“But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6. to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7. to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.”
First, I need to explain what “this very reason” is all about. In the preceding verses, Peter assured the recipients of his letter that because of Jesus, and because of His presence in their lives, they were “partakers of the divine nature.” Which in our vernacular means that they were saved. Because they were saved, they needed to add these things to their lives. Keep in mind these things were not added to make them saved, they should be added because they were saved, and because adding these things in verses 5-7 would make them more effective servants of Jesus Christ. Virtue was to be added to faith. Virtue is defined by obviously living the Christian life by our deeds and our words. It is also sometimes translated as power. It means to utilize the faith that we have in Jesus, to live the life that He wants us to live, and to use the spiritual power that this brings into our lives. To virtue knowledge was to be added. This knowledge is revealed knowledge that we get from scripture and from the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. To knowledge self-control was to be added. Our faith, virtue and knowledge should enable us to refrain from what we should not do, and to do what we should do. In a nutshell, that is self-control. To these should be added perseverance, which means to keep on keeping on in spite of all of the pitfalls of life. All of the above qualities should result in godliness. Godliness means to live a Christ like life. True godliness does not make us self-righteous, but humbles us because we know that we do not deserve the life that Christ has given us by grace. The next two things to be added will show the result of adding virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance and godliness. To all of the above, we are to add brotherly kindness. The things added to our lives will not make us self-righteous and mean like the Pharisees; rather they will make us kind. We will have brotherly love towards people. This brotherly kindness will be extended to our fellow Christians. Anyone who has ever been a member a church knows that brotherly kindness needs to be shared among Christians. All too often, it is the missing ingredient in a church. If we are not kind to each other, people who are in not in church will not be attracted to us. But this brotherly kindness should extend beyond the borders of the church and reach out into the world. This means that we should be kind at home, at work, at play, at the places where we shop; which means that we will practice brotherly kindness wherever we are. Ask yourself if you are a kind person. You might really be working on adding virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance and godliness, but if these do not result in brotherly kindness, you have more work to do to show genuine Christian faith. Brotherly kindness leads to Christ like living. Sometimes brotherly kindness will lead us to confront negative things in people’s lives in order to help them do better. Brotherly kindness will certainly make us more effective in this area. To brotherly kindness, we should add love. Here is that word again that regular readers of this blog will be familiar with, that is agape (ah-gah-pay). We are to practice brotherly love in order to be kind, and we are to practice Christ like love in order to effectively lead the Christian life. All of the things that we should add should result in the kind of love that God showed in John 3:16. Lost people will not be attracted to our virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance and godliness without brotherly kindness and love. These two things are often the missing ingredients that take away from our witness to the world. We need to take stock of our lives and be sure that we are adding the things to our lives that will make us more effective servants and more effective witnesses of Jesus Christ. Bro. Joe
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
All
Archives
September 2021
|