About this sermon
Because God has given believers everything they need for godliness, Peter calls them to make every effort to supplement their faith with virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. God expects his people to grow. Knowledge here is doctrinal truth revealed in Scripture, joined to moral excellence. Those who have these qualities in increasing measure will not be ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ. True believers may have areas of sin, but no regenerate Christian is wholly ruled by it; everyone indwelt by the Spirit bears some fruit.
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We continue our consideration of 2nd Peter and this evening our focus will be 2nd Peter chapter 1 verses 5 through 9 and you will find that on page 1207 in your Pew Bibles. I’m gonna read the first 11 verses of chapter 1 but again our focus will be particularly on verses 5 through 9. So let us hear God’s Holy Word 2nd Peter chapter 1 verses 1 through 11. Simeon Peter a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His 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.
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. 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. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore brothers be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy word and let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of his word.
Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven we thank you that we have a solid rock foundation for our faith in your God-breathed inerrant infallible word. It is indeed a lamp unto our feet a light unto our path. We pray oh Lord that we might gain wisdom from the word this evening through your Holy Spirit and we would ask that you would illuminate us Lord help us to understand what the Spirit is teaching us in this portion of your holy word and Lord once again we ask that you would set a guard over my lips that I might speak only that which is faithful to your word edifying to your people and in a way that tends to your praise and honor and glory. Oh Lord we pray that this portion of your word would indeed be spiritual milk to those who need the milk of the word.
May it be meat to those who need the meat of your word and may it be manna for all of us to feed our souls. In Jesus name we pray and all of God’s people said amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is adding to your faith and there’s quite a number of keywords that you can be listening for if you find that helpful. Faith, growth, maturity, virtues, fruitfulness, and forgiveness. Well dear ones the word of God teaches that everyone who has been born again by the Holy Spirit has a basic desire to live a godly life, a godly life of obedience to the Lord. The last time we were here in 2nd Peter chapter 1 we learned that we who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ that we have in fact been granted everything that we need for godly living.
This is a powerful implication of our spiritual and saving union with Christ. This spiritual equipping for godly living is a gift from God that comes from the Lord’s divine power as we receive it through our full saving knowledge of God. As it says in verse 3 his divine power has granted to us all things or everything that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of him. This is speaking of saving knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence or by his own glory and excellence. Through our Lord’s own glory and excellence he has given to us his precious and very great promises so that through these promises we may participate in the divine nature and may escape from the world’s moral corruption. That’s what we are told in verse 4 where Peter writes by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them through these precious and very great promises we may become you may become partakers of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
Well in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening the Apostle Peter continues to urge his readers he continues to urge his readers to grow in their Christian faith to as it were get growing in their Christian faith. We are to grow in our personal trust in Christ our Lord and Savior and we are to do so by adding to our personal faith the Christian virtues that Peter lists here. Virtues which are ultimately of course the fruit of the Holy Spirit not virtues that we add by our own personal strength or our personal worthiness or self-generated willpower or our own personal resources but no virtues that are granted to us as a gift by the work of the Holy Spirit. Now I will say that I believe there’s good reason here to see this list not as an exhaustive list of virtues that we are to add to our faith but a representative list.
Peter is in essence saying add to your faith things such as virtues self-control and so forth. If by the grace of God we possess these virtues in ever-increasing measure then our Christian lives will be spiritually effective and spiritually productive but if any professing Christian lacks these virtues and is not growing in them by the grace of God then he shows himself to be spiritually blind nearsighted and forgetful. That’s the that’s what we’re told in verses eight and nine where we have both a promise and a warning 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 for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Now friends with all of this in mind let us first of all notice in verses 5 through 7 a call to spiritual growth and maturity.
We have here Peter calling his readers and calling you and me the Holy Spirit calling you and me through Peter the Apostle to spiritual growth and maturity and first of all we are told here about the ground for this call to spiritual growth. On what basis does the Lord through Peter call us to spiritual growth? Well it begins in verse 5 for this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and so forth. Well what does he mean when he talks about this very reason? Well he’s referring to the previous verse or the previous section of what he had written. In other words by virtue of God’s power and promises which had been spoken of in verses 3 and 4 by virtue of the power and the promises of God we are to grow in our faith we are to add to our faith in union with Christ.
Dr. David Wheaton in his commentary says that since the Christian has these resources at his disposal he is exhorted to utilize them in spiritual growth which will give practical expression to the relationship described as knowing Jesus Christ. And so the ground of this call to spiritual growth is the God’s power and God’s promises and what is the method of spiritual growth that we are summoned to here in verse 5? Well notice that he calls us to activity. He doesn’t call us to be quietistic or passive. He calls us to an active faith. He says this for this very reason do what? Make every effort to supplement your faith by virtue. He’s not preaching salvation by good works of course. This effort is the outflow of our union with Christ and of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives as believers but nonetheless we must act by the grace of God.
Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and so forth. The Reformed Bible commentator Simon Kistermacher comments on the verb which is translated in some translations as to add to add to your faith. In the ESV it’s translated to supplement your faith. He says the verb to add is meaningful in the Greek. The word comes from the Greek world of stage and drama. The director of a play not only coached the cast, together with the state he also paid the expenses the members incurred for giving a performance on stage. In other words the choir master added his financial contribution to the amount the state supplied. This verb to add then signified that the believer contributes lavishly to the work of his salvation. Now let me pause there and say I’m a little uncomfortable with the way that Dr.
Kistermacher expresses himself there. I don’t think he intends to mean that that by adding these virtues to our faith that we are somehow contributing to our salvation. I think he has in view working out the salvation that the Lord has worked within us but nonetheless he could have expressed himself a little more carefully. Again this passage is not saying that our works or our virtues somehow earn or merit our salvation or contribute to the finished work of Christ as if that were possible or necessary. Certainly it’s not necessary. When Jesus said it is finished he meant it. He meant it is finished. The work is done. A better way perhaps to express what is or interpret what is being said here in this passage is that we are to work out the saving sanctifying grace that the Holy Spirit has already worked within us and that our faith is to bear spiritual fruit in adding these virtues.
I think what Peter is saying here is similar to what the Apostle Paul writes in Philippians chapter 2 verses 12 and 13. He’s expressing the same kind of idea. Let’s turn there briefly to Philippians 2 and look at verses 12 and 13. Philippians chapter 2 verses 12 and 13. The Apostle Paul writes this. Therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed so now not only as in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Now let me pause there. Notice he doesn’t say work for your own salvation. No. He says work out your salvation. The salvation which the Lord by implication has graciously worked within you in his savings regenerating and sanctifying grace. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you.
All glory be to God. It is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And so friends we are to make every effort again as the outflow of our union with Christ and in reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit to supplement our faith which with virtue self-control and so forth. And we see here in this verse the foundational nature of faith. The faith that is being spoken of here is obviously in context saving faith. Saving faith is the personal reliance the personal trust of the believer in his or her Savior. It is that subjective trust which clings to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and clings to him alone and which serves as the basis for our spiritual life and the root of all these other virtues which Peter mentions.
Saving faith is the root of all these other virtues. And what are the virtues or fruits that believers need to add to their faith in order to live effective lives in Christ? Well we read of them in verses again verses 5 through 7. For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control with steadfastness or perseverance and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. There’s a crescendo here. There’s one virtue leading to and connected to and bearing fruit in another virtue and so forth. Again David Wheaton says faith must be seen at work in a life of moral excellence and this must be backed by a steadily increasing knowledge of God. This in turn gives the ability to control oneself and that is necessary if one is going to be able to cope with trying circumstances or people.
Steadfastness keeps the eyes consistently on God and his purposes in spite of these difficulties and so leads to godliness. In turn the right attitude to God produces the right attitude of brotherly affection to one’s fellows. Beyond this and as it were the coping stone of the whole edifice of character is Christian love which reaches beyond the family of God to all men. So what are these virtues in particular that we are to add to our faith? The first virtue that is mentioned it’s translated here in the ESV simply as virtue. Other translations like the New International Version translates it as goodness and it indicates moral excellence. It’s not just enough to say you have faith. We show our faith by moral excellence. We manifest our faith to those outside of our subjective psyche through our moral excellence and to moral excellence we are to add knowledge.
Now in context here this is obviously referring to doctrinal knowledge. It’s referring to the knowledge of the truth as that truth is revealed in the scriptures and as it was proclaimed by the Apostles of Jesus Christ. The knowledge by which we as God’s people come into a saving relationship with Christ and by which we are sanctified in Christ. So there is an inextricable connection between this moral excellence and this knowledge as well and beyond that is mentioned self-control. One commentator points out that self-control is the exact opposite of the excesses of the false teachers and the sexual abuses in the pagan world. Remember that the Apostle Peter is confronting an antinomian heresy. He is counteracting an antinomian heresy that used the grace of God as an excuse for sin and so these heretics that Peter is is confronting and refuting in 2nd Peter were heretics who use the grace of God as an excuse to throw off all self control but we brothers and sisters we are called not to follow in that way of thinking for after all the grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness as I believe Paul says in Titus.
The grace of God teaches us to follow in the footsteps of our Lord out of gratitude for his gift of salvation and so we are to add or supplement our faith with moral excellence or virtue, knowledge, self-control and the next thing that is mentioned is steadfastness or perseverance. This is the virtue of having an eternal perspective of continuing to press on and push through even when you face obstacles in your walk with the Lord even when you face discouragements even when you stumble into sin you don’t stay in the muck and mire of sin you confess it you look again to Jesus and you get up and you press on relying upon Christ clinging to him and him alone. Again steadfastness is the virtue of having an eternal perspective and waiting patiently upon the Lord to return to punish sin and to vindicate his people.
Steadfastness is that which enables the martyrs of the faith to stand firm in their faith in spite of their persecution in spite of the fact that they seem to be on the losing side of history but realizing by faith that they are actually on the winning side because they are standing in Christ and he will return and vindicate them in the end will judge their oppressors and will glorify his own name in the end. And then there is godliness. Godliness is an attitude of reverence towards God that impacts and controls all aspects of life. Isn’t it interesting to consider the word godless? Think about the two components of that word godless. Take those two components and reverse them. To be godless is to want less God in your life so to speak. But godliness is a God-centered vision.
It is a life that is grounded in a God-centered worldview, a God-centered view of reality knowing that everything that you do, every thought that you think, every word that you say, every deed that you perform, everything is done coram Deo before the face of God. And whether it be whether it be your work, your family life, your recreations, all things are done coram Deo in the presence of God. And having an attitude of godliness is an attitude is to have a perspective that an attitude of reverence toward God that impacts every area of your life. It isn’t just something that that is here when we gather for church on Sunday but when you get up in the morning and you have to drive to work for example and maybe you find yourself in in some heavy traffic maybe someone cuts you off and you’re tempted to to give them a to show them a particular finger on your hand or whatever the case may be instead of doing that you recognize you’re a witness for Christ you’re living your life before the face of God.
Godliness impacts every area of your life. And then closely connected to that brotherly affection the Greek word is Philadelphian from which we get the word What is the city of Philadelphia called? It’s the city of brotherly love right? At least supposedly. That’s what that’s what its name means may not be that in actuality but you know nothing against the city of Philadelphia. But Philadelphian in the Greek is a this refers to the warm affection that believers should have for one another within the fellowship of believers. Brothers and sisters in Christ don’t you love your brothers and sisters in Christ? Don’t you delight to be able to gather together with like-minded believers and share the things that matter most to share the things of the Lord with one another. There’s a there’s a certain warmth of affection towards fellow believers.
Certainly we we are to have love for our families our natural families whether they be believers or not and there’s there that’s a special kind of love as well. But this brotherly affection this Philadelphian that Peter writes of here is that warm affection that we believers have for the fellowship of believers for our brothers and sisters in Christ. And then to to cap it off he mentions love in the Greek it is agapain. Agapain is as one commentator puts it the queen of virtues and denotes self-sacrificing action in behalf of another. And of course Jesus Christ our Savior perfectly exemplified agape love. When he sacrificed himself he laid down his life as a substitutionary atonement for sin on our behalf when he died in our place in our stead as our sin bearer our substitute.
So let me ask you dear listener are you striving by the grace of God and out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation are you striving to add to your faith these kinds of virtues? By the grace of God and in reliance upon the Holy Spirit are these qualities increasing in your life? Now when I ask you these rhetorical questions which of course you are to answer within yourself it’s easy you know certainly it’s a good thing to examine yourself as you’re as we’re called to later on in this section of chapter 1 to give diligence to confirm your calling an election and so forth it’s a good thing to ask yourself these questions but you know what we tend to have a higher view of ourselves than perhaps we ought to have. So my suggestion to you in terms of answering these questions the question are you striving to add to your faith these virtues and by the grace of God are these qualities increasing in your life?
Don’t just ask yourself and think about this within yourself in your terms of your personal self-examination in prayer before the Lord. Ask someone who is close to you to answer these questions. Ask your spouse am I growing in these virtues? Am I growing in goodness, moral excellence, self-control, godliness and so forth? Or ask another close family member or ask a close trusted Christian friend. Are you growing or are you either lacking in these virtues or not making progress in them? By the grace of God may we out of gratitude for God’s gift of salvation to us in Jesus strive to add these virtues to our faith. But next we have a wonderful promise next in verse 8 the promise of spiritual fruitfulness to those who manifest these virtues in increasing measure. That’s my next point on your sermon outline.
Let us consider the promise of spiritual fruitfulness to those who manifest these virtues in increasing measure. Peter writes for if these qualities are yours and are increasing they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Think about that. You have the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which I believe here is speaking of saving knowledge and yet Peter envisions those who might be ineffective or unfruitful in that knowledge. We’ll dive into what that means in a second but brothers and sisters we don’t want to be ineffective or unproductive in our walk with Christ do we? Don’t we want to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Of course it’s the fruit of the Spirit and the Spirit is the one who does his work but we are to work out by the grace of God that which he works within us.
Don’t we want to bear the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Though sanctification is as our confessional standards rightly put it a work of God’s free grace alone and not something we can take credit for, at the same time God’s Word holds us responsible to work out the sanctifying grace that God has worked within us. By the grace of God let us diligently use the means of grace, the Word, the sacraments, and prayer as you are doing this evening as you gather for worship and let us give all diligence to cultivate these spiritual virtues in our hearts and in our lives not in order to be saved but because we’ve been saved by the grace of God and we want to show our gratitude to the Lord. But finally let us consider what we learn here in verse 9 about the spiritual blindness of professing believers who do not manifest these spiritual virtues.
This is my final point on your outline, the spiritual blindness of professing believers who do not manifest these spiritual virtues. Peter writes these words, for whoever lacks these qualities, the qualities that we are to supplement our faith with, the qualities of moral excellence and self-control and knowledge and godliness and brotherly affection and love, he says whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind. The picture is of constricting your eyes that eventually that shuts out the light and if you continue squinting your eyes eventually all goes dark. Whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. In other words, such an unfruitful, unproductive professing believer has forgotten his or her identity in Christ and all that Christ has done for him or her.
But this raises the question, who is Peter describing here in verse 9? Is Peter here describing the so-called carnal Christian? Some evangelicals today have this idea that it’s possible to exercise faith in Christ, saving faith in Christ, it’s possible to make a decision for Christ and and be saved and yet live a life that is entirely characterized by carnality. Is that what Peter is describing here? Someone who is saved but who does not bear any spiritual fruit in their hearts and lives. Well brothers and sisters this cannot be the case because such an individual does not exist. And some might say well what about 1st Corinthians chapter 3 where Paul says that the Corinthians, are you not carnal? And certainly true believers can have areas of carnality and do have areas of carnality in their lives.
But there is no such thing as a truly regenerate, truly born-again Christian whose heart and life is entirely characterized by the dominance of sin and carnality. The Bible indicates that all Christians have received the Holy Spirit, are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and will bear at least some spiritual fruit in their lives. And so Peter may perhaps be referring to an unsaved person who makes a false profession of faith but who is being described according to his or her own profession. You know sometimes the Bible describes people that way. Someone might be a false believer, a false professor of faith, and yet they are described as a believer in Scripture because the Scriptures describe that individual according to their own profession of faith. I believe for example in the book of Acts Simon Magus, the magician who was in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity according to the Apostle Peter, Luke describes him in the book of Acts as a believer.
Luke is describing him not as a true believer who falls away but rather Luke is describing him according to his own profession of faith. And perhaps that’s what’s going on here. Or Peter may perhaps be referring to a believer who is not making the kind of progress in the Christian life that one would ordinarily expect. Or perhaps Peter is simply taking the standpoint of the visible church. He may be describing baptized church members who are not living up to the meaning and significance of their baptism. Whatever the case may be, you don’t want to be in this category that Peter is describing here in verse 9. Simon Kistermacher again has some helpful comments. He says, the intent therefore is to say that a person without spiritual virtues is as blind as someone who contracts his eyelids.
With this illustration, Peter wishes to say that a person who neglects the cultivation of spiritual values is blind to the truth of God’s Word. Such a man is able to see earthly things that are nearby but unable to see heavenly things that are far away. But what about Peter’s reference to the fact that such a one has forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins or his past sins? Well again, Dr. Kistermacher says with the term past, Peter indicates that someone who lived in sin was converted and baptized. Perhaps he gradually drifted from his commitment to Christ by forgetting the significance of his baptism and returning to his former sinful life. There is a real spiritual danger to stagnation in the faith and backsliding in the faith. True believers can stagnate. True believers can backslide and can become ineffective and unproductive in their walk with the Lord until such time as by the grace of God they return again to the Lord.
And so how do we avoid that? How do we avoid falling into this condition here? And by the way, it is those who are in such a position where they have forgotten that they were cleansed from their former sins. It is such ignorant believers who are in danger of swallowing the antinomian heresy that was being promoted by the heretics that Peter is seeking to counteract here in 2 Peter. Well, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us always keep our eyes on Jesus. Let us never forget the grace of God that delivered us from our former sins and continues to deliver us day by day for his mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness continues forever. Remember what Martin Luther taught us that although we’re not Lutherans, we do appreciate Brother Luther and he reminds God’s people that the Christian life is not a life of onward and upward.
It’s not a life where, you know, oh you get saved and then everything’s perfect. No. The Christian life is a life of continuous ongoing daily repentance and faith, ongoing daily mortification and vivification, putting to death the old man, fighting the good fight with your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith. So brothers and sisters in Christ, let us never forget the grace of God that delivered us from our former sins. Let us be on guard against the danger of spiritual stagnation. Are you stagnating in your faith? Are you stuck in the muck, not moving forward, not pressing forward in your walk with Christ? Or have you backslidden? Have you gone, are you drawn away from Christ back into the ways of the world? Be warned. Be warned lest you become ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Be warned, for if you continue in that direction you may prove yourself to be an unbeliever in the end. But again, Peter is speaking here with the language of charity. He’s assuming the best about those to whom he writes, but he does confront them. And you can, and the Holy Spirit through this passage confronts us with the danger of spiritual stagnation and backsliding. So let us always move forward, press forward, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Let us show gratitude to God for his grace in our lives which cleansed us from our past sins and which continues to cleanse us. And let us show that gratitude by adding to our faith, adding to our faith such qualities as virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. May God make it so.
Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the Christian life is indeed a battle, but we thank you that in Christ we have the victory, for we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And so Lord, we pray that as we take what this passage is teaching to heart, let us not receive this passage as a call to get on to a works righteousness treadmill, but a call to again ground ourselves in Christ, to cling to him and him alone, fixing our eyes upon him. For it is in him that we work out that which you in your grace have worked into us by your sanctifying grace. We pray these things, oh Lord, in Jesus name and all of God’s people said, amen.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.