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Introduction
LESSON 1: THE CHRISTIAN’S NEED FOR GROWTH: What is Spiritual Growth?
Spiritual growth means growing in intimacy with Christ.
We learned that it is important, immediate, intentional and inclusive.
We need it because growth assures us that we are truly God’s elect.
LESSON 2: THE REASONS FOR GROWTH: That we would be Fruitful and Effective.
If a believer is not growing in an increasing manner he becomes unfruitful or not productive.
We learned that:
Unfruitful works are bad, wrong and false.
Fruitful works are “good and right and true”
Unfruitful works are of darkness.
Fruitful works are of the light.
Fruitful works are pleasing to God.
Unfruitful works do not please God.
Fruit can be a:
1. godly mindset
2. a lips that glorify God.
3. people we gather for Christ.
Our spiritual growth affects our fruitfulness.
Our goal is not just to become fruitful, it is to become very fruitful.
USE ILLUSTRATION: Corrective Lenses.
Shortsightedness.
A trouble seeing things afar, thinking that reason must be because they were at a distance.
This explains why near things were clear and things afar, are blurred.
IT IS THE SAME WITH LIFE.
All along we thing that we see life clearly.
We assume we are living normally.
But when we finally see how God sees us through His Word, we realize that we are really out of focus.
Our vision had been blurred all along.
This is similar what Peter says:
The second reason why we must grown spiritually is, so that we become focused and not forgetful.
Verse 9 gives the consequence when we don’t develop those qualities stated in verse 8. Without mincing words, Peter describes a spiritually immature person as being “so nearsighted that he is blind.”
Was Peter talking here of believers or unbelievers?
regards unbelievers as blind people:
But Peter describes here a person who “is so nearsighted that he is blind.”
It other words, “You are so shortsighted that you cannot see.”
The person is not really blind, just nearsighted.
He actually could see but he is so out of focus it is as if he could not.
He is as good as a blind person.
THEREFORE, PETER WAS ILLUSTRATING A BELIEVER WHO HAS BECOME SPIRITUALLY OUT OF FOCUS.
This nearsightedness is not INVOLUNTARY.
A commentary explains, “A person has to be born again before his eyes are opened and he can see the kingdom of God.
But after our eyes are opened, it is important that we increase our vision and see all that God wants us to see.”
But instead of increasing his vision, this person closed the very eyes that God has opened.
The word “nearsighted” is active from the original text.
So, “the meaning may be ‘shutting the eyes to the truth” He chose not to see.
He is blind by choice.
He defocused himself.
HE DID IT VOLUNTARILY.
THE REASON FOR HIS NEARSIGHTED IS GIVEN in the verse: “having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”
Peter meant the person’s former way of life.
This person was actually cleansed from those sins and then he chose to forget this truth.
A spiritually shortsighted person then, first of all, is a believer:
1. who chose to forget from where God saved him to return to his old ways.
2. return to his old ways.
And because he chose to close his eyes to the truth and chose not to remember, he is like the false teacher whom Peter describes.
2 Peter
False teachers are exposed to the truth.
Likewise, the nearsighted believer.
At first they have appeared to have embraced the truth.
But later on, they turned their backs away from the truth.
The problem is, when we go back to our old ways, we would end up in a much worse condition than we were before we became believers - “the last state has become worse for them than the first.”
Like dogs licking up their own vomit and pigs who just took a bath but returned to the mud, our lives could even end up worse than unbelievers.
2. A nearsighted person is only focused on the present.
Remember the Israelite in the wilderness?
God, through Moses, freed then from slavery.
Yet time and again they would long for what they had in Egypt.
They forgot from where God had redeemed them - slavery in Egypt.
THEY DID NOT SEE THAT IN THE WILDERNESS, THEY WERE FREE.
A book writer, Robert Deffinbaugh, said in his book ‘A secured Faith that Keeps the Saints from stumbling’, “Spiritual blindness manifests itself as shortsightedness.
Instead of ‘fixing our hope’ on the spiritual and eternal certainties which God has promised and provided for us, we see only in the present.
No wonder this generation has been called the ‘now generation.’”
Just like the Israelite in the wilderness, the nearsighted person is focused on what he is missing from his past and forgets what he is enjoying in the present.
Also, a known preacher, John Piper, said “The problem with the person who does not strive toward all the fruit of faith is that he is blind in two directions.
When he looks to the future, it’s all a haze.
and the promises of God are swallowed up in a blur of worldly longings.
I think that is what it means by shortsighted.
And when he looks to the past, the forgiveness that made him so excited at first is well-nigh forgotten, and all he sees is an empty prayer and a meaningless ritual of baptism.”
WE SHOULD LOOK AT OUR PAST WITH THE CORRECT PERSPECTIVE.
We remember its lessons.
We are not to dwell on it or delight in it.
We view it from the perspective of a redeemed people who were “cleansed from our former sins”.
We have a saying, “Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan, hindi makakarating sa paroroonan”
We remember our failures, our sins and the lessons we have learned in the light of the truth of the gospel.
In this way, we do not forget, our vision is kept clear and we grow spiritually.
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