In our last visit we discovered that Peter makes it clear: having a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ’s person, plan, provision and promise is essential to living victoriously as a Christian.
Notice that in the opening verses of 2nd Peter 1 “knowledge” is mentioned four times, three of them clearly pointing to our experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. The letter closes with the injunction to “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
In three of these references you have the Greek word, which means a full, clear, precise knowledge. It implies a more intimate, personal relationship, or an experiential knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the other two references the word implies a partial or imperfect knowledge, leaving room for continued growth. You can see how these references to knowledge relate to appropriating all God wants us to know about the Christian life and experience.
There have always been those who pride themselves in having a better knowledge than most of what Christianity is about. They consider themselves to be the elite. They were known as Gnostics in the first few centuries. But they have been around down through the centuries under different aliases. Peter warns against having mere head knowledge of Christianity, because if that’s all you have you have less than what God intended and provided for. God wants you to have a heart knowledge or experiential knowledge.
As we continue our study of 2nd Peter we will see how this works.