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Everything You Need...And What Is That?


His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (II Peter 1:3-4)

          Every so often, I hear people proclaim "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness." They leave out the rest of the verse and the verse after. Knowing how God has done this is important, wouldn't you say? Leaving those details out is sort of like handing someone a scalpel and saying, "Here, go do surgery." We have what we need...through our knowledge of Him. That knowledge was given to us not because we deserved it, but because of God's glory and goodness. Through His glory and goodness, He has given us promises that we have a divine partner.
         This has always been the promise: God, Himself. We tend to look at promises in terms of circumstances, but the Mosaic Law can be summed up as "As long as you keep your side of the bargain, we're partners." The other covenants are other partnerships. With Immanuel ("God with us") how can we not have everything we need for life and godliness? The answer is simple: though our lack of understanding of what that means. This is why we need to look into Scripture daily. It is why we need to study and memorize Scripture. The greater our knowledge - gnosko, experiential knowledge - of God, is, the greater our partnership with Him can be.

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