Grace Part 2

Let's speak to God in prayer. Our gracious God and our Father, we thank Thee that there is a reason for us to rejoice. Despite all that may confront us and cause us distress and concern as we go through life, we thank Thee that there is a great reality, that nothing can change, that the Redeemer has come, that He has provided that great ransom price, and that He lives again in the power of an indissoluble life, and that He lives in victory and in authority at Thy right hand.

We thank Thee for each one that has trusted in this Savior and that can now experience the working of Thy grace within our very beings. This gives us great hope and confidence. We pray that Thou might strengthen each one, guide our ways, and we would pray that there may be those who in this area are unsaved and yet could be interested in Thy word.

We pray that they might be drawn into contact with Thy people, that they might hear the word of God, and experience this wonderful salvation. Our Father, we do commit ourselves now to Thee and ask that Thou would graciously bless the opening up of Thy word in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Let's turn to 2 Peter chapter 3, oh yes, sure, 7.30 again tomorrow night.

I'll be here for ministry, so we're all invited to come. 2 Peter chapter 3, now today we've been looking at a bit of the grace of God, looking at different passages that give us some insight into the character of God's grace. Tonight I want to speak about growing in grace.

And so we're going to look at a verse that actually uses this expression. 2 Peter chapter 3, the context is the last days and the cynicism and scoffing of the ungodly. And it says in verse 8, But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation, that is, behavior and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.

Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for such things, be diligent, that you may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless, and account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, has written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest or put to the torture, as they do also the other scriptures unto their own destruction.

Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware, lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be glory both now and forever. Amen.

Now the emphasis I would see in this passage is sanctification and stability. In contrast to the world around us and the character of the world, of the corruption, of immorality, of false teaching, Peter is writing to encourage the believers to remain steady, steadfast, and holy. Now obviously, how people behave is basically derived from what they believe.

If you believe that this is all there is, and you better get what you can out of it now, well you are going to live just for the moment. But if you truly recognize that there is going to be a new heavens and a new earth, an entirely new creation, where sin will have no place, where righteousness will dwell, well then it makes sense to move towards that direction, and to be held steady by it. So that is the exhortation, and he says, what kind of people should you be in all holy behavior and godliness? Now I'm hoping that I might get back into 2 Peter before I get to the end of the meeting tonight, but I just want to draw attention to this passage, to this basic challenge presented to us, to grow in grace.

Thinking about the other verses that we were reading earlier today, about the grace of God, the God of all grace, who has intervened in our lives, who has moved into our very beings, in order to sustain us and ultimately bring us to his glory. That's the God that we have to do with, the God who has taken us to himself. And so we are living in his grace, where his power, his love is focused on us for our help and blessing.

And so he says, now I want you to grow in grace. So that's what I want to focus on tonight, the idea of how can we develop in our spiritual life in the grace of God. And in knowledge, in grace, and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let's go back then to 1 Peter chapter 1. And I'm really going to be kind of bouncing around in 1 Peter and 2 Peter, both tonight and tomorrow night, looking at various sections of the letters and drawing attention to the grace of God. So the first thing that I want to draw attention to in 1 Peter chapter 1 is the pure origin. This is a look back to your new birth.

Starting at verse 22. 1 Peter 1 and verse 22. Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

See that you love one another with a pure heart fervently being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God which lives and abides forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endures forever.

And this is the word which by the gospel is or was preached unto you. Now let me just read the first three or four verses of the next chapter because I'll be looking into this as well. Chapter 2 and verse 1. Wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if so be you have tasted that the Lord is gracious to whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious, you also as lively or living stones are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

So in 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 22 down to the end, he's looking back and he says, seeing that you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit. Now that's referring back to the moment of salvation. What happened when we were saved? We actually came into the element of truth.

And it's interesting that we are credited with having cooperated with the Holy Spirit in purifying our own souls. Now we know that salvation is an act of God. It is a miracle, as someone has said, of new creation power where God creates us anew.

We are born again, but in that experience we actually were cooperating with God. There was a uniting of our beings with the power of God and the Spirit of God as He formed and created that new life within us. We are credited with having purified our souls in our obedience to the truth.

Now what does that teach us? First of all, it teaches us that truth is the sanctifying element of life. But you'll notice that it doesn't end there. It says, in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.

Now I don't know if you knew this, that when you got saved, you not only entered into relationship to God, but you also entered into relationship to all other Christians. And while most of us are happy to be related to God, sometimes we're not so happy to be related to other Christians. But you see, this life that has been formed in us through the truth of God coming into our beings is unto a kind of life.

And that kind of life is His love reproduced in our beings. And so we have had a pure origin which is by the Word of God as we find in verse 23. I want to just give you a couple of exhortations from verse 22 before I get into verse 23.

I have been very much impressed in the last few months in looking at the subject of love in the Bible to realize that love is really the essence of life. Love is what is essential to life. And it is the essence of spiritual life because God Himself is love.

And whatever God is going to try to be doing in your life, love is going to have to be at the center of it. Or we are out of touch with God. That's a very important thing to realize.

So here you have people whose souls, whose beings have been purified. They have come into the realm of pureness, of holiness. And if I would have gone back and Lord willing, tomorrow night I'll be picking up some earlier verses in the chapter that really talk about the holiness of God and our call to be holy.

But in our experience of salvation we entered into a realm of purity, of truth, of reality, of genuineness. And it is unto this unhypocritical. The word unfeigned means genuine, unhypocritical.

Love of the brethren. That's love of other Christians. Why? Because we share the same life.

The same Spirit of God who not only imparted life to me, but entered into my being and indwells me, indwells you. And the life that he imparted to you and the life he imparted to me is the same life. It's the life of Christ.

That is when we are born again, it's the life that is in Christ that has been imparted to us. And we are now sons of God. So we share a life in common.

And so there is instinctively a bond of oneness that we have in Christ. And so he says, this is what you have been saved unto. This is what you have been actually immersed into in this living union with the eternal God.

It's unto a life of love. Genuine love. And so he says, now here's your responsibility.

See that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently. So you see two elements of this love. A pure heart, that's with uncorrupted motivations.

What is love? Well, it's really interest in others. Care towards others. Concern for their well-being.

The desire to bless others. And it's also a desire to be close to one another. Closeness for companionship and so on.

See that you love one another out of a pure heart. So this is one of the first things that we need to be concerned about in growing in grace and we're going to see this in the first few verses of the second chapter. We have to accept responsibility for the condition of our heart.

For the attitudes which we permit to hold sway within us. So see that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently. So not only do we need to be careful about defilement.

Attitudes that are wrong. But we also have to be careful that we don't let indifference and apathy take over. I think it's one of the most difficult things in Christian experience is to maintain and cultivate long-term spiritual relationships.

It seems that we so much easier withdraw from one another. Sometimes it's because we've been hurt. And it's safer not to get close to people again.

And so we kind of isolate ourselves to protect ourselves. But that is a denial of the fervency of the love that belongs. Fervency means really it's like you're flat out in a hurry.

You're stretched out trying to achieve and to get there. Is that the way we love one another? Over in chapter four again he emphasizes above all things have fervent love among yourselves. Because love will cover a multitude of sins.

Unfortunately it seems so much more characteristic that we let maybe little things or big things stumble us. Break that fellowship. Break that closeness.

And then distancing happens. And we either couldn't care less or we deny the responsibility to care and so we live in isolation instead of closeness. So as we grasp this if we are going to grow in grace it's going to be in relationship.

In relationship to Christ and in relationship to one another. So then verse 23 again is an explanation of what I've just been talking about in verse 22. Being born again.

This is something that God has done. He has brought you into this new life by his power. But notice that he says not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the word of God which lives and abides forever.

Something that has become very precious to me both first of all in relation to the Lord Jesus and his humanity and then because of that to my salvation is this recognition that not only is the Lord Jesus incorruptible because of his deity. Because he is God. But also because his humanity is incorruptible.

The Lord Jesus will never, never be corrupted. He will always remain pure. Undefiled.

Absolutely sincere. Absolutely genuine in everything that he is. And when you were born again, when I was born again, that life that was begotten in you was that same life.

Born of God you see you think about all the corruption of humanity. Not only physically but morally. Affected by sin.

We're all damaged goods. We're all corrupted. We've all been born of a corruptible seed.

But this is now a reconnecting with the eternal God with no corruption. A new creation life. Even though we still have sin within our beings.

Part of the old creation. And we still battle with it. Leads to lots of challenges.

Lots of problems. But something has been created in us that is eternal. That is incorruptible.

It is born of God and here it tells us it was created through the word of God. So what follows logically is this if my spiritual life has its origin in this incorruptible pure source of the word of the living God which lives remains forever. Unchanging.

Uncorrupting. It's kind of obvious that the development of this life is going to be again nourished by the word of God. So I want to look then in chapter 2 at bad attitudes and good appetites.

And the principle that we have to acknowledge is that bad attitudes hinder good appetites. Looking at the first verse he says, wherefore laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings. Kind of sounds like that's our responsibility doesn't it? Some other translations will use the idea of stripping off.

This says laying aside and it's like getting rid of some old clothes that you really don't want to wear anymore because of whatever. Other passages like Colossians chapter 2, Colossians chapter 3 actually use the terminology of stripping off, getting rid of. Or some translations will give rid yourselves.

So again all of these emphasize personal responsibility. Now what I think is important to notice as we look at these is that every one of these are chosen attitudes. They're not just mistaken opinions.

I've had to learn over the years that I can be wrong in my opinion of another Christian. I can misjudge another Christian. I can think that they are acting out of this motivation and so on.

I can be mistaken. So yes I could have a bad attitude because I'm mistaken in my judgment. But this is going beyond just having a poor opinion of somebody and maybe being mistaken about it.

This is a deliberately chosen attitude of hostility, of enmity. In fact the word malice is a very strong word that arises out of anger and bitterness. If you go to Ephesians chapter 4 where you have a connection with wrath, bitterness, malice, I would suggest that malice is kind of like one of those further developments in what happens when we get into problems in relationships with other people.

It usually starts out with being angry with somebody. We become resentful. And then we may end up blaming that person for things not being good or right with us and then we become bitter.

And then malice is that added extent of deliberately wanting to destroy that person. Deliberately wanting to hurt that person. So it is deliberate ill will.

Wishing wrong or harm to another person. And that is obviously something that does not live in harmony with the grace of God. It doesn't live in harmony with this life that he has created within us.

This life that is a call to love one another with pure hearts. And then all guile is acting deceitfully. Being deliberately deceitful with other people.

And it's interesting that the word in the second verse where it says, desire the sincere milk of the word. The word sincere is the opposite of the word guile. It's really the guileless milk of the word.

Some people have a lot of trouble with honesty. Some people have learned to get along with other people by simply not being honest. And so you never really know what they think.

And they may even profess care and yet it's not a sincere care because they really think of you as an enemy. And I remember my wife having this very, very bitter experience at the hands of another fellow believer who Becky had cared for and tried to help for several years. But for whatever reason this person kind of began to react against her but never let her know.

And finally this woman actually left the assembly along with her husband and about six months later we got a letter and I read the letter first and I didn't really want to give it to my wife because I knew it wasn't true. But it was just filled with the anger and the bitterness of this person and all the things that she thought about Becky. Well that's pretty hard to take when it's someone that you love.

But it was a hard thing for my wife to get over. It took her several years really to kind of be able to put it behind her. But you know it's something that we have to recognize can arise in any one of our hearts.

Malice, resentment, bitterness often leads to deceptiveness in our way of relating. So we can carry on for years sometimes never being honest, never really dealing with things never confronting things because it's easier to stay hidden. Hypocrisy is very close to that.

Hypocrisy and guile are twins but hypocrisy might be more the sense of pretending love and interest putting on a pretense of goodness. Envy is one of those characteristics that is extremely destructive. And again we need to test our reactions.

If you hear something good about somebody and it creates a negative reaction within you it's very likely you have envy towards that person. If their blessing disturbs you, you're not loving them. You are taking them as a rival or as an enemy of some kind.

But envy frequently, most often arises out of rivalry. Jealousy and envy are very similar but jealousy in its true sense is protectiveness of what truly belongs to you. Like a husband has a right to be jealous over his wife if somebody else starts showing attention to her or she starts showing attention to somebody else because that relationship belongs to you.

That's yours. And God is a jealous God. But envy is displeasure at what somebody else has.

Whether it's a relationship, whether it is prosperity, whether it is spiritual gift or spiritual service, whatever realm it may be, envy is one of the most destructive, corroding influences. Because if we would grasp this, every other Christian is intended by God to be a help to you. Paul said to the Corinthians, well, what about Peter? What about Apollos? What about Paul? They're all yours.

They exist in their service and ministry for your blessing and your help. So don't be envious. Don't feel any rivalry or strife to somebody else in their Christian life or service because God intends their blessing to be your blessing.

And then all evil speakings. I would say that very often it's through evil speaking that we reveal these other attitudes that are detrimental. We usually don't go around lighting fires on somebody else's property to burn them out or cutting the tires on their car or doing some kind of malicious evil thing violently towards them.

We just bad mouth them. We just cut them apart with our words. And so it is very much that it is through evil speaking that we convey and reveal these bad attitudes of heart.

When I find that it is very easy for me to tell a negative story about another Christian, it's because I have a bad attitude towards them. If I love another Christian, if I hear something negative about them, I won't want to repeat it. I won't want to spread it around or embellish it or add it to the rest of their repertoire of bad news about that person.

If I genuinely care about another person, I will want to be protective of their dignity, of their life and so on. And the last thing that I will want to do is to increase their grief and sorrow. But if I have a bad attitude towards someone and I hear something negative, it's very easy to pass it along without checking whether it's even valid.

And so we can kind of challenge our hearts. You think of the Pharisees and I really think that if you want a supreme example of all of this, just think of the Pharisees and Christ. And really this chapter is leading into that context of the living stone.

Christ, upon whom God is going to build everything for eternity, and yet those leaders among the nation of Israel couldn't see one good thing in him because they saw him as a rival and they tried to destroy him. What a difference what we see in another person depending on how we see them. So in other words, what you see in another person might actually tell more about you than it does about the other person.

So that's the bad attitudes that we are to recognize and reject and judge because they will hinder the good appetite of what is of God. So verse 2 then says, as newborn babes. Wouldn't you like to be able to go back to that very first hour when you were saved? Maybe the first day when you were saved and the joy that you had.

You know, anybody could have told you anything and you would have accepted it. You would have been humble. You would have been sincere, genuine.

So these Christians weren't necessarily all new Christians, but he's calling them to that simplicity, that sincerity, that which is common to newborn babes and that is they have voracious appetites. Desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. If so be you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

Now do you see how the connection is here? He says, desire the sincere, the genuine, pure milk of God's word in order that you may grow. If so be you have tasted. Now notice what he's saying.

If you are taking into your being, reading, meditating, absorbing the word of God, you're getting to know God. You're tasting of the Lord's character. And it does make a tremendous difference in how we read our Bibles or whether we even want to read our Bibles if we're enjoying the Lord personally, first of all.

But if we recognize that the word of God is His thoughts, His care, His interest and so I am nourishing, I am approaching Him and learning from Him and getting to know Him. If you have tasted that the Lord is gracious that means you have experienced the grace of God, the goodness of God within your being. So wouldn't it be nice to have the grace of God developing so that it controls you? That it controls your thoughts, your attitudes.

I have found over and over and over again that whenever my attitudes start going astray, my appetite for the word of God goes downhill fast. It's hard to maintain a good appetite and enjoy the word of God and be filled with anger or with some other sinful desire or whatever. And so we need to be nourished with that pure source of the word of God which brought us into this life union with Him.

I want to turn over now to 2 Peter chapter 1 and this really in a sense extends what we've just been looking at. 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 1. Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. According as His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that has called us to glory and virtue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge temperance or self-control and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness charity or love. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

Wherefore, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things you shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So we could call this living on the promises, the divine resources for a godly life. There's a lot of precious truths that are brought out in this passage. In the first four verses we really have God's side of it.

The provision that God has made for our life. It says that we have obtained like precious faith. So there's something that we share in common.

That is a precious faith in the Lord Jesus. And in the experience of that salvation through faith we enter into the realm of grace and of peace. Grace is strength for our need.

Peace is that serenity that we sometimes long for but don't seem to enjoy. Strength and serenity. What blessings.

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? To have grace, peace multiplied to us through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. So all of this is in our acquaintance with God.

Getting to know God. And then we have the provision of his power according as his divine power has given unto us everything we need for life and godliness. So again this is the emphasis of the grace of God moving toward us.

God wants to pour into our lives his goodness. His spiritual power and strength. Everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called you.

Now it says here to glory and virtue. Called you to glory and virtue. Now in my margin of my Bible it has or by his glory and virtue.

And a number of other translations will actually give it this way. And I think that is possibly the most accurate translation just to see it in this way. It says that according as his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called us by his own glory and virtue.

His glory and his goodness. In other words, what we're seeing here is that God in all his greatness and in all his goodness has called us to himself. And out of that glory, out of the riches of his being he wants to enrich us.

And so his promises to us are promises of eternal blessing. Of possessing a character that's like his. Of a quality of life that corresponds to his.

And so he has called us by his glory. It's almost the idea of him attracting us to himself because he's so beautiful, so great, so good. And then it says whereby are given to us.

That is out of his glory, out of his virtue, out of his goodness flow these great promises of his goodness and blessing. That through these you might become partakers of the divine nature. Wouldn't you like to get more and more and more like God instead of what is in the world? What is given in the world, what is given as an expression of the world here is corruption through lust.

And I remember I think it might be the Phillips translation which is a kind of a, more of a paraphrase than a translation I suppose. But if I remember that one accurately it says, having escaped the inevitable disintegration that is in the world through lust. In other words, the character of sin, which is lust or craving, desiring, is that it destroys life.

It corrupts life. It corrupts relationships. It takes from other people rather than blessing other people.

And inevitably relationships break down, life becomes misery, and people say what is the use of life? What is there to live for? Everything is rotten. That's the disintegration, the corruption that is produced through lust. And we can escape that as we orient ourselves towards the God of glory and virtue.

The God of excellence, of excellent beauty and character. So where does verse five down fit then? As it is given here it says and besides this, giving diligence, add to your faith virtue, virtue knowledge and so on. In the first verses up to verse four it's telling us God has provided us with everything.

And now it's telling us that we have to provide it. Now does that seem like a contradiction? I like the New King James translation in verse five where it says but for this very reason. Because God in all his glory, in all his greatness is providing us with everything we need.

For this very reason, diligently pursue these virtues. And so the word that is used to add is the word to supply. It's really the same word found down in verse 11 where it says for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly.

That word ministered is exactly the same word. I'm not sure why it was translated differently. But it really is the sense and I'll just try to give you an illustration of it so you get the sense of it.

You know how whether it's in sports might as well use the example of sports because it's pretty familiar. Sports teams, even individual people in sports are always going around trying to get sponsors. So that these sponsors will supply them so that they don't have to work for their own living.

They can just go out and train and train and practice and play their game or whatever they do. And so you'll have these companies through town, you know, proud sponsors of this whatever, hockey team or football team or whatever it may be. Well this is kind of the sense of this word to add or to minister.

It means to supply, to furnish all the requirements. And so now the Spirit of God is challenging us to supply these virtues in our character. Okay, how does that work then? If we've just been told in the verses before that God has supplied us with everything we need for life and godliness, well then now it's up to us to supply.

Why? Because he's already put it within us. He has already given it to us but we have to make use of it. We have to willingly cooperate just like what I started with in chapter 1 Peter 1 and 22 where we are credited with having purified our souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit.

Well in like manner here, the Spirit of God wants to pour into our lives all of this goodness and develop it in us but he needs our cooperation. And so I need to value these different characteristics and the first one that we need to put into practice is virtue. Now virtue can be looked at as goodness, moral, virtue.

Quite a few translate this as courage and it's really in the sense of moral excellence and manly courage some actually give as a translation or a suggestion. So this is saying now in your faith you're going to need courage. You're going to need, and I'll give you this version of it, noble courage in your life.

It's not easy to live as a Christian in this world. You're going to need noble courage. You're going to need to value what is virtuous, what is excellent, what is good.

And then knowledge. Now I'm going to just suggest that I don't particularly see these as a step ladder where you achieve one and then that lets you achieve the next and then you achieve the next and then the next. I think of this more as a recipe in which you need to mix in.

You know how some of the ladies make their cakes and so on and they pour in this ingredient and that one and then they stick their finger in and lick it and they say, oh it needs a little bit more of this. So it's really that we need all of these in the mix. We need all of these characteristics.

And so to our faith we need to mix in this noble courage. This desire for virtue and excellence. And then we need to mix in knowledge.

Knowledge is important. As the Lord said, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. Having accurate understanding of spiritual truth is very, very important.

And yet it's not enough in itself because we can become just theoretical in our knowledge of God. And attached to that then is temperance or self-control. This is a very, very important quality because we need to have the mastery and the sense of self-control is the mastery of our beings, of our anger, of our desires.

We need to have the mastery of it. And we all know many examples of people who have done great things and have been very prominent in the world and then their life goes down the tubes, as they say, because of a lack of self-control in one aspect of life. And so it's a very, very important quality to seek after.

And I'm going to suggest that we need to pursue these and we need to practice them. Diligent pursuit and disciplined practice of spiritual virtues. After we have temperance or self-control, we have patience.

And this is patient endurance. And that is a very necessary thing because very, very often things do not develop as quickly as we want them to. Things do not change as fast as we want them to and we get frustrated and we give up and we need endurance.

We need to persevere. Perseverance would probably be the best word to use there. And to perseverance, godliness.

What is godliness? Godliness is really an attitude of reverence, of respect for God that controls my behavior. That puts restraints upon how I act. That governs me when no one else is around.

Godliness is the consciousness of God and letting that control my life. And then brotherly kindness. That is that recognition as we had back in 1 Peter 1. We have been called to a life of love of the brethren.

Of Philadelphia. That is the word that really means brotherly kindness or brotherly love. And then in brotherly love we need this final crowning virtue of love itself.

And this love may reflect the idea of showing interest and care in other people who may not have any natural or even spiritual relationship to us as brothers or a connection why we should care for them. And then it says, for if these things be in you and if they're abounding, if they're developing, if they're growing they will make you that you won't be barren. You won't be unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So in other words our acquaintance with Christ is intended to make our lives transformed and fruitful in these qualities of character. But if we lack them it says it's because we're not looking. We're not looking far enough ahead.

We're caught in the immediate present and we're just living day to day with the interests, the pursuits the fears and whatever there may be that is right in the immediate present. And we're not looking far off. And we've also forgotten why we were saved.

We've forgotten that we've been purged from our old sins. And I guess if there's one thing that does happen to us when we get out of touch with the Lord and his character and we let some of these things that I was talking about earlier characterize us, well then old sins regain their power. We find ourselves struggling back with the same old things again.

So he says, wherefore brethren give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Here's one of those interesting verses that link election with human responsibility. So you can think about that one for a while.

What does it really mean? It doesn't mean that you have to make your election sure in the sense that you could lose your salvation and all of that. It really, the word to make sure actually is the word to confirm it. God has called you.

God has chosen you. But you can confirm that by a godly life. That confirms the reality of it.

And you get the same word actually again in verse 19 where you have the more sure word of prophecy. And I've heard many, many wonderful interpretations of what that means. As if the Old Testament prophetic word was more sure than the revelation given to Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration.

But that is frankly an impossibility. It simply means a confirmed word of prophecy. That is the prophecies of the Old Testament have been confirmed by the New Testament.

By the life, death, resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we can be absolutely sure that he's coming again. We can be absolutely sure the kingdom is going to come because of the many prophecies that have already been confirmed and shown to be absolutely sure and truthful.

And so we have the word of God confirmed. We have our calling, our being chosen of God confirmed by the spiritual life that is developing. And so this is all part of what it means to develop or to grow in grace.

In which the power of God is at work. And in the measure that we are cooperating with the Spirit of God in our lives, day by day, he's going to produce this fruit in our life. He's going to develop these qualities of character.

And so he has provided it. He's put it right within us. He's given it to us and we just have to use the recipe.

We have to just put it into life. And experience the grace of God at work within us, shall we pray. Our Father, we commit ourselves to Thee.

We thank Thee that though we are so weak and faltering in ourselves, Thou art powerful, Thou art patient, Thou art very caring to us. We thank Thee for Thy love that is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit to confirm to us the depth of Thine interest. And we know that Thou dost long that the work that Thou hast begun within us would be confirmed by a life of holiness, of righteousness, a life of goodness, of love.

And that these qualities of life that set us apart from the corruptedness of the world, that they will be a confirmation of the grace of God at work. And so we seek Thy hand, we seek Thy love to be within us. Help us, our Father, to rid ourselves of any attitude that would corrupt us, that would hinder the enjoyment of Thy presence, the enjoyment of Thy peace, the enjoyment of Thy truth, and the nourishing and development of our spiritual life.

We ask Thee for this. We feel that at times we have wasted far too much time, far too much of our life in what has not been profitable, what has not been of God. And so we draw near to Thee and thank Thee for Thy patience and Thy interest in us even today.

And we commit ourselves to Thee that Thy grace might be within us. In our Savior's name, Amen.