Reflecting on 2 Peter 1:12-18

One of the things I love about preaching is that I get the opportunity to marinate in a biblical text, to drill down deep and reflect carefully about what it says and what it means. I have been studying Peter’s letters in my quiet times with God, copying short passages and journaling on them. This is my journal reflection on 2 Peter 1:12-18, the text I preach on Sunday.

Here is the text:

Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. 2 Peter 1:12-18

And the journal entry:

Peter is keen to remind his readers of truths they already know, truths they have been established in. Why? Because they – and we, twenty centuries later – are so forgetful.
I asked a friend recently why God’s people are – in fact, have always been – so forgetful. His answer was a penetrating insight. We have a limited bandwidth, he said. We cannot hold several things in our hearts as of primary importance. When we regard something else as primary – not God, something else – the magnificent Truth of God is marginalized, then ignored, and eventually forgotten. This is why we are constantly exhorted to keep God’s Truth – His Word, His glory, His astonishing love for us – before our eyes. We need often to be reminded of who He is and what He’s done for His people.

Which is why Peter turns next to the glorious truth of God coming among us as a man. He recounts the singular moment when Jesus of Nazareth threw off His Galilean peasant disguise and revealed Himself for who He was, who He had always been, who He would someday be in His glorious Return to earth: the Son of Man before whom the whole universe will bow in astonishment and adoration.

Peter never forgot what he and James and John saw that day on the mountain, the Son in His resplendent glory; and what they heard – the verbal endorsement of the Almighty: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship