add to your faith virtue …
2Pe 1:5-8 says “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For 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.”
Peter is giving a command to add qualities to make us grow systematically that we will be fruitful because we are living holy. He tells us we need:
- faith
- virtue
- knowledge
- temperance
- patience
- godliness
- brotherly kindliness
- charity
These qualities named in the old english of the KJV seem a bit fuzzy today. The same list given in the new ISV makes a bit more sense:
- faith
- moral character
- knowledge
- self-control
- endurance
- godliness
- brotherly kindness
- love
These qualities build on each other, like the stories in a building. If you have been justified you have faith. Most people study the bible to add to their knowledge. The problem is, this is an era where virtue, moral character, is mostly ignored. Without moral character, knowledge can easily be perverted.
Character has received a lot of lip service in politics since the Monica and Bill story was used by the press to draw our attention away from the real lapse of character that Bill suffered. A lot of politicians and celebrities have had their careers harpooned by a lack of character that caused them to have affairs, cheat by using illegal substances, cook the books, etc.
The problem is that for many years the public schools have been teaching relative morality, do what works for you, because they say that there are no moral absolutes. The biblical phrase for this was “every man did what was right in his own eyes.” This phrase was used to describe times when men’s hearts were far from God. This would appear to be such a time.
Character has been described as how you act when no one else is around. Secular philosophers have studied and debated moral character since long ago. A study on their musings is available at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Basically it boils down to doing the right thing whether you really want to or not.
So, how do we build moral character? Two courses come to mind:
- Do it yourself.
- Do it with the Holy Spirit.
We know that sin is doing not the right thing. The natural man is in bondage to sin, so any attempt to do the right thing is ultimately futile. Someone who has been justified has had his spirit regenerated and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if you are saved you have resources that the natural man does not have. The bad news is you can still ignore the Holy Spirit and do the wrong thing, display a lack of moral character.
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Filed under BibleStudies, CloserToGod
| Tags: moral character, virtue |
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