Insightful Musings on theScriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, dear ones.

Lots of irregular stuff going on around here this morning…so I didn’t get the jog routine done. It’s a beautiful clear blue sky out there…with green grass growing like crazy. I wish someone would cut it. Hopefully I can find some time to attack that fact today.

It kind of shakes me to realize how close at hand is Friday morning the 9th—at which time Becki and I are slated to be at the airport to board a plane aimed at Missouri—where our latest grandbaby eagerly awaits our embrace. We plan to be back the 14th.

Becki just came into the studio with Nicholas who had a splinter in his thumb…from throwing a stick for Dandy…because the goofy dog doesn’t have a clue where a ball is. I used my jeweler’s loupe and special tweezers to pull it out…after we worked with him awhile psychologically to hold still. It was a successful surgery.

May you have a great day…now that you have a great day to begin with.

Love, Dad/Ray.

First of all, let’s identify who the “them” is in this statement. They are people who have been “saved”—enlightened and embracing of the Biblical Gospel. But then, because they do not set a decisive course of discipleship, their faith becomes sloppy, vulnerable, and falls prey to the rotten rhetoric of hypocritical knuckleheads—whom Peter names as “false teachers” (2:1). The big enticing attraction of these teachers is that they sound so good—“Bold and arrogant” (2:10)—attractive qualities to a worldly mindset. And, “They mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error” (2:18). And get this paradox: “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him” (2:19). Peter is establishing a bottom-line pitiful point—a warning against apathy and mediocrity. This is how it stacks up in my understanding: IT IS POSSIBLE TO RECEIVE GOSPEL GRACE (be saved), THEN FALL FROM GRACE (backslide).

Why does a dog act like a dog? The answer is obvious: He not only has the anatomy of a dog, he has a dog’s nature. A pig thinks and acts like a pig because he has a pig’s nature. And a sinner acts like a sinner because he has a “sinful human nature” (2:18). It seems to me that if we don’t sort things out from that premise, the Biblical Gospel is just another big pile of nonsense.

Please rejoice and be very thankful—and careful—as you “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12)—as opposed to careless presumption. The Biblical Gospel allows us to “participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (1 Peter 1:4)—or escape the tyranny of the “sinful human nature”—made possible by the “miracle” of rebirth—or “born again.” But please also understand that this transformation does not make one completely divine just because they are allowed to “participate in the divine nature”—or that the “sinful human nature” has been completely eradicated. I see no other way to explain the possibility and reality of the backsliding that Peter here describes—a possibility and reality that should sober us all—and add motivation to nurturing and maintaining a HEART AFTER GOD.