SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/4/2025 8:23 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “The Promise of Eternal Blessing”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Timothy
2:11-13
Message of the verses: “11 It is a trustworthy
statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; 12 If we
endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us;
13 If we are faithless, He remains
faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”
I
ended yesterday’s SD by writing “The next two conditions and promises are
negative and are parallel, at least in form, to the preceding positive ones.” Now I want to begin to look at the first one
as promised yesterday.
The
first thing is that Paul says, If we deny Him, that is, Jesus Christ, He also
will deny us. MacArthur writes “The
Greek verb rendered deny is in the future tense, and the clause is therefore
more clearly rendered, ‘If we ever deny Him’ or ‘If in the future we deny Him.’ It looks at some confrontation that makes the
cost of confessing Christ very high and thereby tests one’s true faith. A person who fails to endure and hold onto
his confession of Christ will deny Him, because he never belonged to Christ at
all. ‘Anyone who… does not abide in the
teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he
has both the Father and the Son’ (2 John 9).
Those who remain faithful to the truth they profess give evidence of
belonging to God.”
Next
comes a very important question that MacArthur brings up: “What about Peter’s denial?’ we may ask. ‘Can a true believer deny the Lord?’ (cf. Matt. 26:69-75; Mark 14:66-72; Luke
22:54-62; John 18:16, 25-27).” Now each
of these series of verses speak of Peter’s denial of knowing the Lord Jesus
Christ and remember that it was Jesus who stated that this would happen, and
then said that when he came back from this that he was to strengthen his
brothers. In John’s gospel at the end
Jesus made sure to bring Peter back into the fold by asking him three times “Do
you love me” “Feed my sheep.” MacArthur
goes on “Obviously believers like Peter can fall into temporary cowardice and
fail to stand for the Lord. We all do it
in various ways when we’re unwilling to openly declare our love for Christ in a
given situation.”
“Confronted
by the cost of discipleship, Peter was facing just such a test as Paul had in
mind. Did he thereby evidence a lack of true saving faith? His response to the denial, going out and
weeping bitter tears of penitence (Matt. 26:75), and the Lord’s restoration of
him in Galilee (John 21:15-17) lead one to conclude that Peter was truly justified, though obviously
not yet fully sanctified. And until
Pentecost, Peter did not have the fullness of the Holy Spirit. After the Spirit came to live in him in New
Covenant fullness, however, his courage, boldness, and willingness to face any
hostility became legendary (cf. Acts 1:5, 8; 2:4, 14-36; 3:1-6, 12-26; 4:1-4,
8-13, 19, 21, 31). Peter died a martyr,
just as Jesus foretold he would—faithful in the face of execution for his Lord
(John 21:18-19). Tradition holds that,
by his own request, he was crucified upside down, because he felt unworthy to
die in the same manner as his Lord.
“So
perhaps the answer to the issue of Peter’s denial is that his was a momentary
failure, followed by repentance. He did
not as yet have the fullness of the Spirit, but during the rest of his life
after Pentecost he boldly confessed Christ, even when it cost him his life.”
MacArthur
continues “Jesus Himself gave the sobering warning, ‘Whoever shall deny Me
before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven’ (Matt.
10:33). There is a settled, final kind
of denial that does not repent and thereby evidences an unregenerate
heart. After the lame man was healed
near the Beautiful gate of the temple, Peter testified to te seriousness of
denying Christ. ‘The God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus,’ he
said, ‘the one whom you delivered up, and disowned [denied] the Holy and
Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death
the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we
are witnesses’ (Acts 3:13-15).”
MacArthur then give something that is different from
what he has been talking about as he writes: “The most dangerous of those who
deny Christ are ‘false teachers…who will secretly introduce destructive
heresies, eve denying the Mater who bought them’ (2 Peter 2:1). They are, in fact, no less than
antichrists. To those who claim to
belong to God as Father without belonging to Christ as His Son, John
unequivocally says, ‘Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the
Christ? This is the antichrist, the one
who denies the Father and the Son.
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses
the Son has the Father also’ (1 John 2:22-23).
“In
the present text, however, Paul’s warning could include those who once claimed
Christ but later deny Him when the cost of discipleship becomes too high. Such were the ‘disciples [who] withdrew and
were not walking with Him [Jesus] anymore’ (John 6:66). It is about such Christians that the writer
of Hebrews says: ‘For in the case of
those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and
have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of
God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is
impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to
themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame’ (Heb. 6:4-6).”
This section that MacArthur references from the book
of Hebrews, I think that we should look at it some more as it is an important
section from Hebrews, and so I will try and find what I wrote about this
section when I taught through the book of Hebrews a few years ago so I can give
more information on these two verses in a later SD. Right now I have one more paragraph to look
at here and then tomorrow will look at the second negative condition in
tomorrow’s SD which will be much shorter.
“Later
in 2 Timothy, Paul describes such false Christians as ‘lovers of self, lovers
of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful,
unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control,
brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have
denied its power’ (3:2-5). In this
letter to Titus, he says of such people that ‘they profess to know God, but by
their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient, and worthless for
any good deed’ (Titus 1:16). Continual disobedience inevitably confirms
faithlessness by eventuating in denial.”
Spiritual
meaning for my life: Paul writes to the Romans “All have sinned
and come short of the glory of God.” John
tells is in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” My point is that there is a difference in sin
and denying Christ as your Savior and Lord.
My
Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to trust the Lord to keep me from
ever denying Him, for I know that for over 51 years that Jesus Christ has and
will be my Savior and my Lord.
2/4/2025 9:27 AM
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