Christians have faced threats from persecution.

So how do we discern what is true?

How do we stay strong in our beliefs to the very end, even while we live in a corrupt world?

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches us from the opening verses in 2 Peter chapter

1.

Let us come back and just work through the opening couple of verses.

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness

of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours.

Is this a reference here, the righteousness, the right doing of God, to his impartiality

in extending both to the Gentile as well as to the Jew, the opportunities of salvation?

Or is it a reference to the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Well turn as a cross reference to 2 Corinthians 5 or just a moment and let me try and explain

this so that none of us are stuck when next the question arises.

And here in 2 Corinthians 5 he speaks in terms of reconciliation.

Now why would men and women need to be reconciled to God?

Answer because they are alienated by nature from God.

Why is it that men and women feel an experience of alienation, whether it is social or material

or personal or psychological? The answer is these elements are all fruit of the great alienation

which men and women know, namely that God is holy and other than us and we because of

our sins are separated from him.

There is a great gulf that is between us.

Now then are we ever to bridge that gap all the answers we can't?

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