2 Peter 1:5-165And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; 6And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; 7And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. 8For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. 10Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: 11For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 12Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth. 13Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; 14Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me. 15Moreover I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. 16For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:5‑16).
The Apostle Peter turns here in vs. 5 to the practical state of the believers; having given them what would comfort and refresh their hearts, he says, This is not all, now I look at your own state practically. “Besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge.” He knew how easy it was to get slothful, and so he exhorts them to give all diligence in thus adding. Virtue is that energy and courage of soul, that knows how to refuse, as well as to choose, like Moses, who “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,” and so he says “Add to your faith virtue.” You have the faith that connects you with God, and you believe in what as yet you do not see, but now you must add virtue, that courage, which knows how to say “No” to the thousand things that come up day by day, and to press unswervingly on the pathway that is set before us.
Then you may find a person who has this energy, but who is a little rough, and so he says, there is something else needed, lest this roughness turn to rashness, therefore add to virtue knowledge of God, of the mind and ways of God., and of what suits God, for mere knowledge puffs up, this is the knowledge that humbles.
A man that knows God well, cannot know Him without being in His company, and a person who is rear to God is tender in his ways, though there may be energy in him to follow on. We need grace from the Lord to add this.
“And to knowledge temperance.” Not the mere external restraint, but the cultivation of the inward mystery of the soul day by day, governing ourselves, keeping ourselves in order: and depend upon it if we cannot keep ourselves in order, we cannot keep anyone else.
Temperance is that quiet gravity of spirit, that equable in every circumstance, like Christ, never upset by anything or anyone that came along.
“And to temperance patience.” Temperance will keep me from saying or doing a thing that will wound you, and patience will keep me from being upset by anything that you may do to wound me. Temperance is active, patience is passive!
If you have not knowledge, you will not know how to meet the mind of God. If you have not temperance you will be sure to do something that will hurt someone else, and if you have not patience you will be upset by what someone else may be doing to you.
“And to patience Godliness”—God-likeness——walking through this scene, and possessing the divine nature, see that you illustrate it, exemplify it! new me a man’s company, and I will skew you what sort of a man he is; and if you are keeping company with God you will be a godly person, for we all resemble the thing we are occupied with. It comes out in a thousand blessed details too every day.
Then in this the Christian’s addition table, we have brotherly kindness, and charity, two things that may seem alike, but are different.
Brotherly kindness is a thing that might be merely human, and might degenerate and fade away, and brotherly kindness might only love the lovable sort of people, might be partial, but when I come to charity, it is impartial and unfailing, it is divine. “Charity never fails.” In 1 Cor. 13 there are eight things it does not do, and eight things it does do, and it never breaks down. It is the very thing our souls need as we go through a scene where everything is against us.
Supposing a person repulsed me, and considered my love interference, brotherly kindness only might say, I will not go back; but charity is a divine thing and says, “I think of the blessing and good of the object, and of the glory of God in connection with that object.”
Charity is not the love that makes light of evil, but the love that seeks the real good of its object.
We have a guide how we may learn if we really love the children of God (1 John 5:22By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. (1 John 5:2).) “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.” If you love the Father you love His children.
If we love Himself we love His people likewise, and we seek each other’s blessing, but always desiring to meet His mind.
You act as one who goes directly out from God, dependent on Him and obedient to Him, in grace to a, person no matter what his state may be. The Lord help us to profit by His word, and to seek to add these things to our faith, for there are many beautiful consequences of so doing.
If there be not this blessed adding, there is going back, for there is no such thing as standing still; if we are not progressing, we are retrograding. “Unto every one that hath, shall be given ... but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
If there be not the desire to press on, to go on with the Lord, what is there? There is only a returning to the things from which the Lord called us out in days gone by. The Lord give us to have diligence o! heart in thus adding to our faith, and progressing in the knowledge of Himself.
From the frequency with which the Apostle alludes to the eight things mentioned in verses 5, 6, and 7,—would seem almost impossible to overrate their importance. He brings out the effect of having these things and the result of not having them.
The end of every dealing of God with our souls is to make us know Christ better. If a person goes on with these three verses, you find about that person the savor of Christ. Peter felt that everything was nothing that did not lead a person to a deeper knowledge of Christ. That which puts us nearer to Christ has this effect, we feel how unlike Christ we are, and also it allures us from the world, so that we are more fit morally to pass through the world.
Many a saint of God feels, I am fit for heaven, but not fit for earth, because I am not sufficiently with the Lord to be equal to the occasions that arise as I pass through this scene. We feel our impotence and folly feel how we have broken down as witnesses for Christ. It is only as Christ becomes better known that there is a fitness to pass through this scene.
Verse 9. You will say this is a backslider. Not at all! He is confident about his eternal salvation, “But,” you say, “he is blind.” Quite true; put the things that belong to the Lord before him, he does not see them, he has forgotten too that he was purged from his old sins. What has he forgotten? Has he forgotten that his old sins were purged away? Not a bit! He has forgotten that he was purged away from his old sins, and so he has turned back to them again, got back into the world, lost completely the sense of what Christianity is as being a heavenly thing, and the Christian as being a heavenly person. There has been a dropping down, and losing sight of the things the Lord has called us to, a dropping down to earth, and its ways, its principles, and its religion likewise, the whole thing has been let go. Bit by bit the standard has been lowered, till there has been a dropping down so far, that the Lord has had to awaken us in a startling way.
Verse 10. Here the apostle comes in again with the solemn exhortation “give diligence,” and it is a thing we need, this holy diligence of soul to keep up, with purpose of heart to the thing the Lord has called us to. Peter alludes, doubtless, in this verse to the terrible fall he had had himself.
“But,” you say, “how can we make our calling and election sure?” Who called us? Our Father. Who chose us? Our Father. But this does not do for other people. Who are you to make your calling and election sure with? with the One who called you? the One who chose you? Not a bit, but with everyone who watches you, everyone who could say “You a called person! You do not look a bit like it. You a chosen person! No one would think so.” You are to make it manifest to the eyes of everyone else that you have been thus called of God.
Verse 11. That is more than the soul being sustained, kept of the Lord, though that in itself is a wonderful mercy, for there is many a fall in the history of a child of God, that God and his own heart alone knows of.
But is there not something very beautiful about the path of a Christian of whom you could say, from the first till the Lord took that one home, “He never took a backward step, there was not a trip, nothing manifest but a pathway of beautiful devotedness.” There is no reference here to forgiveness or pardon, but Peter reverts to his great subject of the government of God, and he says, if you have these things and abound, not only will you be kept from falling, but there passes before his mind the thought of the place, and the portion, and the reward that the saint of God has in the coming kingdom of the Lord, for though the grace of God gives us a common place in heavenly glory, there is such a thing as the kingdom, or a place in the kingdom, and reward for service which has nothing to do with grace. Grace gives us a common place in heavenly glory, but the government of God gives us an unequal place in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to service.
It is a question of the reward that a saint gets from the Lord by-and-by, and there is the same difference in this, as there is between a vessel, that goes abroad, and encounters storms by the way, but has been badly rigged, badly manned, and badly commanded, and though it gets into port, yet it comes up the channel with masts torn away, and tugged by a steamer; and a vessel that comes into port with all sails set—everything in order, and cargo safe.
Peter says, If you do not go on adding, you will fall down by the road, and there will be a sense of loss at the end. There comes a moment when the soul deeply feels, Would to God I had been devoted to Christ, instead of being worldly, cold, trivial, half-hearted. Most beautifully Peter guards the sheep, lest they should fall into the thing from which he would fain protect them.
Verses 12, 13. We may sometimes think it not worthwhile to be going over the same things again and again. Not so Peter. And if our hearts are only put in remembrance of these things God be thanked. It will be blessed fruit to our account in the days to come.
Do we not need stirring up? We do. Satan does his utmost to hinder our souls. The Lord lead us to be more watchful, more on our guard against the wiles of the enemy.
Verse 15. How persistent Peter is “To have these things always in remembrance.” “These things,” are five times spoken of. It is impossible therefore for our souls to over-estimate the value, and the worth of vss. 5,6,7, to which the apostle thus alludes five times after. The Lord grant we may have them always in remembrance, have them engraved upon the tablets of our hearts.
How Peter felt there was no apostolic succession, no one to do the work he was doing, after his death. I leave you, he says, in my Epistle that which may always be a blessing and a help to your souls.
In all ages the people of God have clung in a peculiar way to Peter’s Epistles. Why, do you think? I believe it is because they come right down to where we are in the world, and meet us so beautifully with a presentation of Christ, which comes to us and suits us in our need in this world.
We have Satan presented as a roaring lion in the first epistle, and as a snake in the grass in the second epistle, and we have what meets him in both these characters, and preserves us from his devices.