FAITH ADDITIVES
2nd Peter 1:4-11
An additive is something that's added to something to make it better in some way. Food additives. Some additives are not good for us. Things like artificial flavors or coloring (red dye #40), high fructose corn syrup and aspartame are not good additives. Some additives have been linked to certain cancers.
But not all additives are bad. Some foods have added vitamins and minerals. Certain additives can extend the shelf life of foods. The chemicals in food react with oxygen in the air giving it an unpleasant taste and color. It makes the food go stale, and the oils and fats go rancid. But antioxidants help preserve the flavor of foods.
There are some things that, when added to something else, make it better. People usually don't eat a hamburger plain, they add a condiment to make it taste better. Today we'll look at some things that Peter says we need to add to our faith. You might think if we have faith that's all we need but that's not the case. Let's find out why we need some faith additives.
1) Precious promises.
2nd Pet. 1:4, "Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." Peter starts out by saying "Through these".
Through what? Although we could just include what we see in vs. 3-God's divine power, glory and goodness, it makes sense to go back to vs. 1. Through the righteousness of Jesus, through the knowledge of God, through his grace, peace, faith; all of these wonderful treasures. We can see God working through all these things to bring us his very great and precious promises.
But what are they? In Rom. and Gal., Paul uses the word promises numerous times when he establishes and defends that salvation is through faith and not through the law. Paul talks about the promise that was given to Abraham and that he was declared righteous through faith. So, those who are born again are true descendents of Abraham and are called children of the promise.
After Peter preached the first sermon at Pentecost the people were convicted and asked Peter what they needed to do. Acts 2:38-39, "Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” The promise Peter is talking about is salvation-forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
We also have the promise of our future inheritance. 2nd Pet. 3:13, "But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness." So we have the promises of salvation, the Holy Spirit and eternity in heaven, along with things like grace and peace. Psalm 85:8 says God promises peace to his people. Through salvation we have peace with God. And we also have the peace that enables us to be calm in the storm. Great and precious promises.
"So that". Peter lists two reasons why we've been given these precious promises: to participate in the divine nature and to escape the corruption in the world. They work hand in hand. Through God's glory, grace and divine power we are able to have forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are given a new nature-the divine nature. When we operate in that divine nature we will escape the corruption in the world.
But only through God can we do this. We can't escape corruption apart from operating in the divine nature. People without Christ can do things like leave a life of crime or stop an addiction but they won't be able to escape total corruption. And there's no escape from condemnation without Christ so no matter how successful they are at turning their lives around they will still be in their sins.
Corruption is caused by evil desires. That's what the divine nature can change in us; we can replace those evil desires with godly desires. The one without the Spirit may fight their evil desires but they can't replace them with godly desires. James 1:27 says part of operating in religion as God sees it is to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world.
As a new creation living a new life, I have the ability to get rid of the pollution and pursue purification. 2nd Cor. 7:1, "Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God."
Paul is speaking of the promises of God receiving us and adopting us as his children if we would come out of the darkness and into the light. Since we have the promise of God's acceptance and adoption, let's live in accordance with this newness and change our ways. We see what can motivate us toward purifying ourselves is God's promises.
When we truly understand and believe that God's promises are valid, for me, then I will be more apt to passionately pursue the things that purify me and remove whatever is impure. Out of my reverence for God, out of my holy respect and righteous fear, I will seek to honor the one who loved me enough to send his son to die for me.
I will be compelled by that great love and sacrifice to escape corruption, replace evil desires with godly ones and live an unpolluted life. I'll be driven to decontaminate myself, body, mind and spirit because God gave me his precious promises. My allegiance is my continual thank you to God for giving me what I couldn't earn and didn't deserve. I give back by giving myself to God as a living sacrifice for his purposes.
2) Add to your faith.
2nd Pet. 1:5-7, "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love."
"For this very reason". What reason? Because God's power gives us everything we need, because we've been given these precious promises so we can participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world, we need to then add some things to our faith. Faith is key; it's the foundation we need to build on. This means the things in this list are not available apart from faith. Faith is needed if I am to truly possess what we find here. Apart from faith there is no goodness, knowledge, self-control, etc.
Does that mean if I'm not a Christian I have no goodness? If I'm not a Christian I have no self-control? Yes and no. Non-Christians can do good things but that doesn't make them good. But whatever good things they do is still only because God enabled them to do them.
All good things come from God, whether someone acknowledges that or not. A non-Christian can exhibit some self-control but only to a degree. Christians have the ability to develop a goodness that can't be reached without faith; a level of self-control that can't be reached without a relationship with Jesus.
A non-Christian's knowledge of God can only go so far. But when we have the Spirit of God inside us the ability to know God goes through the roof. Godliness without Jesus? No way. And you can't persevere in Christ if you're not in Christ.
What about brotherly kindness and love? People exhibit a certain degree of these things but it's limited. Perhaps their kindness only goes so far or is done with an impure motive.
Our capability to love can only go so far without God showing us what love is all about. We can't know what love truly is unless the author of love comes to live in us and show us what it really means to love unconditionally.
Let's get into these characteristics and see what Peter tells us to add to our faith. Peter starts with goodness. But wait, why is goodness first and love last? Shouldn't it be the other way around? 1st Cor. 13 says love is the greatest thing. This tells us Peter isn't listing these qualities according to their importance or value; otherwise love would be first.
Goodness. We can come up with a definition of what we consider goodness to be but what did Peter mean? Some translations have virtue and the NASB has moral excellence. So, add to your faith morality. Add to your faith honesty, decency, honor; these things constitute goodness or virtue.
If we are to live in newness of life then we are to characterize our lives by living morally where once we lived immorally. However we were dishonest we now commit to laying that aside and being honest in our dealings. Once we were crude and indecent, now we're proper. These are the things implied by Peter's use of goodness.
The Greek word used is the same as in vs. 3 that mentions God calling us by his own glory and goodness. We're to adopt the same goodness that God has. And we are able to now because we have the Holy Spirit.
We are also to add knowledge. If we have faith we obviously have some knowledge-we know that we are sinners and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and we need to trust in him if we are going to escape God's wrath. But that's just the beginning.
If we've been given everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of God then of course we need to add knowledge to our faith. The more we know, accept and understand about God the more we will be equipped to operate in these attributes. We need to know what's right and what God wants before we can act on it.
Next Peter mentions self-control (some bibles-temperance). This is about restraining ourselves. We need to control our anger, impulses, our tongue; all of that. In 1 Cor. 6:12 Paul said he will not be mastered by anything. That's the problem when we don't have self-control; we become mastered by things. Whatever it is we can't seem to stop saying or doing we need to realize we have lost control.
Self-control can mean total absolution or doing in moderation. When it comes to sin we need to have no tolerance since no amount of sin is acceptable to God. I'm not talking about having to be perfect but we have no justification for sinning less frequently. We can't say, "I have this sin under control; I only do it every so often."
But we can say this in regards to behaviors that are not sinful but they still need to be kept under control. Things like having a hobby or perhaps a certain food we like. Eating too much or doing too much of something becomes problematic because it starts to take control of our lives.
Perseverance. This is the mindset of tenacity, diligence and determination. But in order to have perseverance we need to have suffering. You've never heard of someone persevering through the good times. Perseverance is made up of things like trust, courage and a positive attitude. It is powered by faith hope and love. It is accomplished by the one who knows that it's all worth it and that their hard work and sacrifice won't be overlooked by God.
Then we see godliness. This is holiness or piety as some translations have it. It's being spiritual. It's caring about and prioritizing our lives to pursue godly things. Jesus said we need to hunger and thirst for righteousness. He said we need to build up treasures in heaven, not treasures on earth. So, we eagerly pursue all things righteous ie: godly.
We absorb the word, we sing praises, we fellowship with godly people, listen to godly music, read godly books, see godly movies, etc. We speak his truth and we exhibit the character of Christ and shine the light of Christ. This is godly behavior.
Brotherly kindness is going out of our way to help a fellow Christian. This means we're determined to put away all manner of discord and bitterness we might have against a fellow believer. We pursue peace, unity and harmony among those of the faith. When we learn someone is a believer we show kindness to them. We should be kind to everyone but there's a special kindness shown to brothers and sisters in Christ.
Gal. 6:10, " Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." Why? Because we're family. We may show love and kindness to all people but our family has a special place in our hearts. Naturally we're going to do more for our family than we would for other people. Likewise, we will behave this way with our spiritual family.
Love. The love that Peter is talking about is not the love we have for our favorite things, this isn't the love that is here today and gone tomorrow, it's not erotic love or merely brotherly love. This is agape love; the love that loves without first being loved-the unconditional love-the 1st Cor. 13:4-7 kind of love. God showed us this love when he sent his only son to die for those who didn't love him. And he has given us the capacity to love this way so and we add this love to our faith.
This list has similarities to the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5, so Peter could've said, 'add fruit to your faith'. There are scriptures where we're told to be devoted to good works. Eph. 2:10 says we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Titus 2:14 says we need to be eager to do what is good. Titus 3:8 says that those who have trusted in God need to devote themselves to doing what is good.
We were saved for a divine purpose; that we would surrender our lives to the Lordship of Christ and live for him. We can't exit the baptismal, dry off and go back to living our lives as we did before and think we'll be ok; it doesn't work like that. If we're going to walk in newness of life and make it to the finish line then we need to add these wonderful traits to our faith.
3) In increasing measure.
2nd Pet. 1:8-11, "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. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.
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, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."
When Peter talks about possessing these things in increasing measure, he's not talking about adding these things one at a time; he's talking about possessing and increasing in these virtues collectively. Like I said before about the order of things in the list, if I didn't focus on love until I had all the other ones down-I would never get to love because you need love in order to possess the others. Could I really have brotherly kindness if love wasn't there?
So this is a collective group of attributes that we are supposed to add to our faith-not one a time but all at a time. And we need to operate in them all of the time; in increasing measure. This means we will always be needing to get more goodness, knowledge, self-control, etc.
We will never get to the place where we've reached our limit on the amount of love we can have. This is the sanctification process; the process of becoming like Christ. Jesus is the only one who had all these fully. The rest of us-we'll be spending the rest of our lives striving to get there.
It's about increasing. Paul said in 2 Cor. 3:18 that we who reflect the Lord's glory are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory. And if we possess these qualities in increasing measure they'll keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of Jesus.
If we don't want to add goodness, brotherly kindness and godliness to our faith, then how are we going to be effective for the kingdom? How effective will we be if we have no self-control or knowledge? How bright will our light shine if there's no agape love?
Then Peter says that the one who doesn't add these things to their faith is visually impaired and has amnesia; spiritually speaking. Since you can't be nearsighted and blind at the same time, what does Peter mean?
Being near-sighted means you can't see far away. Therefore, this person is failing to see the future reward; the hope of the journey. He has lost his vision for sharing the gospel and is only living for this life; for this world.
He is blind to his own predicament; he doesn't realize that there's no neutral-if he's not focused on increasing these wonderful qualities in his life he'll slip back into the world.
And we see they've forgotten they have been cleansed from their sins. How can someone forget that? Well, it's not in the sense of completely forgetting they made a commitment to Jesus, but they will not keep it fresh in their memory what Jesus has done for them. They will forget that they gave their lives over to Jesus and that their lives are not their own anymore-they were bought at a price-Jesus paid for them with his blood; as Paul reminds us in 1st Cor. 6:19-20.
We take communion each Sunday to remember Jesus' sacrifice. If we start letting the old ways take over again then the joy we felt from becoming born again will dissipate. We'll forget that we have been cleansed from our past sins and having that clean slate will eventually become meaningless to us. We'll forget our purpose and we'll lose sight of God's wonderful plan. If we don't add these qualities to our faith and continue to do so we run the risk of becoming blind and forgetful to all the spiritual things.
That's why we need to be careful. We need to have assurance so we can confidently look forward to our rich welcome into the kingdom of God. This tells me that the more we are adding these things to our faith the more assurance we will have that we're doing God's will and that will bring satisfaction and joy.
When we know we're not doing anything with the gifts and opportunities God has given us it brings us down. None of us do it perfectly and if we have a "slow week" getting our faith additives on it doesn't mean we're failing the test, but we can't afford to start developing a pattern of neglect.
Don't lose your faith-add to it-multiply and increase in those wonderful qualities so you can finish strong and hear, 'well done, good and faithful servant-come and share your master's happiness'.
