You are welcome! But how to receive a rich welcome?

Key verses:      2 Peter 1:10-11

¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, ¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Scripture:        2 Peter 1:1-11

1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who through the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

² Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Confirming one’s calling and election

³ His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. ⁴ Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

⁵ For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; ⁶ and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷ and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ⁸ For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But whoever does not have them is short-sighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, ¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

(Message)

See v10.

¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble,

Calling and election is yet another example of Peter’s use of a pair of words of very similar meaning. If a distinction is to be made between them, we can say that election is a prior decision to select someone from a group (as, for example, God selecting Israel out of the nations to be his people), while calling is the actual process of inviting the elected ones to share in the privileges and responsibilities of their election. The one who does the calling and choosing is God. These two terms stress the fact that it is through God’s initiative that people experience a new relationship with God. [2]

But how do people confirm their call and election? We should of course avoid translating this in such a way as to make the calling and election dependent on human action rather than on divine initiative. God is the one who calls, but those who are called must show by their action that their call is real and that their election is absolutely certain. In this way they themselves, as well as people from outside the church, won’t have any doubt regarding the genuineness of God’s call. [2]

This emphasis on the importance of the human role in the Christian life serves to remind the readers that there are teachers who would like to lead them into a morally lax existence. In such cases it is possible to restructure the ordering of these clauses completely and say, for example, “My brothers, God has called you to follow him and has chosen you to be his people. So, if you want to insure that this experience lasts permanently, you must try even harder than you have up to now” or “… Therefore try even harder to act in a way that will prove to yourselves and others that God has really called you to follow him and has chosen you to be his people.” [2]

If you do these things can refer to what comes immediately before, that is, making sure of your calling and election, or else to the virtues in verses 5–7, since literally this reads “if you do these things.” “Stumble,” in this context can refer to committing error or sinning, or falling away from the faith and becoming unfaithful to Christ. Some commentators take this in a future sense, taking “stumble” as referring to the inability of reaching final salvation. The Greek negative (never) here is emphatic, with the sense of “never, never,” or “never at any time.” [2]

• If the translator understands the phrase if you do these things to refer to the virtues listed in verses 5–7, and stumble to refer to “becoming unfaithful to Christ,” an alternative translation model is the following; “If you follow these qualities you will never stop trusting in Christ.” However, if stumble is understood as committing error or sinning, then one can translate “if you follow these qualities you will never fall into sin.” [2]
• However, if translators understand if you do these things to refer to what comes immediately before this text, an alternative translation model is the following: “if you insure that God has called you and chosen you, you will never stop trusting in Christ (or, never fall into sin).” [2]

See v11.

¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

This verse continues the thought of verse 10 and mentions in a positive way the reward that comes to believers as they make sure of their call and election. It begins with the word ‘and’, again referring back to the virtues mentioned earlier. In many languages this can be rendered as “By doing all these things …” [2]

Reference

[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version (Anglicised Edition, 2011). (2011). (Revised and updated edition, 2 Pe 1:10–11). London: Hodder & Stoughton.

[2] Arichea, D. C., & Hatton, H. (1993). A handbook on the letter from Jude and the second letter from Peter (pp. 83–85). New York: United Bible Societies.