2 Peter 1:4

2 Peter 1:4

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.

If you have already forgotten the “these” Peter is talking about they are the fullness of life and godliness God has granted to us. We have been given everything we need for life and godliness and through that his promises are granted to us. We see here that God’s promises are magnificent but never forget that God’s value judgment places a high price on joy over happiness. God’s promises are for our joy not our happiness. American Christians have a hard time with this principle because we are Americans we are entitled to the pursuit of happiness! It is our right as Americans to pursue happiness but it is our duty to seek God as Christians. The pursuit of happiness seems to be to be the exact opposite of the pursuit of joy in God. We see this throughout the Bible and the Israelites we such a great example of this. At the very end of Judges after we have seen so many ups and downs, failures and successes, rebellion and returns, we see that everyone returned to their homes and their inheritances and they did what was right in their own eyes. These were people who were seeking happiness and not God. When we are happy it is so easy to forget what God has done in our lives. Before I go any further I need to address something. Some of you maybe thinking that I am anti-happiness and that I think the Christian life is a life of hardship and sadness. That is not the case, I love to be happy! When things in life are going great I am happy and I enjoy it. I love to be in a good mood and to laugh and to be happy but I do not live my life striving for it. Happiness is fleeting it comes and goes. There are days when I am happy and there are days when I am angry or sad but in the midst of all of that I have Joy in my God who knows what is best for me. When you are happy enjoy it and praise God but never lose sight of Him never do what is right in your own eyes! Do not forget God in His blessing because His blessing is not our god!

Joy and godliness, by these we are granted God’s promises. God promises us eternal life through His son Jesus Christ who died for our sins on the cross. We have the promise of an eternal relationship with the God of the universe. That is an awesome promise! And it is through this relationship with God that we can take part in His divine nature. “To err is human, to forgive is divine,” Alexander Pope. This quote shows us what we have in this divine nature. We have been granted the opportunity to exchange our human nature for the divine. Human nature seeks happiness because it is above all else selfish. When we partake in the divine we have the ability to be selfless and in being selfless we can experience joy. I can take joy in the spiritual growth of another even if it comes at the expense of my personal happiness but that is because of the divine! My human nature is too seek my happiness above all else but because Christ died for me I can enter into his Nature which is divine. We are all scarred by our own sinful nature we have deep wounds because we have lived life seeking our own happiness many times at the expense of others but Christ has offered us a better way a better life.

In Christ we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Lust here is our sinful desires, our selfish nature. Do we seek happiness above all else or do we seek God? When we seek God to we follow Him when he calls us to forgo our happiness for His will? It is not easy to trade happiness for joy but it is necessary. The world and our sinful nature only offers corruption. In the Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis writes that the devils cannot create a single pleasure the most they can do is to take all the pleasures God has taken and corrupt them. They do this by encouraging us to partake of God’s pleasure in an improper way, to an improper degree, or at an improper time. God created everything that is good and right. He created things like sex which the world has corrupted and claimed as its own. God calls us to live for Him by sacrificing our sinful natures daily in Romans 12 but why would we not want to? We get to trade our sinfulness for His glory! We not only escape the corruption of the world but we can enjoy God’s pleasures in the correct context to their full extent! This is what joy has to offer so I urge you seek God and his joy instead of happiness. When god blesses you and you feel happy praise Him and seek Him more earnestly. His nature is divine and in it we have the ability to truly enjoy this life.