How To Love People Who Drive You Crazy - 2 Peter 1:7 Series

2 Peter 1:5 For this very reason, having made every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. 10 Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 12 So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have.

Introduction: Love Is Hard

The greatest and most important of all God’s commands is also the sweetest—love. All the joy in life comes from love—people you love, places you love, activities you love, food you love—from the shallowest to the deepest, all the delights of life come from some form of love. It’s the greatest command, it’s the sweetest command, but it’s also the hardest command. Of all the changes you can make in your life, is there any that feels more difficult than changing what you love? If there’s someone you don’t like at all and God commands you to start loving that person, what command in the Bible feels more impossible than that one? How do you obey the command to love? Peter’s going to help us with that in 2 Peter 1:7.

Outward Expression

I mentioned that the structure of this list of seven is three, perseverance in the middle, then another three. The first three are internal: moral excellence, spiritual knowledge, and control of your inner man. Those all have to do with what’s going on inside your heart, in your mind, and your internal impulses.

But as wonderful as those virtues are, even when you add perseverance, it’s still not enough because God’s holiness always expresses outwardly. When you share in the divine nature, that holiness won’t stay inside you. It will come out.

Internal holiness is essential, which is why it comes first. External expressions that aren’t driven by internal holiness are just hypocrisy. Whitewashed tombs. So you’ve got to have that internal reality, but if the internal holiness is real, there will always be external expression of it. You can’t grow in godliness in the privacy of your own heart.

James 2:26 … faith without deeds is dead.

Any virtue without deeds is dead.

So the back three in Peter’s list turn outward. Internal holiness will be expressed outwardly, first toward God, then toward the brothers, then out to the whole world. So Peter says:

2 Peter 1:6 [Add] to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

Godliness

So let’s look at those three. First, godliness. Godliness is living with awareness of God. It’s living in a way that someone could observe your life and say, “Okay, there’s a person who believes:

1) That God exists

2) That God is the way he describes himself in the Bible

3) That God is present

Godliness is living in the presence of God.

So how does internal holiness express itself outwardly toward God? Through godliness—simply being aware of his presence. The more you are what you should be in your private life on the inside, the less prone you’ll be to forgetting God.

The opposite of godliness is worldliness. Worldliness is when this world has your attention. You look out at life, and this world is really big and God is small. Godliness is when you look, and God is really big and this world is small. And Peter says, “Add that to your perseverance.”

Prevents Pride

Now, as we’ve gone through this list, we’ve seen over and over that each virtue is connected to the one before it and the one after it. Those connections are significant because not only do you use the previous one to attain the next one, but we’ve also seen that you need the next one to govern the previous one. For example, the first two in Peter’s list—moral excellence and spiritual knowledge. You use the moral excellence to gain the knowledge, but you also need the knowledge to inform the moral excellence. We’ve seen that pattern each time, and we see it again here. We’ll look at how to use perseverance to increase your godliness in a minute, but first, let’s consider how we need godliness to govern our perseverance.