Two Scary Words That Could Change Your Life Forever - 2 Peter 1:8 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.

Introduction: When Life Is Empty

In today’s passage, Peter uses two piercing, terrifying words: unproductive and unfruitful.

2 Peter 1:8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being unproductive and unfruitful

The word unproductive is translated “useless” in James 2:20.

James 2:20 … faith without deeds is useless.

It doesn’t accomplish anything. Peter is warning us against a useless, empty, unproductive life.

Then he explains how to avoid that fate and have a life full of meaning and purpose, which is a wonderful promise, because a meaningless life a horrible fate. I don’t know if that would qualify as a fate worse than death, but it’s a fate very similar to death.

God Designed Us to Crave Productivity

Being useless grates against the human soul. A cow standing around all day doesn’t mind being useless. Chickens don’t worry about meaning in life. Your dog doesn’t have a midlife crisis. But you’re different. God made mankind in his image and then immediately assigned us the task of tending and ruling over the creation. It’s our job to create culture and run this world, that’s deep in our bones, and we must do it or we’ll go insane. We must have purposeful, impactful lives.

When you’re young, you don’t worry too much about what you’ve accomplished in life, but that’s only because it seems like you’ve got plenty of time to make something of your life. You don’t really have your act together yet, but you’re sure that one of these days you’re going to knock it out of the park. The term “mid-life crisis” was coined to describe that point in life where you finally realize, “I’m never hitting anything out of any park. I’m already past my prime and I’ve never even hit a double. In fact, I’m not even sure if I’m playing the right sport.”

A mom sees her empty nest and thinks, “Do I even matter anymore? What’s the point of my life now?”

A man plateaus in his unimpressive career, his wife pretty much has everything in hand at home, no one cares about his opinions, no one comes to him for anything and he thinks, “I could disappear off the face of the earth and it wouldn’t really disrupt anything.”

Somewhere along the line your life became more about coping than calling. You’re showing up every day, taking care of all your stuff, but nothing in your life is important enough to make you run hard. And the reason that is so painful is that God created us for productivity, and every human feels it.

And if you doubt that, just go to a bookstore. How many books do you think were published in the last 5 years on that topic—how to be more productive? Between 30 and 50 thousand new books published on that topic just in the past 5 years. People spend decades trying to get to retirement, and then when they retire, if they don’t find something productive to do, they end up going back to work. No matter how lazy we get, something deep inside us craves productivity and fruitfulness and meaning in life.

Not all Work Is Fulfilling

Does that mean everyone with a job is fulfilled? No. You often hear that work gives meaning to life, but that’s not automatically true. If you work really hard at something and it ends up being a total waste of time and accomplishes nothing, that drains life of meaning.

Think of how much it bothers you when you work hard at something and it ends up accomplishing nothing. If someone makes a mess on the floor before you sweep, you can live with that. But if they do it right after you sweep, so that all the work you just did gets immediately undone, it bugs you because it makes the work you just did meaningless.

Did you ever study the wrong chapter in school? Nothing is more aggravating to a student than learning something he didn’t have to learn. All that wasted effort.

Have you ever explained something or told a long story to someone on the phone only to find out they lost connection and didn’t get any of what you said? All that talking for nothing.

Those are little examples. But if the bigger things in your life are futile, that’s when life loses meaning. When you look back on your life and see wasted years, wasted decades, that can put you in depression. And Peter is warning us here that that can happen to Christians. Even as a Christian, your life can become pointless and ineffective and indolent—not because you don’t care, but because you’ve lost touch with something vital.