2 Peter 1 KJV
Growing in Faith
2 Peter Chapter 1: Growing in Faith
The virtue list in vv. 5-7 adapts Greco-Roman ethical catalogs but reorders them so that agape crowns the sequence, transforming Stoic self-mastery into participation in divine nature rather than mere human excellence.
1imon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:
2 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
11 For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
12 Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.
13 Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;
14 Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.
15 Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.
16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
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Did You Know?
The virtue list in vv. 5-7 adapts Greco-Roman ethical catalogs but reorders them so that agape crowns the sequence, transforming Stoic self-mastery into participation in divine nature rather than mere human excellence.
Verse 14's phrase 'shortly I must put off this tabernacle' employs tabernacle imagery from Exodus to frame Peter's death as priestly departure, echoing early traditions of his upside-down crucifixion in Rome under Nero.
The rare term 'epoptai' (eyewitnesses) in v. 16, drawn from mystery-cult initiation language, is applied to the Transfiguration to present apostolic testimony as superior public revelation over private visionary claims of false teachers.
'Partakers of the divine nature' (v. 4) echoes Philonic and Hellenistic Jewish ideas of assimilation to God yet ties this sharing explicitly to future escape from corruption, giving an eschatological rather than mystical reading of theosis.
Verse 20's denial that prophecy arises from 'private interpretation' (idias epilyseos) functions not as a general hermeneutic rule but as a claim that true prophecy originates solely in the Spirit's movement, countering both charismatic excess and Gnostic secret exegesis.