"Supplementing Your Faith"

“Supplementing Your Faith”

 

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.  For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins.         2Peter 1:5-9

 

The Apostle Peter gives us seven attributes that should be cultivated along with our FAITH.  Goodness---moral excellency, and with the GOODNESS comes KNOWLEDGE---SPIRITUAL knowledge, knowledge that does not come from intellectual pursuits, but it comes through the Holy Spirit and is focused on the Lord Jesus Christ.  With KNOWLEDGE comes SELF-CONTROL---Keeping your passions under control.  With SELF-CONTROL comes ENDURANCE, a steadfast PERSERVERANCE under adversity, without giving in or giving up, but PRESSING ON.  With ENDURANCE comes GODLINESS, which refers to mankind’s devotion to religious duties and practices, mankind’s obligation to being reverent to God.  These first five attributes deal with mankind’s inner life and their relationship with Almighty God. 

 

These last two attributes deal with mankind’s actions towards others.  With GODLINESS comes BROTHERLY AFFECTION, this refers to mankind’s passionate caring for others, a GENUINE concern for another’s needs.  With BROTHERLY AFFECTION comes LOVE----an AGAPE-type of LOVE, the kind of LOVE that God has for a sinner.  Desiring the highest good for another. 

 

These are the attributes of a TRUE BELIEVER, whose FAITH is INCREASINGLY growing.  As God’s Children, we are to do more than possess these attributes, we are to GROW in them, by allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us, teaching and guiding us in the ways of the Lord.  If you are NOT growing in these areas you are INEFFECTIVE and UNPRODUCTIVE in your KNOWLEDGE of the Lord Jesus Christ.  You are still a babe in Christ, and are still on the MILK of the WORD.  You have yet to progress to the MEAT of the Word.   Peter urges his readers to grow in the GRACE and KNOWLEDGE of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

One who does not grow as they should will have poor SPIRITUAL eyesight, they are SPIRITUALLY BLIND and SHORTSIGHTED, when it comes to the ways of the Lord.  The have a lapse of memory when it comes to REMEMBERING that God has CLEANSED them from their past sins.  This is NOT an indication that they have lost their SALVATION just that they have NOT grown in their FAITH, as they should. 

 

If you have not given your HEART and LIFE to God, then you do NOT POSSESS these GODLY attributes, and are practicing the ways of this old sinful world, and you are headed for destruction.  But you NOW, have the opportunity to turn to God and be directed in the RIGHT direction, by: CONFESSING your sins to Him and asking Him for His FORGIVENESS, BELIEVING, with ALL your HEART, that Jesus died for YOU, and is ALIVE in Heaven, making intercession for you, before God, then ACCEPT His gift of SALVATION and GROW in the GRACE and KNOWLEDGE of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Do it NOW, while you still can.  He’s waiting and coming SOON!!!