For this very reason, 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. 2 Peter 1v5-7 ESV
We are saved by faith in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, but that is not the end of the story. God wants us to grow and become more and more like Jesus, in our thoughts, our words and our actions.
As a parent and now a grandparent, I am convinced that good nutrition with a wide variety of fresh food cooked from scratch is the best way to build up the immune system for a healthy body. But sometimes there is a need to supplement with a particular vitamin or mineral that we are lacking in our diet, or that our body doesn’t absorb well. In this case, a vitamin or mineral supplement may be required to give us back our strength and vitality.
This passage in 2 Peter is the key to living a vibrant, healthy Christian life of growth and fruitfulness. We need to add these “supplements” to our faith so that we will not lose our spiritual sight (v9), or strength (v10).
It’s not just enough to know about these things. Peter urges us to put effort into gaining these qualities, and developing them in our lives, not because we need them to be saved, but because we need them to flourish and grow. God doesn’t want His children languishing on the point of spiritual death, He wants us to live a vibrant Christ centred life where we become “partakers of the divine nature” (v4)
There is a progressive pattern with these supplements, with one leading into another, so let’s start with the first one – virtue.
While virtue is similar to morality, I think there is a subtle difference. A moral person avoids certain things which he considers sinful. The impression is that of frowning upon certain actions and avoiding them at all costs. The goal is to not do certain things. It has a bit of a negative connotation.
Virtue on the other hand is reaching out and pursuing with enthusiasm things that are good and righteous and holy. It is the desire to be pure and filled with God’s thoughts and God’s Words and God’s Ways. It’s not that you don’t sin, but that you are so caught up with God’s glory and excellence (v3) that you have no desire to stay where sin is. A virtuous Christian wants to forsake sinful habits and when he falls into sin, he will seek repentance and forgiveness and get back to pursuing God.
I’ve observed that many Christians do not seem to have the desire to be holy and set apart for God. They seem to want the world’s ways more than the ways of God. They have a childish belief that God “loves me just the way I am” and so excuse themselves from any personal battle with sin and ungodly habits. God cannot love any one of us more than He did on the day that He saved us. We do not earn His love through good deeds, if that were the case, none of us would ever do enough to earn salvation. But He wants us to grow up, not remain spiritual infants demanding our own way all the time, and crying that God is not being fair when He doesn’t give us what we want. Spiritual growth is always an option that we can pursue or ignore.
In 2 Timothy 3v16, Paul talks about training in righteousness. Virtue, which is the pursuit of a righteous character or nature, requires training and effort. You do not wake up one morning and discover that your old nature has gone and that the new virtuous nature has magically appeared. It requires constant effort and honing of skills already learned.
It’s a hard slog becoming a world class athlete, but sports people pursue the title because they really want it. They want to win the gold, so they dedicate themselves to the training required to get there. They train hard, and study their areas of weakness so that they can build that area up to full strength. The gold medal is what drives them on. They pursue their ambition through years of hard grafting. They have to forsake unhealthy foods, give up a lot of their social life, study the mechanics of their chosen sport etc. Their ambition consumes every area of their lives.
There are huge crowds of spectators that watch sport, know all the rules, praise and admire the ones who are winning, and criticise and scorn those who make a mess of it. But they are not participants. They have not done the training. They are armchair critics that have never experienced the blood, sweat and tears that goes into becoming a champion.
When we are born-again, we enter into a new realm of spiritual living. While we still live in the natural physical realm, our hearts and minds have been given a new goal to pursue, i.e., becoming conformed to the image of Christ. We can ignore the goal or we can pursue it with enthusiasm. We can become moralistic, or we can become virtuous.
There is no fun in being moralistic, but there is great joy and exhilaration in training to be virtuous. I picture it as learning to be a knight in shining armour; one who has chosen to serve his king and country and learns all the skills necessary to fight the enemy and defend the kingdom.
God needs no defenders. His Will will be done. But He has offered us the honour of working with Him to destroy the works of the enemy in the lives of our family, friends and community. Only those who are prepared to train will have this privilege. It is not a burden to pursue virtue. It is the joy filled, enthusiastic rallying cry that Joshua proclaimed to the Children of Israel – “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24v15
