The Toolbox
II Peter 1:3-11
Apprenticed to Jesus
We learned in the previous session that a disciple is an apprentice – we are to think of following Jesus as like being apprenticed to a master craftsman: Jesus is someone who knows how to nurture the soul and be spiritually fruitful. From him we learn skills that cannot be picked up from a breezy seminar with a guy in a suit – and over a lifetime we learn and live the kind of virtues that marked Jesus out as totally unique. If we are successful then we will be unique too.
We have all the tools we need to do this (3), our job is to learn to use these tools and then to become experts.
We also learned that our apprenticeship begins when we answer his call; we turn from our sinful lives and trust in him to save and teach us. This is a once and for all thing – conversion means that our sins are forgiven and that we belong to Jesus – Peter says that “God has cleansed us from our old life of sin” (9).
So what happens next?
Two big mistakes
It is at this moment that we often make one of two grave mistakes. The first is to assume that, because we are saved there is nothing more to be done but settle down and wait for the second coming. The second is to realise that our characters must be changed and to assume that God will take care of all that and we don’t need to bother our heads with the details. Both errors lead to spiritual stagnation and, in the end, to a strong dissatisfaction with the Christian life.
So here is the first dramatic challenge from this passage: repentance and faith get me into the kingdom, but my continued growth in repentance and faith enable me to change deeply so that I become more like Christ. Furthermore, I am supposed to make a large contribution to this process – my active attention to steady spiritual growth will mean that I never stagnate or become disillusioned (5 & 10).
Jim Packer puts it like this:
A holy persons motivating aim, passion, desire, longing, aspiration, goal and drive is to please God, both by what one does and by what one avoids doing. In other words, one practices good works and cuts out evil ones. Good works begin with praise, worship, honouring and exalting of God. Evil works start with the neglecting of these things, and coolness with regard to them. So I must labour to keep my heart actively responsive to God. [1]
An apprentice usually begins by sweeping floors (this is true whether you are leaning to be a hairdresser or install gas turbines). But if you are still sweeping floors a year later there is something seriously wrong – you are meant to be learning on the job not just cleaning up. If you believe that God will change you without your participation, or you just need to hang on until Jesus comes to get you, you are a Christian floor-sweeper; it is years since you became an apprentice and the only tool you have learned to use is a broom! What’s wrong with you? Peter says that, if you tolerate this, you are stuck and you will never be useful (8). [2]
The power tools
You are here to learn to use the tools in the toolbox and the first two you need to master I am going to call power tools – we won’t get anywhere without these. These are the ones you began with – repentance and faith. You need to continue to master these power tools throughout your Christian life: your spirit will be nourished as your practice of repentance expands and as your faith deepens – this will be a lifelong process.
Think of Abraham – the man of faith according to the New Testament [3] . This man began his journey with God because he believed God’s promise to him. But it was not long before the weakness of his ability to trust God began to show. There was an embarrassing series of incidents where he schemes and lies to protect himself because he couldn’t quite believe that God would look after him in every circumstance.
Yet, Abraham’s faith grew gradually as God kept putting him in situations he couldn’t quite cope with! Eventually you see him, in an almost incomprehensible test of his faith, poised with a dagger over his own son’s heart because he believed that God could bring him back from the dead. God stopped him in time, but the point had been made. Faith is a tool that he learned to use in a lifetime of allowing God to teach him. In the end he was an expert - believing God’s promises in the most extreme of circumstances.
If faith is a power tool then so is repentance.
Repentance happens when we apply the benefits of what we believe to our lives (5). The first time we repent we are turning away from our sinful life and inviting God to take his rightful place as our king: from that moment his word is our command. But repentance must continue through a lifetime – apprentices of Jesus need to continue to deal with the sin in their lives in the same way that a Gardner needs to learn to defeat the weeds in his cabbage patch.
Jim Packer describes the process brilliantly:
Repentance means turning from a much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as your knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged. [4]
Peter sees this process as a kind of progression; starting with faith he lists eight qualities or virtues that we develop over time; in his thinking ‘one thing leads to another’.
This idea of progression, one thing leading to another, is familiar to us. Think of sin; you steal something, then you lie about it, then you keep lying in a sustained way, then you delude yourself that the lie is actually true; you are outraged when someone accuses you of stealing, so you get angry with him… so it goes on. It is the same with virtue. One virtue leads to another (5-7).
It all begins with faith and it continues as we live a life of faith; believing the promises God has made to us (4). It also begins with repentance and it continues as we expand in our knowledge of God, and of ourselves, and of our sin.
So are the only two possibilities available to you – repentance or regression. Repentance is a lifelong life-change (5-8); regression is standing stock still and getting nowhere (9).
Let’s start with regression.
Standing still
The way that Peter writes here, it seems he is talking about genuine Christians who just don’t seem to be making progress. They are unproductive and useless if you contrast them with the people in verse 8. I bet that you can think of Christians who are like this, I certainly can – an uncomfortably large number of them.
Perhaps you don’t feel comfortable right now because you know that you are one of them?
The Peak District National Park is Britain’s biggest and it is closest to several huge cities. It gets around 19 million visitors every year. About ten years ago someone surveyed it and he worked out that there are a total of 1500 miles of footpaths in the park. They also calculated the average distance walked by each visitor. One of Britain’s natural treasures, with 1500 miles of paths, and guess how far the average person walked? Just over 100 yards!
This is where stagnant Christians are at – there are wonders to explore and we can’t be bothered to get off our bums and make the effort! We answer Jesus call to come to him but ignore his call to keep going and to express [5] more of his character in our lives. We become his apprentices but spend our lives sweeping floors. This is an unacceptable situation and this is what Jesus said about it:
To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.
Matthew 25:29
The master has a simple message for his apprentices; use it or loose it! Peter repeats this here, “If you are not practising a lifelong life of life-change, you are loosing the faculties that make you grow”. He goes on to say that you become spiritually visually-impaired and you develop amnesia (9) as a result you stop enjoying the Christian life and (probably) start complaining!
This is where a lot of us are – you are not enjoying it and you are making it miserable for the rest of us. I suggest that you change! Here is the alternative: a toolkit for lifelong life-change.
The toolkit for lifelong life-change
After the power tools there are more skills to master. Peter tells us to develop these virtues…
Faith - A growing trust in God in every circumstance
Moral excellence Goodness – high-quality character
Knowing God better - Spiritual understanding of God and his ways
Self-control Self-discipline – mastering habits and urges
Patient endurance - Stick-ability, willing to endure under pressure
Godliness Piety - love of God’s presence and worship
Love for believers - warm friendliness towards other Christians
Love for all - Generosity and graciousness to everyone
It would be nice to linger over each of these eight virtues and tease out their meaning – this is exactly what we plan to do over the next eight weeks. Meanwhile, just catch a flavour of this and get a vision of how your life would be if you were to throw away your yard broom and grab something from the toolbox
So how does this happen? The key is in verse 5; the three most threatening words in the Christian vocabulary; “make every effort”!
This sort of language frightens evangelical Christians. One of the first things we grasp about salvation is that we cannot save ourselves; we cannot even pay part of the price. The only thing I contribute towards my salvation is the sin I need to be saved from! So evangelical Christians come out in spots when a phrase like, ‘make every effort’ is used. I know theologians who, if they had been standing behind Peter when he wrote this, would have stopped him. “Hang on Peter, you can’t write that, it is very misleading”, they would have said [6] .
But Peter is not wrong; it is our thinking that is wonky and needs putting straight. Salvation is all God’s work – you cannot contribute to it. But now you belong to Jesus, and you are his apprentice he has given you a toolbox, you and I must learn to use these tools or we will spend the rest of our lives sweeping floors!
When I started secondary school I used to love woodwork lessons. I had helped my dad make a lot of things with wood, and I expected to be good at it. Our first project was a plant label involving some simple work with a plane and a chisel. But I just found the new tools very difficult to handle and the final result was a complete mess. I was really ashamed of it. But I felt even worse when our teacher gathered the class around my bench and told everyone what he thought of my carpentry – it was a deeply humiliating moment.
Over the course of that year I learned how to use the tools in that workshop – it wasn’t easy, but I just wanted to prove that I could be better at woodwork than anyone else in the class. Half-way through the year my dad bought me a piece of teak and I took it to school and asked the teacher if I could make a bookcase with it. He agreed and gave me some plans.
When I had finished he gathered the class ‘round my bench again and spent ten minutes pointing out where I had gone wrong and how I could do better next time. But he knew as well as I did that it was the best darn bookcase he had ever seen an eleven year old boy produce! I made that bookcase in 1966, it is forty-one years old and I still use it – it is on my desk as I type these words, not perfect but miles better than that plant label!
This is how it works… it is a progression!
Make every effort - Get a determination to develop these virtues ask God to give you a passion to see this in your life, put it at the top of your list of desires and – then with God’s help - work to achieve the proficiency that he expects for you.
[1] Jim Packer - A Passion for Holiness, Crossway Books, ISBN 1-85684-043-3
[2] Jesus told a terrifying story about you – find it in Luke 19:11-27
[3] See Romans 4 and Hebrews 11:8-12.
[4] Keep in Step with the Spirit, Jim Packer, IVP, ISBN 0-85110-725-7
[5] I chose this word carefully. Plenty of Christians want to experience more of Christ, but few will make every effort to express his character through their lives. If you do more of the latter then you will get plenty of the former!
[6] They would have stopped Paul a few times too, and as for Jesus…