [participating, fellowshipping, or koinoneo-ing] the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.” Peter is not suggesting—when he says that we share in the sufferings of Christ, he's not suggesting that we are actually, in any sense, suffering the same sufferings of Christ or that we are becoming transformed into suffering. He's simply saying we are participating in the same kinds of sufferings that Christ participated in.
He also uses the word partake in 1 Peter 5:1: “Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed.” There he says we are sharers in this glory. We participate in it, we have a vested interest in it. We get to partake of something that we do not have by nature, but we get to partake of that which, by nature, belongs to another. Without ever being transformed into that thing or changed into that thing, we participate in it. We get to share in it, in the sense that it kind of overflows to us.
In this sense—this is what Peter is talking about. He's talking about partaking of the divine nature in this sense. Number one, that we are brought into His family. “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12).
We become partakers of the divine nature because the Spirit of God dwells in us. As a believer in Christ, the Spirit of God has sealed you. We sang about that this morning in our worship. The Spirit of God has sealed us. And so we partake of the divine nature in the sense that God's very Spirit dwells within us. We are habitations of the Spirit of God, both individually and corporately as a body of believers. That's Romans 8:9.
We participate in the divine nature in that Christ lives in us. Galatians 2:20: “Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
We participate in the divine nature in the sense that God Himself regenerates us and gives us new life. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the One who gives new birth loves also the one who has been born of Him” (1 John 5:1). We've become born again, born of God, birthed into His spiritual family through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. So 1 Peter 1:23 says, “You have been born again not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.”
And we participate in the divine nature in the sense that we share His holiness. Hebrews 12:10 says that God disciplines us for that purpose, “that we may share His holiness.” We become conformed more and more to the image of Christ, being transformed into His image, which God has predestined us to be. So as we are morally transformed, we are morally conformed to be more like Christ. We begin to share and participate in His holiness and in His righteousness.
We become partakers of the divine nature in the sense that we have true fellowship with God. First John 1:3: “What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you may also have fellowship [that is, a sharing, a participation; it's the same word] with us; and indeed our fellowship [our partaking and participation] is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” We have communion with God through the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we become then partakers of God's essence, not in the sense that we are changed into that and we become divine but in the sense that we begin to share the attributes which belong to another, those attributes which are singularly and uniquely divine. And as we pursue the godliness for which we've been given everything that pertains to it in Scripture, we become more and more like Christ. We become then partakers of the divine nature. Those attributes which we do not have, we partake in and we share in them, those attributes that belong to God. So we become a partaker and a sharer in those things that characterize God.
This is a reality that is true both now and in eternity. And though it is true that in eternity we will enjoy these realities in a fuller and deeper and more profound and unhindered way than we ever have here, these things are true of us now. We are children, we have been adopted, we have been born again, we are indwelt by the Spirit, we have fellowship with God in Christ, and we partake of the divine nature even as we gather around and confess our sins and partake of the Lord's Supper together. We are participants in a holy thing. We're sort of brought in to participate in that. Without ever being changed into Deity, we begin to enjoy the attributes that belong only to Deity. God is holy and righteous and He is life, and so He grows us in holiness, He imputes righteousness to us, and He gives us His life.
This is what it means, by the way, to have the new birth and to have spiritual life. The eternal life that you have as a believer is not a life that you will one day get after you die maybe, maybe not. That's not what eternal life is. Eternal life is a reality that you possess even now. And it is not a life that is apart from God, like God gives you something that's sort of over here, this thing, and you believe upon Christ, so He takes eternal life and sort of gives it to you, injects it into you. That's not eternal life. Eternal life is the very life that characterizes God, so that the believing sinner, when he places his faith in Christ, is made alive with the very life that God Himself possesses. This is why you can never lose eternal life, because it is God's life that keeps you alive. He gives it to you as a gift, and it is that life that you now possess. If you're alive in Christ Jesus, you are alive with the very life of God Himself, an eternal and unending life.
So that answers what it means to partake of the divine nature. Now what does it mean that we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust? When we use the word corruption we typically are thinking of something that is rife with lies, something that is immoral, something that is wicked, twisted, distorted, like a corrupt system, a corrupt court, a corrupt criminal, a corrupt judge, a corrupt politician, a corrupt media, a corrupt government, and I repeat myself. Something that is just rotten to the core, right?
Now this word corrupt, the word that is translated “corrupt” here, does have a moral element to it. It does have a moral element to it. It describes a moral quality, but it describes something more than just a moral quality. It describes a state of death and decay as well. It refers to that which is perishing, that which is decaying because it is part of this world's order. Death and decay, mortality, dissolution, and it even has an element in it of destruction and judgment. That is what is meant by corruption.
I'll give you three other ways that it is used. It's used to describe all of the natural creation that is a slave to corruption. Romans 8:21: “The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption.” The creation is in slavery to a state of decay because of the sin in the garden when Adam ate of the fruit. And for that reason, everything today is under this curse. So everything today is rendered corrupt in the sense that it is decaying and it is dying—everything around us is.
Second, foods are called corruptible in Colossians 2:22. Paul talks about those laws which deal with everything “destined to perish”—that is, corruptible. He uses a form of the same word there.
And it's also used of the false teachers who are slaves of corruption later on in 2 Peter 2. Look at verse 19. He says the false teachers promise people freedom “while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.” Look at 2 Peter 2:12: “But these [speaking of the false teachers], like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed.” There he uses the word for corruption twice. It's translated as “destruction” and also “be destroyed.” And there it has the idea of judgment.
So this word corruption does describe a moral reality, a corrupt moral reality, but it also describes a state of decay and a judgment that is to come upon that state of decay and that moral element. So we live in a creation that is under the curse, a creation cursed with death and decay. It has a perishable quality about it. And it is this because of the lust that is in the world. This corruption is in the world through lust or by lust.
Verse 4 says we have “escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” So as those born into this perishing and decaying creation, we are in bondage to that same perishing and decaying element. And by the grace of God, we have been delivered from ultimate death, ultimate decay, and ultimate judgment because we have been delivered from the mastery of sin and lust and delivered from the judgment that is to come. We have been set free from the death, from the decay, and from the judgment that is to come because of it.
Now, you say, “Does that mean we're not going to die?” No. You have been set free from decay, but your body has not. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50). So your body must and will decay, and if the Lord does not return prior to this, you will go the way of all men and you will die. But you have already escaped the moral corruption of the world. You have already escaped the moral pull of lust and the immorality of lust. You have already escaped sin's power, and you have already escaped the judgment that is to come. That is true of you. And now you just need to escape what is corrupting—that is, your body. Once you've escaped that, then it will deteriorate, and then it will be resurrected again in a new and glorified form.
So your outer man is still perishing, but because you are in Christ, you have escaped the corruption, the judgment, the decay, and the death that is in the world by lust. This is the image that comes to mind: It is as if decay and death has its claws into our body, our flesh, which is of this world, and it is dragging us down. And we feel like it is dragging us down all the way until the point of death. And then death consumes it, but we have escaped it. Once we are no longer in this body, we will then fully escape the corruption that is in the world by lust. We decay because of sin.
Notice the stark contrast in the passage in verses 3–4. He describes Christ's glory and excellence and he describes the world's lust and corruption. Glory is contrasted with corruption. These are two opposite things—the glory and corruption. And then lust and His moral excellence, those are two opposites as well. Because we have been summoned by One who is glorious and excellent and we have laid hold of promises that flow from the wellspring of that glory and excellence, we have escaped the corruption and the lust, and one day He will make us like Himself and we will be both glorious and excellent.
Now there's something in Peter's language that I want you to notice. It is subtle, but it is significant. I don't want to skip over it. And we're going to close with this this morning. The subtle thing is that Peter is very careful in verse 4 to not make us think—to use language to avoid saying that the material world itself is corrupt. You notice that? The goal of our salvation is not to escape the material world. The goal of our salvation is to escape the corruption that is in this material world through lust. That is a significant distinction and here is why. Look over at chapter 3, verse 10. Second Peter 3. Look at verse 10:
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be found out.
11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,
12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens burning will be destroyed, and the elements will melt with intense heat!
13 But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells. (2 Pet. 3:10–13 LSB)
Friends, it is not this material world that is in itself corrupt. When God created it, He pronounced it very good. Everything was very good. Sin has corrupted this material world. That corruption, the death, the decay, the moral element of corruption, is in the world because of man's sin. And someday God Himself will purge this entire creation of sin through a judgment by fire, and He will re-create this creation into a new heavens and a new earth, and He will resurrect His people to live in that new heavens and that new earth in physical, glorified bodies. It is not material things that are corrupt, it is corruption that has come into the material world because of lust. And once that is done away with, you and I will live all of eternity in a material world.
Salvation, contrary to the Gnostics, contrary to pagans, contrary to Greek mythology, contrary to New Age theology, contrary to almost every ism and false theology out there—salvation is not about being liberated from the body and from a physical creation. Salvation is about being spiritually made new, and then eventually we will be resurrected and placed back in a physical creation. If you like this life, wait till you see the one that is to come, the new heavens and a new earth.
Friends, this is how the promises of God motivate us to holiness. Since you know that this world will be burned up and everything in it—that is God's promise that judgment is coming—therefore, what sort of persons ought we to be in holy conduct and godliness? That promise that judgment is coming and that we will escape the corruption that is in the world by lust and that we will be placed in a new creation, where we will live and move and we will exercise dominion and we will enjoy all of the things about a brand-new physical creation without any corruption, without any mortality, without any death or disease, that should motivate us to holiness. By His glory and excellence He has granted to us these precious and magnificent promises. And therefore, since we know that is true and we know that the end is closer than it appears, what sort of persons ought we to be in holy conduct and godliness?
All these blessings have been purchased for us through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. By His body, by His blood, through His sacrifice, all of these things have become ours. We have laid hold of His promises because He has granted us the faith, which is just like the apostles' faith. We have laid hold of those promises because He has granted to us everything that pertains to life and godliness. Every blessing, all of the sufficiency of salvation that is described here in 2 Peter 1:3–4, all of that sufficiency has been purchased for us through the doing and the dying of another—that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.