The sermon closes a months-long exposition of 2 Peter by working through the letter's final five verses, 2 Peter 3:14-18, and using them as a lens on the whole letter. The preacher opens with the true story of a husband and wife swept apart at sea: while the husband searches for a boat, the current carries his wife thirty kilometers before she is found, still afloat but far from where she started. The illustration frames the sermon's central claim: a Christian who merely floats does not stay in one place — without deliberate effort against the current of the world, a believer inevitably drifts backward. There is no such thing as spiritual neutrality. This urgency echoes 2 Peter 1:5, where Peter urges believers to "make every effort" to add virtue to their faith, and it resurfaces in the letter's closing exhortation, "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," which mirrors the greeting of grace and knowledge given at the letter's opening.

The sermon organizes its answer around three questions: what does it mean to grow in grace, how does that growth happen, and what threatens it.

On the first question, the sermon locates believers in an "already and not yet" era — after Christ's first coming and before his second, while they await the new heavens and new earth promised earlier in the chapter. The greatest grace, Christ's perfect obedience, death on the cross, and resurrection to conquer sin and death, has already been given and is received by faith alone, sola gratia. Drawing heavily on Paul, the sermon insists no human effort qualifies anyone for salvation: everyone has sinned and fallen short, and breaking even one commandment implicates a person in breaking them all, since every sin is at root a breaking of covenant with God — the sermon calls this the deeper meaning behind commands like "do not commit adultery" and "remember the Sabbath." The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector illustrates this: the Pharisee's boasted works are like filthy rags before God, while the tax collector's cry, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner," is what faith actually looks like — not a work, but an empty, outstretched hand, as in Martin Luther's image of a beggar. Abraham is cited as the pattern: he does nothing but believe the promise, and it is credited to him as righteousness. This is a radical, uniquely Christian claim, unlike every other religion and unlike the modern instinct that "there is no free lunch" — illustrated by a street-evangelism story where people refuse a free gospel tract yet would eagerly queue for a free car or a free iPhone.

Because this grace is so radical, it provokes the wrong question Paul anticipates in Romans: shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? The sermon names two wrong extremes this doctrine can be twisted into. Legalism assumes salvation is earned by obedience — precisely what Paul opposes. Antinomianism, the opposite distortion (which the sermon ties to Peter's warning about people twisting Paul's hard-to-understand teaching to their own destruction), assumes that because salvation is secure — "once saved, always saved" — a believer's conduct no longer matters. Paul's answer in Galatians is that believers have already died to sin with Christ and now live by faith in the Son of God; the old self, deserving wrath, has died with Christ, so continuing in sin makes no sense for one united to him. Yet the process is not finished: believers are justified and secure, but not yet fully sanctified, so Peter's command to "grow" and "make every effort" is evidence, not the cause, of having received grace. The sermon also reads "the Lord's patience means salvation" as directed at believers, not merely unbelievers awaiting conversion: God's patience is the space in which grace is meant to be worked out toward maturity, echoing Paul's charge to work out one's salvation because God is at work within. Paul's own testimony — that by the grace of God he is what he is, that he worked harder than all the other apostles, yet not he but the grace of God within him — models the sermon's proposed rhythm of past grace motivating present obedience, and present obedience opening onto future grace.

On the means of growth, the sermon focuses on one thing: koinonia, fellowship — with God through worship, the preached word, and the sacraments, with the Lord's Supper described as a tangible "tasting" of the gospel, and with fellow believers. Mary's visit to Elizabeth, whose greeting strengthens and confirms Mary's faith and prompts the Magnificat, is offered as a model of how fellow believers steady one another. The sermon closes by connecting this to the congregation's new outreach work in Springvale, urging the church not to withdraw from fellowship in times of hardship but to seek it out, since it is the God-given means by which grace grows toward maturity until believers see Christ face to face.

Bible Verses Used

• 2 Peter 3:14-18: The sermon's main text — the closing charge to be found spotless and blameless, to regard the Lord's patience as salvation, and to grow in grace and knowledge of Christ.

• 2 Peter 1:5: Cited as the letter's opening statement of the same theme, "make every effort," tying the whole epistle together around growth.

• Romans 6:1-2: The question "shall we go on sinning that grace may increase" is used to expose the antinomian misreading of grace that Peter also warns against.

• Galatians 2:20: Paul's "I have been crucified with Christ" grounds the sermon's explanation of why a believer united to Christ cannot go on living in sin.

• Philippians 2:12-13: "Work out your salvation" is used to explain how growth in grace is human effort empowered by God's prior work, not self-effort.

• Genesis 15:6: Abraham's faith credited as righteousness illustrates that salvation is received by faith apart from works.

• Ephesians 2:8-9: Quoted directly to anchor the sermon's central claim that salvation is by grace through faith, not of works, so no one may boast.

• Luke 18:9-14: The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector contrasts self-righteous boasting with the posture of faith that simply pleads for mercy.

• Luke 1:39-45: Mary's visit to Elizabeth models fellowship among believers as a means by which faith is strengthened and confirmed.