EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/28/2025 9:52 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “Salvation’s Sufficiency”
Bible Reading and Meditation Reference: 2 Peter 1:3-4
Message of the verses: “3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. 4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”
Now as I look at John MacArthur’s commentary on this section it is a bit different from what I often see in his commentary as what I will try to get through this evening is what could be called an introduction to these verses and then he will break them down into different phrases that come from these verses in order to study them.
“In 2 Corinthians 9:8 Paul makes an amazing statement of the overwhelming, generous sufficiency of God’s salvation: ‘God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything; you may have an abundance for every good deed.’ The word rendered ‘sufficiency’ (autakeia) refers to self-sufficiency, which means having all that is necessary. It further means to be independent of external circumstances and from what outside source may provide. Believers’ spiritual resources, provide lavishly by divine grace, are sufficient to meet life’s demands (Phil. 4:19; cf. 2 Chron. 31:10).
“But in spite of God’s revelation of His tremendous generosity (cf. 1 Chron. 29:10-14), Christians often think He was somehow miserly in dispensing His grace. He may have given them enough enabling grace for justification (Rom. 3:24), but not enough for sanctification. Or some believers have been taught that they received enough grace for justification and sanctification, but not enough for glorification, and thus fear they may lose their salvation. Even if they believe there is not enough grace for them to handle life’s problems and trials. But there is no reason for any believer to doubt the sufficiency of God’s grace or to look elsewhere for spiritual resources (cf. Ex. 34:6; Pss. 42:8; 84:11; 103:11; 107:8; 121:1-8; Lam. 3:22-23; John 1:16; 10:10; Rom. 5:15, 20-21; 8:16-17, 32; 1 Cor. 2:9; 3:21-23; Eph. 1:3-8; 2:4-7; 3:17-19; 1 Peter 5:7). Paul admonished the Colossians:
‘See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority. (Col. 2:8-10)
Jesus compared salvation to a wedding feast: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son…. ‘Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened livestock are all butchered and everything is ready; come to the wedding feast’’ (Matt. 22:2, 4; cf. Luke 15:17-24; Rev. 19:6-9). He used that analogy because in first-century Jewish culture the wedding feast epitomized lavish celebration. In the same way, when He redeemed His own, God lavishly dispensed through the indwelling Holy Spirit all the grace and spiritual resources (Rom. 12:5-8; 1 Cor. 12:8-10; Eph. 3:20-21) they would ever need. Four essential components reminded Peter’s audience of the reality of their sufficient salvation: divine power, divine provision, divine procurement, and divine promises.”
This was, as I wrote, the introduction to the following things that MacArthur wrote about at the end of his introduction, and Lord, willing we will look at “divine power” in tomorrow evening’s SD.
9/28/2025 10:21 PM
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