By:
Thomas Clayton Booher
2
Pet 1:3
As
His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who
called us by glory and virtue.
Salvation is from sin. Since man fell,
all of God’s work in relation to him has centered around the saving of the soul
from sin. A. W. Pink may have been the one who popularized the tri-faceted
nature of our salvation by describing it as deliverance from the penalty, power,
and presence of sin. His observation serves to keep the whole matter of
salvation in perspective.
Often as a child, the preaching that I
heard stressed only how God saves us from hell. Not from my pastor, Clayton
Howard Gray, who was the greatest pulpit preacher I’ve ever heard. Such
preaching did not come from him, but others.
I remember one speaker at a youth camp
located in Erie , Pennsylvania George Junior
Republic
In the particular sermon I alluded to,
the speaker looked in the direction of these boys (they usually sat together)
and said, “You’re not worried about going to hell, because you say you’ll just
tough it out. Well, there’s no out – it’s just toughing it.” I thought that was
a rather slick rejoinder, and was sure it had to make those guys think long and
hard about their future, eternal destiny. Of course, over the course of the
week several of the interns professed conversion – Fabian one of them. In the
few days that remained, I spent some time with him, talking and assessing him
as a convert. Not much had changed – actually, nothing really did. The profanity
would come out, the lack of a genuine seriousness about ‘being Christian,’ his
anger and get-even attitude were still there, and his lust. He remarked in a
rather lecherous way how one of the girls (she was from my church) had a really
nice body – from the neck down. I had great doubts about the genuineness of his
profession. The problem: salvation was preached exclusively as salvation from
the penalty of sin – from God’s judgment and hell. The problem was actually
more fundamental than that. There was no genuine portrayal of the holiness of
God and the heinousness of our sin. These guys had no good reason to convert
because there was nothing that brought them face-to-face with an all-holy God.
Peter writes that God has called us ‘by
glory and virtue.’ The translation could be expanded, “by means of glory and
virtue.” We should note that the means by which anything is accomplished might
not always be concrete. This can be illustrated using a baseball analogy. When
someone steps to the plate and knocks the ball out of the park, the color commentator
might say, “He hit that one by hard work,” and his companion might turn to him
and say, “What are you talking about, he hit that homer by a 33 inch bat.” The
color commentator was not thinking of a single, concrete, wooden stick with a
certain shape. He was thinking of the history behind the home run, the character
of the batter and the time and effort he invested in practice before he ever
walked into the park. He was thinking of the mental attitude, work ethic, and
physical sacrifice that was necessary to make the home run a possibility for
the batter.
The virtue and glory of our call
describes the quality of the call, what went into it, like the hard work of the
batter that went into his home run. The virtue and glory are not the specific
instruments by which we are called. If we were to identify the specific means,
we would have to refer to God’s explicit choice that always existed in his
mind. The sovereign choice to save an individual is the instrument of the call
to salvation. The character of the call takes on the virtue and glory of the
one doing the calling.[1]
Grace is the word most often
associated with our calling. It is God’s gracious character behind the call.
The call to salvation could only come if God were a God of grace. If there were
no grace in God, there would be no call. We, as sinners, deserve God’s unreserved
wrath. That would be just. But in grace, because of grace, out of grace God
called us to be saved from that wrath, a salvation that we do not deserve.
The glory behind our calling is a
motif found in Paul, and if we sample his exposition of that motif, we see that
glory impinges on our salvation in several ways. In his letter to the
Ephesians, he reiterates the point several times that our salvation rebounds to
his glory (Eph 1:6; 12, 14; 3:21). The glory also refers to the quality of
salvation itself which Paul describes as “the riches of the glory of his inheritance
in the saints” (Eph 1:18). We see Paul prayed that the Father would grant the
Ephesian Christians to be internally and spiritually strengthened according to
the “riches of His glory” (Eph 3:16). In Romans, Paul identifies our call as according
to his purpose and then explains that purpose in terms of the golden chain that
begins with his foreknowledge and ends with our glorification (Rom 8:29, 30).
Peter also understands the telic glory that will be ours when Christ returns (1
Peter 1:7; 5:1, 4, 10)
The virtue of our calling has not been
brought to the forefront in our preaching as glory has, which is
understandable. The New Testament writers do not dwell on it much either, at
least, not in the specific use of that word. But Peter has tied the call with
not only glory but also virtue.
Virtue would better be translated
excellence, and the idea would be that God’s call arises not out of a second
rate, ill-formed, flawed notion, but bears the mark of the most excellent
wisdom and prudence of God. Paul speaks in reverent awe of God’s wisdom and
prudence when he ponders our salvation (Eph 1:8; cf Rom 11:33; Eph 3:10). The excellency
of our call is therefore tied precisely to the purpose of our call, which is to
bring him the most glory[2] and us the
most good (Rom 8:28). As such, God designed it with the greatest care, ensuring
that in everything that bears on its accomplishment there is nothing that is
extraneous or unnecessary nor is there anything lacking. The humiliation and
suffering of Christ, his resurrection and ascension are necessary elements to
the fulfilling of God’s calling us to be saints. God’s calling is worked out
prudently in Christ’s work (Acts 4:27, 28; Rom 3:23-26; 1 Cor 15:20-25) and the
Spirit’s operation (John 3:3-5; Eph 1:13; 2:18, 22; 3:16).
Because of the glory and excellence
that is behind the call to salvation, the salvation to which we are called is complete. God saves us in every way that
we need to be saved, from its penalty, power, and its presence. God has not
forgiven us and declared us righteous, only to leave us to grovel in our sin.
He has not made us his children without a view to our freedom from the mastery
that sin has had over us. It is a call that changes from the inside out.
Because of an excellent and gracious call, his divine power has given us
everything necessary for a holy and godly life; it is suffused with the promise
of unfailing salvation through which we may be holy, even as the one who has
called us is holy, and escape the corruption of this world (1:4).
Because the promises of the call
cannot be thwarted, we know we are victors, and it excites us to add to our
faith and take on the great virtues of the Christian life (1:5-7).
The fellows from George Junior, Fabian
at least, did not get excited about being a Christian. He did not know anything
of salvation from the power of sin, nor the marvelous anticipation of being one
day delivered from its presence. There was no excitement to be holy as God is
holy because he had no awareness of the holiness of God. It was lacking in the
preaching and, therefore, lacking in the understanding.
Our preaching and teaching should
point ever back to the holiness of God, to the excellence behind our call which
graciously and effectively enlightens the mind to know the hope of that call (Eph
2:18). That hope is our deliverance from sin in every facet of our existence,
and drives us to make our calling and election sure (2:10, 11) by conscientiously
adding to our faith (1 Pet 1:5-8) the fruit that characterizes those called by glory
and excellence.
[1] Some manuscripts would translate, ‘by his own virtue and glory.’
[2] 2 Cor 4:15; Gal 1:5; Eph 1:6, 12, 14; 3:21; Phil
1:11; 4:20; 1 Tim 1:17; 2
Tim 4:18; 1 Pet 4:11; 5:11; 2 Pet 3:18; Jude 25; Rev 1:6; 4:9, 11; 5:12, 13;
7:12; 14:7; 19:1
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