19 We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:19-21)
2 Peter 1:16-21 gives two things that provide stability to our faith: (1) the witness of the disciples to the deity of Jesus Christ (1:16-18); and, (2) the revelation of God through the Scriptures (1:19-21).
Today we will consider the second of these.
Our faith gains a measure of stability by the revelation of God through the Scriptures.
In 2 Peter 1:12-15, Peter employs the first person pronoun, I, to make his points. But in 2 Peter 1:16-18, he uses the plural pronoun, we, in order to include the testimonies of James and John who experienced the transfiguration of Jesus while on the mount of transfiguration. Peter, James, and John all saw and heard, and collaborated this real event.
Truth is the revelation of God through His chosen apostles and prophets as recorded in His Word (John 17:17). Such truth supremely focuses on God’s revelation of His Son who said (John 18:37), “for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.” He also said (John 14:6), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” The truth about Jesus is made known to us through the scriptures.
Jesus is the eternal Son of God who laid aside His glory and took on human flesh through the virgin birth. He is fully God and fully man. He voluntarily laid aside the use of some of His divine attributes as He took on the form of a servant and became obedient to death on the cross.
As the apostle John put it (John 1:14), “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
In our text today, we have the testimony of a man who spent more than three years with Jesus Christ. For most of those three years, he saw the humanity of Jesus. He saw Jesus hungry, tired, and finally, rejected and crucified by sinners. But he also saw Jesus feed the 5,000, walk on water, heal the sick, and raise the dead. He saw Jesus in His glory on the mount of transfiguration. He saw Him risen from the dead and he saw Him ascend into heaven, with the angelic promise that He is coming again in power and glory.
This witness to Jesus Christ is the foundation of our faith.
I will close with the appropriate words of C.S. Lewis.
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
