Peter says, “take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.” Peter may have been thinking about the time he was deceived and deceiving others about the Gentiles. He was carried away into sinful thinking and behavior until Paul confronted him.

Never happens to any of us, right?

Yes. It does. How do we know we have been carried away with the error, the lies, of the lawless? We lose our stability. We are blown about by every wind of doctrine that comes whistling down through the corridors of culture. We begin to say things like, “It really doesn’t matter which God you believe in, as long as you are sincere.” Or, “Isn’t church an institution that has outlived its usefulness? I don’t really need the church, right? I can just follow Jesus on my own.” Or, “I believe in science; it is really the only thing in the world that is reliable.” Or, “Because of all the suffering in the world, God is either not all loving or he is not all powerful, and therefore I cannot trust him.” These questions are not new; they have all been around for a long time, and each are errors of lawless people that Peter warns us about. By the way, a great resource that does an excellent job with some of these questions and others I didn’t mention is Rebecca McLaughlin’s book, Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion. We worked through the teen version a few years ago in a morning class here at Antioch: Ten Questions Every Teen Should Ask (and Answer) About Christianity.

Peter says to the stable Christian, take care that you do not lose your stability! And I would say to parents that it is especially important that you are settled in what you believe because you have children watching you every day, and their stability will at least be influenced by yours. It’s like that warning we always hear on the airplane: “In case there is a loss in cabin pressure, yellow oxygen masks will deploy from the ceiling compartment located above you.” And they always say that if you are traveling with children, “please secure your own mask before assisting others around you.” Secure your own faith so that you can assist those around you. If you get carried away with the error of people who have rejected the truth of God’s Word, you also put your children and others who watch your faith at risk.

Harrison Butker is a kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs who has helped them win three Super Bowls. Some of you have heard about the firestorm surrounding his commencement address he gave last week at Benedictine College. The remark that caused the longest applause at the commencement and the greatest protest in the nation afterward were these, directed to the female graduates: “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world…I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

Cancel culture was firing on all cylinders as people around the country called for this man to be fired for saying these things. Here’s the question we have to answer. Does the Bible elevate or denigrate the office of homemaker? Elevate! That certainly does not mean a woman cannot have a career outside the home. But it also does not mean she has to in order to find meaningful purpose in her life. Being a homemaker is not just a career, it is a calling.

Peter would say to all who want to cave to the lies of the culture, “take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people.”

A rather pompous church leader was trying to impress upon a class of boys the importance of living the Christian life. “Why do people call me a Christian?” the man asked. After a moment’s pause, one youngster said, “Maybe it’s because they don’t know you?”

Well, Peter certainly knew Paul, and he was anything but pompous. And at the end of his second letter, Peter refers to him as “our beloved brother Paul.” Peter knew, as any believer of that day did, that before Paul was saved, he was a Jewish terrorist named Saul who tracked down and imprisoned followers of Christ. The men who stoned Stephen to death laid their garments beside this young man Saul, as he watched the execution of the first martyr and then became an executioner himself. In those days he would have been, “our horrifying terrorist Saul.” But wonder of wonders, Jesus apprehended him on the road to Damascus, just as he does every person who comes to faith. Saul wasn’t looking for Jesus; Jesus came looking for him. He was gloriously saved and then he became “our beloved brother Paul.” Right? Not exactly, not according to the Scriptures. 

After Paul was saved, he was living and growing as a believer with the community of disciples in Damascus. He finally left there and the Bible says, “And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple.” At that point, it sounds like he was “our scary brother Paul.”  We understand why they would be afraid, right? But I think the larger point here is that we all have stories and some are scarier than others. We all came from lives wrecked by sin, even if our sin did not express itself in dramatic ways as it did with Saul and many others. Never underplay the miracle of your salvation, and that God brought you from a mighty long way as the old Gospel song said. We were all “dead in our trespasses and sins, following the course of this world…but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” And here’s something we learn from Peter’s words about Paul: we are called to be both the speakers and the hearers of truth. 

Paul clearly and boldly spoke the truth to Peter one day, and Peter humbly heard it from him.

I love the story in Galatians 2 because it tells me so much about these two pillars of the faith. Peter was not a perfect Christian. He had fallen into self-deception and was even being used by the enemy to turn other men of faith, at least Barnabas for one, away from the truth of the Gospel. It was a public sin that was misleading the church and so Paul confronted Peter publicly, “before them all.” We know that Peter repented; if he hadn’t his two letters would not have been written. We also know that Peter received this instruction from a man younger in the faith, a man who had not walked with Jesus for 3 years, and a man who had a horrific past. But Peter listened and turned from his sin. 

The church and the witness of the Gospel could have been badly damaged in those days if Paul had not had the spiritual courage to confront Peter, the powerful preacher and apostle. And the church would have been badly damaged if Peter had not repented when confronted with the truth about his hypocrisy. 

Beloved, the church universal will prevail and Jesus will return to gather all of his sheep and shepherds. But local churches are diminished or destroyed when leaders turn away from the Scriptures and will not listen to those who come to them with pleas and prayers and biblical truth.

Because of disobedience, the children of Israel had to do laps around Mt. Sinai for 40 years. But we are called by God to grow up in obedience through grace. And in order to do that, Peter wrote, we need diligence. It was one of his favorite words, one that expresses urgency and purpose. He told the believers to “make every effort to supplement your faith,” by adding virtue, knowledge, self-control, and more. He told them to “be all the more diligent to conform your calling and election.” He told them, “be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.”

There are two ditches to avoid on the road to spiritual growth as followers of Jesus. The ditch on one side of the road, legalism, promotes the idea that you earn God’s favor outside of the work of Jesus Christ. That God accepts us because we dress a certain way or do or don’t do certain things. No, God accepts us solely because of what Jesus did on the cross. Otherwise, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus was either not necessary or not sufficient. Legalism ultimately leads to bondage to pride or bondage to inconsolable shame and guilt. The ditch on the other side of the road is just as dangerous. It was called antinomianism by Martin Luther, which he used to describe people who say that belief in Christ eliminates the need for the law. This lessens the grace of the cross and makes it, as Ryan Reeves wrote, “a mere demonstration of love not atonement.” This ditch is attractive to people who say, “give me Jesus without any rules.” In other words, I want to be a Christian but only on my terms. Don’t preach to me; I am a child of God and I will decide what I believe about the Bible’s commands. This ditch leads to cultural Christianity, shallow doctrine, worldly living. To tell these folks to make every effort to grow in faith and obedience is not received well. 

 So we need to ask the question of ourselves: am I making every effort to grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ? It is not hard for any of us to understand that concept, because we apply it, or don’t apply it, every day in every area of our lives. I remember the early days of Antioch, when I needed to supplement my income as a pastor working different jobs to feed my family and pay the bills. One job I had was selling World Book Encyclopedias door to door. That’s not even a thing now, is it? But the woman who hired me said, “If you knock on 10 doors, you will be able sell one set of encyclopedias.” She was right. Learning what you need to know to be successful in your job and then being diligent to apply that every day is a recipe for success at work.

   The same applies to taking care of our bodies. We know that muscles that are not exercised will atrophy. We know that the older we get, the more maintenance it takes to keep those muscles working well. There’s a lady I see regularly at the Y in the weight room, and it is always the same routine. She never really does anything there! She finds a machine that is not being used, usually the leg press, and she sits down. She pulls out her phone, puts the pin in the machine at the least amount of weight, and calls someone on her phone or just scrolls through her social media.  Every now and then, she will make a half-hearted effort to, you know, push on the weight once or twice. It is funny to me, and I find myself thinking, “You know, lady, why do you even come to the Y? You could sit outside and at least get some Vitamin D from the sun while you talk on your phone. But that machine right there? You will get out of that exercise exactly what you put in. Which is nothing!”

 The Christian life is hard. It requires diligence, and diligence, by definition, is difficult. But let me remind you as I remind myself, that our diligence is and always will be grace-powered. We have to go back regularly to an important passage where Paul combines an important command and a critical promise: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (that’s the command), for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (that’s the promise). God works in us to give us the want-to and the follow-through. We have the responsibility to work out what God has given us through diligence and effort, but we do so by his power.

That makes all the difference.

18th century British writer Samuel Johnson said, ‘Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ Peter makes a similar observation connected to a question in the last chapter of his second letter. Since these things will take place, the dissolving of the world as we know it, Peter says, “what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness”? If the world as we know it is going to be dissolved, how should we then live? Augustine wrote about this in his book, City of God, defining virtue as “rightly ordered loves.” Our lives are filled with loves and some things we love too much and some not enough, but the summum bonum, the highest good, is God himself. We are to love him most of all and recognize that all other ‘good things’ are from his hand, including the earth we live on and the air we breathe and the family he has given us and the church community we enjoy. All of them are intended to lead us back to him. Here’s another blessing: when we rightly order our loves, we find the greatest joy. David sang to God, “…in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” 

Augustine wrote, “For there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You yourself are their joy. Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and because of you. This is happiness and there is no other. Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.” (Confessions)

That reminded me of John Piper’s well-known quote: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

 So, knowing the end of the age is coming and Jesus will return, how should we live? For him. With every effort towards holiness and godliness. God will help us do it; Peter told us that in the first chapter: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him…” We have his divine power to order our loves and live worthy of the Gospel, even though we are weak. I remember when my children were little and I would ask them to ‘help me’ pick up something heavy. Even though I would be carrying 99% of the weight of it, in their minds, they were doing half the work. I would praise them for their ‘muscles’ and they would grin and flex for me.  But here’s the thing. I was loaning them my ability to carry something so they would learn to carry it on their own when their strength increased. God’s power is always needed for us to live godly lives, and we will never be able to do so on our own. But like a loving earthly father, our heavenly Father teaches us how to grow in godliness. Paul loved this word and used it a number of times, especially in his pastoral letters.

He told Timothy, “train yourself for godliness;” Godliness does not come by itself. We must put effort into it, using his divine power that gives us everything that pertains to life and godliness. It is an attitude and a manner of life for us. 

Godliness is not only worth the effort; it is to be pursued. Paul wrote to Timothy, “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.”  Again, godliness is how we are to live, and godliness requires our sacrifice and our effort. We must help one another grow in godliness, as that is one of the primary purposes of the church community.

In light of the end that is coming, may our hearts and minds be concentrated wonderfully on the Lord, who is our hope and our joy.