Good morning my dear “Walking with Jesus” friends,
When you hear or read the word “RECONCILIATION” I wonder what comes to your mind or what emotions rise up in your heart? Do you immediately think of someone with whom you once had a relationship, but difficult things happened, and you are now estranged from each other? Perhaps, a smile comes to your face as you think about a person with whom you had a deep disagreement and you both intentionally avoided each other, but then something happened which brought you back to each other and you have been reconciled in your differences?
The truth is disagreement and conflict are a frequent part of our human journey, yet most people have more broken relationships than restored and healthy relationships. Today Peter has something to tell us about that!
We’re with the apostle Peter as he is nearing the end of his second letter, writing about 67ad. From everything we read about Peter in the Bible, Peter appears to be headstrong, self-confident, boisterous, opinionated and sometimes it appears Peter spoke or acted before he had given it much thought. I believe there are two significant relationships, which at one time were strained for Peter, but thankfully, later in Peter’s life were reconciled.
Today let’s see Peter refer to both of them in what he writes. Peter has rolled out his parchments and is speaking the words as he writes them: “So then dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with Him. (2 Peter 3:14)
Yesterday we saw, in the previous verses, that Peter was calling us to look forward in time to something he and prophets of old called “The Day of the LORD”. It will be a dreadful day of God’s judgment on the evil in our world. But following that dreadful judgment will come a glorious future of a new heaven and new earth and a time when Jesus will be greatly glorified as all evil will be abolished. This is what Peter was looking forward to and calling all Christians of all time, living anywhere in the world to “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with Him.” Have you noticed that living a God honoring life requires considerable effort? Why? Because we must restrain our personal sinful nature which works so hard to draw us away from God, and we must battle the dark kingdom, which is predominant everywhere in our world affecting morality, ethics, distortion of truth, and is forcefully leading the human race to oppose God at all times.
So, Peter’s words lead us to an important question: am I leading a blameless life and am I at peace with God? That is only possible, of course, through a personal relationship with Jesus and the inner working of the Holy Spirit guiding my heart and my mind.
Peter continues: “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation…” As Peter wrote this I wonder if he put down his stylus and was overwhelmed with the deeply personal thoughts of how patient Jesus had been with Peter so many times in the years, they were together. Of course, we remember Peter’s profound failure as he denied that he even knew Jesus, not once, but three times, (John 18:15-27) only hours after he had boasted to Jesus and the other disciples that he’d be willing to die for Jesus! (John 13:37,38)
But that wasn’t the only time Peter had offended Jesus. Matthew records for us that as Jesus was describing His soon betrayal and death in Jerusalem, Peter was determined to not let it happen. Matt. 16:22,23 gives us a glimpse into this pivotal moment:“Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Jesus. “Never, Lord!”, Peter said, “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.’ Jesus then said to His disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. “ This was one of those defining moments for the relationship Peter and Jesus had. We are grateful that John gives us the wonderful story of Jesus and Peter reconciling during their breakfast on the beach a few weeks after the resurrection of Jesus. In that John 21 account, not only is their relationship reconciled but Peter is restored by Jesus to a strategic role in taking the Gospel message of Jesus to the world and also nurturing the Christians through his teaching and his life. It seems to me that restored relationship permeates both Peter’s letters which we’ve been reading and the book of Acts accounts of Peter’s life activities in the month and years after Jesus ascended back to heaven.
But there was another strained relationship which Peter mentions here. He next writes: “just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. Paul writes the same way in all his letters…His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures to their own destruction.” (2 Peter 3:15,16)
Have you ever thought about the hatred which must have existed between Peter and Paul especially during the last weeks of Jesus’ earthly life as Jewish Pharisees and other leaders were constantly confronting Jesus and opposing Him? And of course, during that Passover weekend as these religious leaders led the charge to have Jesus killed, we can safely assume the young zealous Pharisee Saul Paulus of Tarsus was one of the most vocal in opposition to Jesus. Have you considered Peter may have been one of the first to hear the news of Stephen’s execution and Saul’s role in overseeing that murder? We have no doubt Peter knew that Saul was on his way to Damascus, with papers in his hand, giving him authority to arrest and persecute Jesus followers in that city!
I doubt we can imagine the disdain these two men had for each other during those many months. And we wonder if Peter led the charge in doubting Saul’s Damascus road conversion and perhaps Peter even opposed any efforts by Saul to meet with the apostles in Jerusalem, for a long time after his supposed conversion. (Acts 9:26)
But here, as Peter is closing his second letter, he refers to Paul as “our dear brother”, and Peter speaks with great respect for Paul’s letters, even referring to them as “Scripture“. That word “Scripture” placed Paul’s writings in the same holy category as the Old Testament writings of Moses, Isaiah, Samuel and all the prophets! Yes, the Holy Spirit of God had accomplished a great reconciliation between Paul and Peter as they came to understand the authenticity of their love for and allegiance to Jesus Christ as their Savior and their callings by Jesus to be HIS apostles to the world. In writing to the Galatian Christians Paul wrote: “God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the Jews, is also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter and John… gave me the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace of God given to me.” (Gal. 2:7-9)
As we close today my friends, have you discovered the power that Jesus can bring into the reconciliation of broken or strained relationships? How does it happen? Oh my friends, the reconciling work of Jesus happens by your invitation into the broken relationships you have! No, we don’t invite Jesus in as Judge, hoping He will punish the person we are at odds with, rather we invite Jesus in as healer, and reconciler. We invite the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and show us anything that is breeding discord, and as we repent of our anger and what we’ve done to strain relationships, the Holy Spirit does His cleansing work, His healing work and His restoring of relationships miracle!
Peter had experienced that with Jesus and with Paul, and I urge us all to look closely, do we need that very same miracle of reconciliation in our lives? I urge us to invite Jesus to show us the truth about all our relationships, and then invite Jesus to do His healing work in any relationship that Jesus wants improved. And here’s a wonderful worship song that helps us consider the power of God in restoring us!
Today’s Scripture is 2 Peter 3:14-16.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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