2 Peter 3.11
v 11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives
How but by God’s will for salvation would freedom be actualized within unity, and not suffocated by unity? Fullness of freedom and of unity is in the fabric of the revealed being and working of God. Freedom as expression of love, itself the unity that binds all together, is the promise of fellowship in scripture’s prophecy, and is known now to man as God’s project for the sufficient sanctification for him as part of the bride of Christ. So what then is the command of the promise, which is the hope of the prophecy being delivered and participated in by God’s miraculous working within man? That we live holy and godly lives, quite simply, knowing that freedom within obedience to God’s Authority was the example made known to us in the Son of God’s free obedience to the Authority of the Father. How can we expect to live holy and godly lives given our history of sin and the fininitude of men who are called to God but yet made of flesh and live within the world of flesh? Again, the example of Jesus Christ makes clear the demands of God are not beyond his anointing, by the Holy Spirit residing within those he so anoints.
What hope would unity be, for the man who is incongruent to the Authority of love which binds man in this promise? What grace is it to man, created in freedom, to be subjected to an order he sees as an abnegation of his own will? What love would it be if it were prepared before the recipient even was formed, and yet were to be actively spurned and rejected by that individual regardless of the significance of the need, or great costs to be avoided by freely receiving it? It would not be hope, nor freedom, nor love. It would not be the examples of these attributes revealed in the fabric of the trinitatarian God of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, by being made manifest in history and the flesh with the life of the Son and his public dynamic with the Father and Spirit? We may be compelled by the costs to be avoided by failing to receive this love of God, understanding that everything will be destroyed that does not find its life is now hidden with Christ in God (colossians 3.3). Or we may be compelled by the promises of God’s Word, that by the blood of the Son and the sanctification by the Spirit, we might clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3.12). What makes clear either motivation is the True foundation of both reactions of man, which is the Name of God who was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1.19–20). By the light God’s Truth in this, you will encounter the resounding answer to what kind of people ought you to be: under the Grace of God’s will for salvation of men, both for the judgement of the wicked and the redemption of the righteous in his Son’s name, you ought to live holy and godly lives so that when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (Colossians 3.4).
