Make Every Effort
2 Peter 1v5-7
5th January 2024
We've been studying 2 Peter, Chapter 1. To summarise so far, Jesus is God. God has called us and has given us everything we need to live godly lives. He's given us many promises of His salvation and favour, so that over time we can become more like God and less corrupted and sinful. We appropriate all this by getting to know God better and better. Next, Peter says:
2 Peter 1v5-7
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;
and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;
and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.
God loves us, He provides for us, and He's changing us to make us like Jesus. I know that many people in this world prefer to stew in their sins, slowly becoming less and less like God, but what greater ambition is there than to become more and more like God? God has made that possible for us who believe, and God has promised to do it.
It's hard to imagine being free from sin, and as kind, and gentle, and patient as Jesus, but God has promised to achieve it in us, and God assures us through Peter that He has given us everything we need for it.
We can't change ourselves. We need the Holy Spirit, but we also need to co-operate with the Holy Spirit. Surely it makes sense to do so, to work to become the people God wants us to be. Peter urges us to make every effort to this end, and I can't think of a more worthwhile endeavour. The longer I know God, the more my main ambition in life is to be a better person. I want my thought life and my actions to please Jesus my Saviour.
Now, some people think the list of virtues we just read is a sequence, with one attribute flowing into the next. Some think there's no sequencing involved; it's just a literary device and Peter simply means "work at all these things". I take a middle view, which is that we grow in all of them all the time, but there is some truth in the idea that one attribute flows into another.
Make every effort to add to your faith, goodness. "Goodness" here means "moral excellence". If you have truly been given saving faith in Jesus, if you have been born again as a child of God, then you'll want to please your Lord and Saviour. You'll admire Him and want to be good as He is good. Every true Christian is morally better than he used to be, and worse than he will be. It's a process, and God and you are both involved. So pray, ask God to change you, and make every effort to do the right thing and refuse the wrong thing.
Make every effort to add to your goodness, knowledge. You're a Christian now. You love Jesus, you want to please Him, and to become morally pure as He is. We've already seen that to achieve such progress we need to know God better and better. And a young Christian discovers that it's possible to learn more and more about God by studying the Bible, and to encounter God through worship, through sharing the Lord's Supper, and through joining in with church life and prayer.
Make every effort to add to your knowledge, self-control. You're saved, born again. You're growing in Christian character, and you're getting to know God better. You intend to live a virtuous life, but sometimes you fail to resist temptation when it comes. And it will come. You will want to add self-control, as you learn how to master yourself and your desires, so you don't let Jesus down so often, and continue to grow.
Make every effort to add to your self-control, perseverance. Self-control is great, but if we're only self-controlled for a short time, we'll soon fall into sin. You'll want to develop perseverance, so you can stand up to temptation over the long haul.
Make every effort to add to your perseverance, godliness. You've made a good start in the Christian life. You worship God regularly, your moral life has improved. You're growing in self-control. You keep going, not deflected by discouragements and difficulties. You still openly confess the name of Jesus. You're living the Christian life. You have a growing desire not only to worship God, to obey God and to serve God; you want your actions, your thoughts and your emotions to be like God's. You want to be as Jesus was when he walked the earth. You want to have His love, His patience, His wisdom. You want to love what He loves and hate what He hates. You ask God to change not only your life but your heart. That is, you want to become godly.
Make every effort to add to your godliness, brotherly kindness. The phrase "brotherly kindness" translates the Greek word "philadelphia", which means "brotherly love". The New NIV has "mutual affection" which is a very poor translation. God loves His people, the church. A godly person also loves God's people. You can't love the Father without loving the children. There are many reasons to come to church on a Sunday. One of them is to meet with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to show them brotherly love. And there are plenty of opportunities through the week to show brotherly love to one another.
Make every effort to add to your brotherly kindness, love. "Love" translates the Greek word "agape". This is the love of God, which he gives to those that are His. A godly person goes beyond the brotherly love that we have for each other, to the sacrificial love of God, which wants to sacrifice our desires and our preferences for the good of other people.
Whether or not you see a pattern in these virtues isn't really the point. Here's the point: What a wonderful vision it could be for us to be, say a year from now, as we enter 2025, more full of faith, more good, more knowledgeable about God and His ways, more self-controlled, more persevering; more godly, more full of brotherly kindness and more sacrificially loving!
God wants that for us, and He has given us everything we need to achieve it. Do we have the vision for it?
Peter used the phrase "make every effort". We can't become good, knowledgeable, self-controlled, persevering, godly, loving, sacrificing people simply by an act of our own will. Even our faith is a gift from God. But we can co-operate with God as He works these character attributes in us. Is that what you want to do with your life?
And God has told us in verses 2 and 3 that the best way to co-operate with Him is to get to know Him better. Do the things that draw you closer to God. Don't do the things that take you further from God.