“PT-1 Salvation’s Source” (2 Peter 1-1)

 

 EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/21/2025 8:30 PM

My Worship Time                                                                       Focus: “PT-1 Salvation’s Source”

Bible Reading and Meditation                                                                     Reference: 2 Peter 1-1

            Message of the verse:   “1 Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:”

            We begin this evening by looking at the very first verse found in 2 Peter, and I believe that there is much packed into this verse, and so it will take a few days to unpack what is in it.

            This verse is what is called a standard salutation, appropriately identifying himself as the author Simon, which is the Greek form of the Hebrew “Simeon,” the father of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, and was a common Jewish name as can be seen in the following verses (Matt. 13:55; 26:6; 27:32; Acts 1:13, 8-9; 9:43).  Peter is from a Greek word that means “rock” (Cephas is its Aramaic equivalent; See John 1:42; 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5; Gal. 1:18; 2:9, 11, 14).  The apostle used both names to ensure that the letter’s recipients knew exactly who it was from.

            Next we look at the phrase a bond-servant, as Peter humbly and gratefully placed himself in the position of submission, duty, and obedience.  Some of the greatest leaders in the history of redemption bore the title servant (e.gl, Moses, Deut. 34:5; Ps. 105:26; Mal. 4:4; Joshua Josh. 24:29; Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:1; James, James 1:1; Jude, Jude 1), and it eventually became a designation suitable for every believer (cf. 1 Cor. 7:22; Eph. 6:6; Col. 4:12; 2 Tim. 2:24).  In Peter’s day, to willingly call oneself a bond servant, which is the Greek word doulos, “slave”) was to severely lower oneself in a culture where slaves were considered no better than animals.  Now that practice may have been demeaning socially, it was honorable spiritually, for Jesus Himself is called a slave: 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men” Phil 2:5-7). Now the highlighted word is doulos in the Greek and it means slave, and so we can see that the Holy Spirit uses in Phil. 2:7 slave when describing Jesus.  Here is the problem, and the in our English editions of the Bible in the United States and because of slavery formerly in our country they did not translate the greed word, doulos as slave, which they should have.  Now back to where I was before explaining this word:  Whereas that practice may have been demeaning socially, it was honorable spiritually.  MacArthur concludes “It was to acknowledge that one was duty bound to obey his master, no matter what the cost.  Of the sense in which this is true of Christians, William Barclay explains:

 

(i)              To call the Christian doulos of God means that he is inalienably possessed by God.  In the ancient world a master possessed his slaves in the same sense as he possessed his tools.  A servant can change his master; but a slave cannot.  The Christian inalienably belongs to God.

(ii)            To call the Christian a doulos of God means that he is unqualifiedly at the disposal of God.  In the ancient world the master could do what he liked with his slave.  He had the same power over his slave as he had over his inanimate possessions.  He had the power of life and death over his slave.  The Christian belongs to God, for God to send him where He will, and to do with him what He will.  The Christian is the man who has no rights of his own, for all his rights are surrendered to God.

(iii)          To call the Christian the doulos of God means that the Christian owes al unquestioning obedience to God.  Ancient law was such that a master’s command was a slave’s only law.  Even if a slave was told to do something which actually broke the law, he could not protest, for, as far as he was concerned, his master’s command was the law.  In any situation the Christian has but one question to ask:  ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?’  The command of God is his only law.

(iv)          To call the Christian the doulos of God means that he must be constantly in the service of God.  In the ancient world the slave had literally no time of his own, no holidays, no time off, no working-hours settled by agreement, no leisure.  All his time belonged to the master.  (The Letters of James and Peter, rev. ed. [Philadelphia; Westminster, 1976], 345-46; emphasis in the original).

 

9/21/2025 9:08 PM