01/30/2011 Add To Your Faith (2 Peter 1:5-11)

Add to Your Faith
2 Peter 1:5-11
5 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. 8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; 11 for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
NKJV

From the very earliest days of my life as a Christian, the one thing that was continually emphasized by the pastor of my youth, by other Christians and by the teachers at bible school is that there is no standing still in your Christian life. You will be doing one of two things, you will either be growing in your faith, you will be moving forward, or you will be backsliding. It’s spiritually impossible to stand still. There is always movement, either up or down. As I look back on almost 40 years as a Christian I would have to say, that has been true in my life.

Peter doesn’t want that for you. He wants you to move forward and he’s trying to give us all some encouragement and motivation this morning.

When we don’t have church here, I if at all possible try to go to some other church. If the roads are good I will usually go up to one of the AFLC churches just north of town. I have had good fellowship at all three. But if I’m not able to go out of town, I go to one of the local churches, sometimes Zion my old home church, but other times to other churches just to see what’s going on. As a rule you hear some pretty solid biblical preaching, but I’ve been disappointed at the lack of any solid gospel emphasis in the sermons.

I’ve shared this concern with some of my friends and one response I get is that not all texts are about the gospel. Well that may be true to an extent, but really isn’t the whole bible about the Gospel. Isn’t the whole bible about Jesus, and how God moved in history to bring His Son to be the sacrifice for sin? I have yet to preach the gospel rightly, but I try to make some reference to the Gospel and the fact that Jesus came to save sinners in every message I bring.

Paul told the Corinthians that he determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It was all about the gospel.

Peter is never far from the Gospel. In his first letter about every five or six verses, he came back to the Gospel. Every command or admonition he gave, he gave it as a response to the gospel. He does the same thing in his second letter.

Sorry all you original King Jamers. The way the King James Bible starts out is this way. “And besides this.” No it’s not besides, it’s because of this. This isn’t a side issue, this is not unrelated to what he’s been talking about. What he’s told us is the motivation to now do what he says.

Most other translations, even the New King James starts out, “For this very reason.” What reason? In the previous verses he talked about the righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ our savior. He talks about the gifts we are given, that allow us to live and grow both physically and spiritually, and he tells us we have been given great and precious promises. Because of these things, because of the Gospel, we have the privilege of partaking of the divine nature, and we escape the corruption that is in the world.

Because of what God has done for us in Jesus we are to give all diligence to do something. All diligence, we are to make every effort to do something. We are to be zealous. It’s very emphatic. We are not just to dedicate a half hour a week to this or even a half hour a day to it. It is all diligence. Not just some diligence. Not, most diligence. Not, the greater part of diligence, but all diligence.

I listened to Paul Washer’s testimony on U-tube this last week again. The part that really struck me was the end. Paul Washer is one of those individuals that will probably go down in history with the likes of Whitfield and Wesley. Towards the end of his testimony, he said, “People ask me, how do you preach the way you do? What’s your secret brother Paul? No secret, he found me in a pool of my own vomit and saved me. That’s my secret. What’s your secret brother Paul? How do you pray the way you do, how do you witness the way you do? You don’t understand, I was the lowest of the low, and he saved me. He saved me! What more do you need?

What is our motivation to give all diligence? He saved us, that’s our motivation. Anything other than that is legalism. Anything other than that is a striving after the wind. For one we’ll fail. If our focus isn’t on the fact that we were wretched sinners and God saved us out of the cesspool we were in, then when we fail, it will defeat us, depress us, and we will wallow in despair.

Most of you are 70 -80 years old, and maybe in your latter days you have looked at your life and asked the question, have I done enough? Truth be told, no you haven’t done enough. I haven’t done enough. Billy Graham hasn’t done enough. D James Kennedy didn’t do enough. Nobody does enough. Only Jesus did enough, and that’s the Gospel. Jesus did enough and when we fail, rather that wallow in our failure, we need to pick ourselves up and remember that Jesus did enough. And the little we do is sanctified by the abundance that Jesus did.

We are to give every diligence to add certain things to our faith. Add to your faith. Some translations say “supply your faith”. The word used and translated “add” or “supply” is another emphatic word. It’s like “all diligence”. It’s all supply. It’s a word of abundance. It was used for a professional choir director who would give his students his undivided attention and every tool at his disposal so they would be the very best.

Most people who call themselves Christian, spend no more than an hour at church, and never crack open their bibles the rest of the week. How can that be? Does that sound like Biblical Christianity? Now maybe as new Christians they are still ignorant and don’t know any better. But some of these people have sat in church for years. I’m not sure Peter would call most of what is going on in the name of the church today, Christianity.

Notice that faith is the starting point. Add to your faith. He doesn’t say first you have to get some faith. In verse one he acknowledges that they already have the same precious faith that he has. Faith is one of the things that God gives us. In the first four verses Peter tells us that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. So one might think then, I’m good to go. God has done it all, end of story; I can just coast through life.

No, out of gratitude and love there are things we should do. The doing of these things is part of the evidence that we truly are saved and have this precious faith. We are to abundantly add to our faith virtue. The Greek puts a definite article in front of each of these. It’s the virtue; it’s the knowledge, the self-control, the perseverance, the godliness, the brotherly kindness and the love. Peter has very specific definitions in mind here. It’s not vague language. We can’t define these terms anyway we want. We can’t say, “Well to me virtue means, I have to feed the homeless.” We can’t define these anyway we want, we need to figure out as best as possible what the Holy Spirit wanted to communicate to us through Peter.

The Virtue, Christian virtue. The word carries the idea of moral excellence. This speaks of purity in heart and mind. It speaks of modesty, humility, an inner strength to do what’s right. Literally it’s “manliness”. Today that doesn’t mean much. When was the last time you saw a man portrayed in a positive light on television. If you haven’t noticed in commercials the man is always a bumbling idiot.

Manliness used to be applauded, celebrated and encouraged. We would encourage young boys to grow up and be a man. We were to man up, play the man. We were to be responsible, we were to care for our families, we were to protect and provide for our families, we were to be the spiritual leaders of our families. It speaks of strength, it speaks of courage, it speaks of laying down your life if necessary. Women and children first, you were to be a man and make sure that all the women and children got in to the life rafts first, even if that meant going down with the ship and loosing your own life. Play the man.

Moral excellence, we are to make every effort to abundantly supply moral excellence to our life of faith. I wonder what percentage of Christians can say they are making any effort at all to do this. The number of men and women who are addicted to pornography, even in our churches would indicate that few take this command from Scripture seriously.

We live in a sex crazed culture, but the church is to be different, Christians are to be different. We are to with great effort add to our faith moral excellence.

Then we are to add to our faith, knowledge, and again it is the knowledge. It’s not just any knowledge. It’s not the knowledge of history as helpful as that is. It’s not the knowledge of math, although that can be helpful. It’s the knowledge he’s already talked about. It’s the knowledge of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. And it’s just not knowing about him, as helpful as that can be, it’s knowing Him. Last Sunday I talked about some of God’s attributes, and that’s fine, but if you don’t know this God, if you haven’t experienced Him, then what have you gained.

The apostle Paul wanted to grow in experiential knowledge. He said in, “Philippians 3:8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. NKJV

Paul considered every thing, including his life as rubbish in comparison to knowing Jesus. Paul seems possessed by this one thought, “That I might know Him, and the power of His resurrection.” We should have that zeal as well that we might give all diligence to abundantly add to our faith, experiential knowledge of Him.

We are to abundantly add to our faith self-control. When I was growing up, I’m sure it was the same as when you were growing up, as young people we had sex on our minds. Same as today. There was a difference though; there was an expectation by pretty much everybody, that you needed to learn self control. It was taught at school, in Sunday school and it was preached from the pulpit. It was reinforced by parents, by your friend’s parents, and even by your piers. Now granted it wasn’t a perfect world and some did not practice self control. But that was the societal expectation.

Contrast that with today, when the attitude of many adults, at least the cultural elites and the educrates is that kids will be kids and they are going to do it any way so the least we should do is give them condoms. There is no expectation that they are in the least capable of practicing self control. This is the pagan world we now live in.

It is of course full of contradictions. They say man is an animal, and can’t control himself. We just need to live out who we are born to be. So one with same sex attractions shouldn’t fight who he is, he should embrace it, celebrate it. It’s interesting that the world doesn’t feel the same way about pedophiles.

Ravi Zacharias in one of his books has quotes a poem by Steve Turner a British journalist that illustrates the world we live in with its many contradictions, entitled Creed.

Creed We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes
UFO's and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.

If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear

State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.


This is the pagan world in which we live. The world says if it feels good do it. The Holy Spirit says make every effort to add to your faith self control. We are to control our passions rather than have our passions control us. Self control involves our appetites for sex, food, alcohol, and probably even our work ethic, lazyness, our spiritual disciplines of personal bible study and prayer. Sometimes self-control is just getting out of bed in the morning so we have time for devotions rather than hitting the snooze button three or four times.

We are to make every effort to add abundantly to our faith perseverance. This has the idea of persevering in trials, temptation and persecution. It is patient endurance in doing right even if you are persecuted for doing right.
There is to be a consistency to our Christian life, we are to grow day by day in grace and holiness. You may retire from your earthy labors and stop working, but you never retire from the Lord’s work until you take your last breath. We are to keep on keeping on. It is he who is faithful unto death that shall be saved. It is he who finishes the race that wins the prize. We are to add to our faith perseverance.

We are to make every effort to abundantly add to our faith godliness. This is interesting, because earlier we are told that God has given us every thing that pertains to life and godliness, but yet we need to live it, don’t we? We need to practice it, we need to experience it. We need to live reverently, worshipfully, loyally, and obediently. Yes he gives us everything, but we still do the living.

We are to make every effort to abundantly add to our faith brotherly love. The Greek word is Philadelphia. Again a reminder, It’s the brotherly love. It’s a specific kind of brotherly love that Peter is talking about here. It’s not just the blood is thicker than water love, the love for our physical family, the love of brothers and sisters and parents, the love of Norwegians. The specific kind of love the Holy Spirit is talking about is the love for other Christians. We are to add to our faith the loving fellowship of the saints. We are to love our spiritual brethren.

Finally we are to make every effort to abundantly add to our faith Love. The word is Agape. A word that primarily was coined to describe the self sacrificing love that Jesus demonstrated to the world when he took on human flesh that he might lay down His life a perfect sacrifice for our sins. The world has many wrong definitions for the word love. It’s not any love Peter is talking about here, it’s very specific. It’s the love, it’s the agape, it’s the love demonstrated in Jesus. For God so loved the world. We are also to love the world.

How does that look in the Christian? Jesus’ love caused him to come and seek and to save the lost. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, the world was already condemned, but he came that the world might be saved through Him.

This agape love is what drives us to make sacrifices in time, talent and resources that the world might be saved through the preaching of the Gospel. It is the Love that drives all evangelical Mission work.

If you ere going to grade yourself on this, how would you do? Not very well? Join the club. That’s why we can’t make this a legalistic thing. If you’re not doing well, you don’t just grin and bear it, and take another run at it and this time put more human effort in it. No you go back to the first four verses, you go back to the Gospel, you preach the gospel to yourself. You remind yourself of everything that Jesus did to save you, as Paul Washer said, that’s enough, that’s the secret, He saved you, that’s the motivation you need to pick yourself up and keep going.

Amen.