1
“To: Those Who Have Received a Faith Every Bit as Precious as Ours”
1 From: Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus the Messiah.
To: Those who have received by God’s will a faith every bit as precious as ours, through the righteousness our God and Savior, Jesus the Messiah.
“May Grace, and Peace, Be Yours in Ever Greater Measure”
2 May grace, and peace, be ᵖyours+ in ever greater measure on account of your knowing God and Jesus our Lord,
3 just as all things pertaining to life and godly conduct are now ours as a gift bestowed by his divine power, on account of our knowing the one who summoned us for the sake of his own honor and renown.
4 In this way he has bestowed on us those priceless and most wonderful blessings he promised, so that by them you may come to share in the very character and likeness of God, having escaped the moral corruption that fills the world as a result of evil desires.
5 It is on account of these very things, moreover, doing everything you possibly can, that you must add to your faith virtue, and to virtue, knowledge,
6 and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, patient endurance, and to patient endurance, godly conduct,
7 and to godly conduct, brotherly affection and concern, and to brotherly affection and concern, love.
8 These qualities, you see, if they to you truly do belong and are yours in ever greater measure, will make you with respect to your knowledge of our Lord Jesus the Messiah very productive and fruitful.
9 If someone lacks these qualities, you see, he is blind, so completely nearsighted as he is, having lost all sight of the fact that the guilt generated by the sins of his former life was cleansed away.
10 That is why you must do everything you can, brothers and sisters, all the more urgently, to put God’s summons and choice of you beyond repeal.+ If these are the qualities that define your conduct, you see, you will never falter beyond recovery.
11 By adding them, you see, entry into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah will be added to you most generously.
12 That is why I am resolved to remind you about these things continually, even though you already know them and are already firmly established in the body of true teaching you received.
13 I think it only right for me, as long as I am in the tent of this mortal body, to stir you to action by keeping them before you,
14 knowing that I will very soon lay aside this weak and mortal tent of mine, as indeed our Lord Jesus the Messiah made clear to me.
15 And I will do everything I can to make sure that you have, too, after I’m gone, a way to keep these things before your minds at all times.
16 It wasn’t cleverly devised myths on which we were relying, you see, when we told you about our Lord Jesus the Messiah’s powerful coming; no, it was with our own eyes that we witnessed the awesome splendor in which he will return.
17 Indeed, we were there when he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came to him from the Majestic Glory a voice, saying, “This is my dearly loved Son, with whom I am very pleased.”
18 This voice, too, we ourselves heard when it came from heaven, because we were on the holy mountain right there with him.
19 And so we possess the message proclaimed by the prophets as something whose truth and reliability has now been made even more certain, with respect to which you will do well by paying close attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until that Day dawns and the morning star itself appears on the horizon,
20 in your hearts understanding this as of first importance: In the case of any prophecy in Scripture, it isn’t by a person’s own power of interpretation that its meaning is unraveled.
21 It wasn’t by an act of human will, you see, that a prophet’s oracle was uttered in days of old. No, it was as they were moved by the Holy Spirit that they spoke on God’s behalf as human messengers.