IN the first chapter of his second epistle, Peter refers to the "exceeding great and precious promises" of God. Though the Bible indeed abounds in these promises, mankind has come to entertain a skeptical attitude towards them. Generally speaking, it has failed in finding their fulfillment because it has so persistently looked in every direction but the right one. Then, too, a certain amount of misapprehension has arisen because of the assumption by some that God can be bargained with as can be a mortal of variable moods; that His favor is whimsical, and must needs be sought without definite assurance of response.
It is possible that this misapprehension results, in a measure at least, from the fact that so frequently the divine promise is accompanied by the word "if": if ye do thus and so, then such a result will follow. A contemplation of the divine nature as so fully portrayed in the Scriptures, however, convinces one that the word "if" does not imply an uncertainty, but that it is used in the sense of "because," or "in consequence of": because ye do thus and so, then such a result will follow.
No element of doubt can attach to the promises of God, "with whom," as James says, "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Divine promises indicate the operation of a spiritual, infallible law. Indeed, a little later in the same epistle Peter rebukes this state of doubt by affirming that "the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness." How deeply he had drunk of the truth and proved its potency during those few years of which the Bible tells us! All that Peter found possible, through knowledge of God, is possible also to each of us.
