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2 Peter 1: What the Passage Says

60 claims across 21 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 2 Peter 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Peter greets readers who share the same faith and says God's divine power has given everything needed for life and for godliness. He urges them to add a chain of qualities to their faith and to make their calling and choosing sure, promising a rich welcome into Christ's eternal kingdom for those who do. He explains that he will keep reminding them as long as he lives, since he knows his death is near. He then defends his message as eyewitness testimony to Jesus' majesty on the holy mountain, and points to the prophetic word, which came not from human will but from men carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • The letter is from Simon Peter.
    • Simon Peter is a servant of Jesus Christ.
    • Simon Peter is an apostle of Jesus Christ.
    • The letter is addressed to those who have obtained a faith equal in value to the faith of Peter and those with him.
    • That faith was obtained through the righteousness of God and of the Saviour Jesus Christ.
  2. 1:2
    • Peter wishes that grace and peace be multiplied to the recipients.
    • That multiplying comes through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
  3. 1:3
    • God's divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
    • That giving is through the knowledge of him who called us.
    • He called us to (or by) his own glory and virtue.
    • Whether the calling is by his glory and virtue or to them is not made explicit.
  4. 1:4
    • Through his glory and virtue exceedingly great and precious promises have been given to us.
    • The purpose of the promises is that the recipients might become partakers of the divine nature.
    • The recipients have escaped the corruption that is in the world.
    • That corruption is caused by lust.
  5. 1:5
    • The recipients are told to apply all diligence.
    • The recipients are told to add virtue to their faith.
    • The recipients are told to add knowledge to virtue.
  6. 1:6
    • The recipients are told to add self-control to knowledge.
    • The recipients are told to add patient endurance to self-control.
    • The recipients are told to add godliness to patient endurance.
  7. 1:7
    • The recipients are told to add brotherly kindness to godliness.
    • The recipients are told to add love to brotherly kindness.
  8. 1:8
    • If these things are in the recipients and abound, they will not be barren.
    • If these things are in the recipients and abound, they will not be unfruitful.
    • That barrenness and unfruitfulness would be with respect to the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
  9. 1:9
    • The one who lacks these things is blind.
    • The one who lacks these things cannot see far off.
    • The one who lacks these things has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
  10. 1:10
    • Peter addresses the recipients as brethren.
    • Peter tells them to give diligence to make their calling and election sure.
    • If they do these things they will never fall.
  11. 1:11
    • An entrance will be ministered to them abundantly.
    • That entrance is into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
  12. 1:12
    • Peter will not be negligent to remind the recipients always of these things.
    • The recipients already know these things.
    • The recipients are established in the present truth.
  13. 1:13
    • Peter thinks it right to stir the recipients up by reminding them.
    • He will do so as long as he is in this tabernacle, meaning his body.
  14. 1:14
    • Peter knows that he must put off his tabernacle shortly.
    • Our Lord Jesus Christ showed this to Peter.
  15. 1:15
    • Peter will endeavour that after his decease the recipients may be able to remember these things always.
  16. 1:16
    • Peter and those with him did not follow cunningly devised fables.
    • Peter and those with him made known to the recipients the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
    • Peter and those with him were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
  17. 1:17
    • Jesus received honour and glory from God the Father.
    • A voice came to him from the excellent glory.
    • The voice said, 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'
  18. 1:18
    • Peter and those with him heard this voice come from heaven.
    • They were with him on the holy mount when they heard it.
  19. 1:19
    • We have a more sure word of prophecy.
    • The recipients do well to take heed to that word.
    • That word is like a light shining in a dark place.
    • They should take heed until the day dawns.
    • They should take heed until the day star arises in their hearts.
  20. 1:20
    • The recipients are to know this first.
    • No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation.
  21. 1:21
    • Prophecy did not come in old time by the will of man.
    • Holy men of God spoke.
    • They spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
"Apostle" means one who is sent, an authorized messenger who speaks on behalf of the person who sent him. "Servant" translates a word for a slave, someone wholly owned by a master, though it was also used as a title of honor for a ruler's trusted officials. The Greek behind "of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" can be read two ways: as naming two (God, and our Savior Jesus Christ) or as one description of Jesus (our God and Savior, Jesus Christ). The wording is genuinely open.
1:2
"Grace and peace" is the standard opening of a letter in this collection, blending the Greek greeting, grace, with the Hebrew one, peace, shalom. Grace is favor freely given; peace means wholeness and well-being, not just the absence of conflict.
1:3
KJV "virtue" and the rendering's "goodness" translate a Greek word meaning excellence, the quality that makes a thing good at being what it is. Applied to people it means moral excellence, and it could also mean a praiseworthy deed or the reputation such deeds earn.
1:4
"Corruption" translates a word for decay, the process by which flesh and food and timber rot and fall apart. Talk of sharing in "the divine nature" was familiar vocabulary in the Greek religious and philosophical writing of the period, so the first readers would have heard a common phrase rather than a strange one.
1:5
Verses 5 to 7 form a chain, each quality named again as the starting point of the next. This was a standard device in ancient moral writing and does not mean the qualities are acquired one at a time in that order. The verb behind "add" means to supply lavishly, from a word used of a wealthy citizen who paid the whole cost of training a chorus for a public festival; the same verb comes back in verse 11.
1:6
KJV "temperance" means self-control in general, not abstaining from alcohol in particular. KJV "patience" translates a word for holding up under a load, staying in place under pressure; it is closer to endurance than to waiting calmly.
1:7
KJV "charity" means love. In 1611 the word had not yet narrowed to mean giving money to the poor. "Brotherly kindness" translates the word for affection between members of a family, used here of fellow believers.
1:8
KJV "barren" here means idle or ineffective rather than childless. "Barren nor unfruitful" is a farming image: ground that yields no crop.
1:9
The Greek word behind "cannot see afar off" means shortsighted, and can also describe someone squinting or deliberately shutting his eyes. Both senses are possible here. "Purged" means cleansed or washed.
1:10
"Election" in 1611 English means simply being chosen; it has nothing to do with voting. "Calling" is the summons, "election" the choosing behind it.
1:11
"An entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly" uses the same lavish-patron word as verse 5. The picture is a formal, generous reception, like a city throwing open its gates for an honored arrival.
1:12
"The present truth" means the truth you now have, the message already delivered to these readers, not truth for the present moment as opposed to some earlier time.
1:13
KJV "tabernacle" here means a tent, a temporary shelter, used as a figure for the body. "I think it meet" means "I think it fitting" or "I think it right."
1:14
"Put off this my tabernacle" is literally taking the tent down, the way a traveler strikes camp and moves on.
1:15
KJV "decease" translates the Greek word exodos, a going out or departure, the same word used of Israel's exodus from Egypt. "Endeavour" means to make every effort.
1:16
"Fables" translates mythos, a story or legend, the word used of tales told about the gods. "Coming" translates parousia, the everyday word for an arrival or official visit, commonly used of a king or emperor entering a city in state. The word behind "eyewitnesses" was also used of those admitted to see the innermost rites of the Greek mystery religions.
1:17
"The excellent glory" is a reverent way of referring to God without naming him, much as "the Majestic Glory" does. Jewish writers of the period regularly used such substitutes. The words quoted are the ones reported at the transfiguration, when Jesus appeared transformed in brightness before three of his followers.
1:18
"The holy mount" is the mountain where that scene took place. The accounts do not say which mountain it was.
1:19
The Greek is open here in a way English struggles to hold: it can mean that the prophets' word has been made more certain by what the writer saw and heard, or that the prophets' word is more certain than that experience was. "Day star" translates phosphoros, the morning star, the planet Venus, which rises just before sunrise; it also carried the sense of a royal or ruling figure.
1:20
"Private" in 1611 English means "one's own." The sentence can be taken in more than one way: that a prophecy did not arise from the prophet's own reading of what he saw, or that its meaning is not for an individual reader to settle on his own.
1:21
"Holy Ghost" is 1611 English for "Holy Spirit"; "ghost" then meant simply spirit, with no suggestion of a haunting. "Moved" translates a verb used of a ship carried along by the wind, driven rather than steering itself.

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