2 Peter 1:5-8
5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement (present) your faith (conviction of truth, belief, requires trust, cannot have salvation without faith) with goodness, goodness with knowledge (general understanding of Christian religion), 6 knowledge with self-control (master desires and passions), self-control with endurance (steadfastness, passionate patience), endurance with godliness (God-likeness, image bearer of Christ), 7 godliness with brotherly affection (phileo – cherish each other, found easily in commonality), and brotherly affection with love (agape – loves despite differences). 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The first step in walking the Christian life is making a profession of faith. Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” (HCSB) Once that confession is made, your relationship with God begins building, growing, maturing. Remember, in the prior blog, 2 Peter 1:3 tells us God provides us everything we need to live a godly life once we make that confession of faith. Now, it’s just a matter of maturing those areas in our lives, and there seems to be a progression that maturity takes. After all, your babies don’t start off eating steak with a knife and fork, do they?
So after the confession of faith comes goodness. Goodness is a virtue. But how does a Christian’s goodness differ from a non-Christian’s goodness? Because let’s face, there are a lot of good people in the world. There are a lot of good people in hell too, for that matter. A Christian’s goodness has a basis on and in faith in Christ. If Christ is working through you to do His will for the benefit of others and the kingdom, then it will be done. A Christian’s goodness is rooted in Christ who is the Author of goodness.
After goodness comes knowledge or spiritual understanding. This is learning what the Bible has to say, learning to read the Scripture, to meditate on Scripture, and to pray. There isn’t just one way to do any of these things. There are so many ways to learn and read the Bible, and just as many different ways to pray. The important thing is that you begin, that you try. Don’t you know your heavenly Father is thrilled to hear from you when you speak to him? He is!
With knowledge, one should be in a better position to learn self-control or discipline. This is mastering your desires. How do you manage the good things in your life? Knowledge is a key element to self-control because you need to be able to see what the Word of God says about your desires and cravings. There’s a lot of false doctrine that says if you name it and claim it, you’ll have it, but that’s just not Scriptural. Self-control requires you to read and study the Word in order to mature in this area.
And the flip side of the same coin of self-control is endurance. In the Bible translation called the Message the words “passionate patience” is used instead of “endurance.” I quite like that. How do you manage the hard things in life? If you cannot control your mind or body, how can you possibly endure? Doesn’t endurance require you to maintain self-control in order not to quit? When I was in high school, I ran track. I was a sprinter. I ran 100 and 200 yards. The relay team needed to compete and place in one more race in order to earn a trophy. The next race would require that I run 400 yards – 1 full lap. I had never trained to run a full lap. As a sprinter, as soon as I start running, I am full open speed. I don’t slow down until I cross the line and pass the baton. No one told me how to run a 400 yard leg, and I found out the hard way one does NOT sprint 400 yards. Well, I sprinted 400 yards, and I was sucking wind by the time I passed the baton and passed smooth out. You see, not only had I sprinted the whole way but my breathing was for a sprinter which was short pants. It was not a pretty sight. Endurance requires training. Endurance is something that is exercised in order to grow. Just like muscles that atrophy when they are not used, this list of qualities will atrophy. Continue working on your faith exercising the qualities and characteristics of Christ, and your walk and maturity as a Christian will grow.
After endurance or passionate patience, comes godliness or God-likeness. Can we be perfect? NO! But we are to be image-bearers of Christ. If you were to look at my parents, listen to my parent, and then watch and listen my sister and I, you would see that we favor both of them. We have our dad’s very warped sense of humor much to our mother’s chagrin. My sister is built like my mom and has her coloring. I’m built like the Timmons side of the family. We bear a resemblance to our parents. In verse 3 and 4, we discussed the divine power and divine nature in us which is the Holy Spirit. Our spiritual birth gave us a new nature to take on, a divine nature to emulate, to model. Will we succeed? Not always, but people should be able to see our lives, hear our speech, and know who our Father is.
And once we know who our Father is, and we become His image-bearer, then we mature to brotherly affection. This type of brotherly love is the kind of love when you can find something in common with a person. Truth is, commonalities can be found with everyone on the face of the planet because we all have the same Creator. The reason godliness must come before brother love is because some people are harder to love than others. There are mean people in the world. There are wounded people in the world, and if God burdens your heart to minister and to serve a particular person who is difficult to love, you will need godliness in your back pocket.
Progressing from brotherly type of love, we move to agape type of love. This is a love that loves no matter the differences. It’s the love that is found in Romans 5: 8, But God proves His own (agape) love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! It’s also found in 1 Corinthians 13 which is known as the “love” chapter. This chapter concludes with, “these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”(agape)
So how are you progressing through this list? How would God say you are progressing?
Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t where you want to be. Be encouraged knowing “He who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” Philippians 1:6. We are all a work in progress.