To Encourage You

2 Peter 1:5-8 “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Do you know anyone that is gifted physically in some way but that never developed those gifts?  I’ve known athletes like this; people with extraordinary coordination, natural speed, and agility for whom things just came easily. They were the first to be picked for kickball as a child, and as they grew you could just see that they were gifted. But some of them were lazy, unmotivated, or they took their abilities for granted and never achieved the heights for which they were seemingly meant, while others, less gifted but harder workers, eclipsed them in their athletic accomplishments.  It’s sad, really, but who hasn’t seen such things. 

We have a parallel to this kind of thing in the passage above from 2 Peter. Peter has just told us how wonderful the gift of the knowledge of God is.  In this country we are incredibly gifted in this way. We have every translation of the Bible known to man available at our fingertips. We have access to the commentaries of many gifted teachers. We have freedom to worship. We have available to us all anyone could ask for in terms of knowing God.  Peter puts it this way concerning what God has given us in His Word, which anyone in this country has such wonderful access to: “His (i.e., God’s) divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:3-4). 

But in the challenge Peter then gives us in the words that follow and that are shown above, we are urged to take the knowledge we’ve been given and do something with it.  Otherwise, that gift will prove unfruitful, just like the athletic gifts of a person who never develops those gifts.   The keys to fruitfulness in the knowledge of God are laid out for us in very clear language. First, we must believe and act upon the things that we know. It’s called “faith.” It means to put our knowledge into practical use, for as the Bible tells us in another place, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17).”

And then our knowledge of God becomes fruitful as we practice “virtue,” i.e., behavior that shows high moral standards, standards that are laid out for us in the Word of God. 

Also, we should not stop at the “knowledge” we have. We should add more knowledge through daily study and meditation upon the Scriptures. 

Then there is the discipline of “self-control.” It’s the opposite of “if it feels good do it,” which seems to be the motto of so many today. Rather, the believer’s attitude should be “if it IS good do it,” and “if it IS NOT good, don’t do it,” no matter what everyone else is doing or how great the temptation for us to do it might be.  We can find out if things are good or not by searching the Scriptures to see what God has said about them. 

We should also add to these things “steadfastness.” Sometimes it’s called the “perseverance of the saints.” It’s the perseverance Jesus was talking about in the parable of the soils in Matthew 13 where the seed (i.e., God’s Word) fell on three kinds of unfruitful soils (along the path, on stony ground, and among the thorns), which were metaphors for the hearts of those people for which the Word of God either had no effect, or who made a good and exciting start in the knowledge of God but then fell away for one reason or another. Conversely, the seed that fell on good ground is likened to “the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty” (Matthew 13:23). He’s talking about that person that perseveres in the faith. 

And then there’s the issue of “godliness.” That’s a striving to see things as God sees them and acting and reacting as God would have us to. It’s all made possible by a purposeful reading of the Word of God, for it is in the Word that these things are revealed. 

And finally, there’s the issue of “brotherly kindness” and “love.”  These are really the bottom line of the knowledge of God. It’s the epitome of what this knowledge is to result in, for it is love of God and love of our neighbor that are God’s two greatest commands. They are a summary of what God desires for our life. They are the two marks that demonstrate that the knowledge of God has been developed to its apex in a person’s life. 

So, does this describe us? Are we taking the incredible gifts of knowledge that God has given us in His Word and made it the aim of our life to develop them to their greatest extent? Is it these things that describe our life? Or, like the athlete that never fully develops his or her natural gifts, are we lazy, negligent, or ignorant of the gift of the knowledge of God?  May God help us to keep from “being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ,” for if we are, we have no one to blame but ourselves.