Chapter 1

¹Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the uprightness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have been given a faith as privileged as ours; ²God bless you and give you perfect peace through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. ³For his divine power has given us every requisite for life and piety, through our coming to know him who through his glory and excellence called us to him. ⁴Thus he has given us his precious and splendid promises so that through them you may escape the corrupting influences that exist in the world through passion, and come to share in the divine nature. ⁵For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, ⁶knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with piety, ⁷piety with a spirit of brotherhood, and the spirit of brotherhood with love. ⁸For if you have these qualities in their fulness, they will make you neither idle nor unproductive when it comes to the understanding of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹For whoever lacks these qualities is blind or near-sighted, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his former sins. ¹⁰Therefore, brothers, make all the greater efforts to make God’s call and choice of you certain. For if you have these qualities, you will never stumble, ¹¹for then you will be triumphantly admitted to the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

¹²Therefore I will always remind you of this, although you know it and are firmly grounded in the truth that you have. ¹³Yet I think it right, as long as I live in my present tent, to arouse you by a reminder, ¹⁴for I know that I must soon put it away, as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me. ¹⁵I will also take care that after I am gone you will be able at any time to call these things to mind. ¹⁶For they were no fictitious stories that we followed when we informed you of the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and of his coming, but we had been eye-witnesses of his majesty. ¹⁷For when he was so honored and glorified by God the Father and from the supreme glory there were borne to him such words as these: “This is my Son, my Beloved! He is my Chosen!”— ¹⁸we heard these words borne from heaven when we were with him on that sacred mountain. ¹⁹So we have the message of the prophets more fully guaranteed. Please pay attention to that message as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. ²⁰You must understand this in the first place, that no prophecy in Scripture can be understood through one’s own powers, ²¹for no prophecy ever originated in the human will, but under the influence of the holy Spirit men spoke for God.