2Peter 1: 5-8 (c) - Steadfastness and Godliness

2Peter 1:5-8

5-8 For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.


Virtue...knowledge...self-control...


STEADFASTNESS

Self-control by itself is not enough. We may all exhibit a degree of self-control in one area or another, or for a period of time - but we must be sure that this is not mere human effort. By human effort we can cork up anger and feel very self-righteous about it. We can suppress sins of the mind and body like addictive smoking, pornography, excessive drinking. We can squelch the lust of the mind, the unbridled tongue, the jealous thought, the hateful hope. But if it is we who are doing it then the top will blow off sooner or later. Like the man who quit smoking for years and upon lighting a single cigarette went right back to the habit, only now smoked 2 packs a day instead of one.

Biblical self-control is not what the world thinks of as self-control. Worldly self-control is using the power of the human will to overcome. Biblical self-control is submitting the will to God. If you don’t understand the distinction then I urge you to pray for light. If you are walking in the Spirit then you know the difference already. One redounds to human credit and relies upon the carnal nature to suppress the carnal nature. But a house divided against itself cannot stand. The other relies upon the power of God to exhibit the life of Christ in him. The strong man (Christ) has first come in and overpowered the man of the house so that he can despoil his goods.

We fool ourselves all the time. The unsaved religionists do it by professing faith while inwardly relying upon themselves. Believers do it by failing to trust God in all things, and by having to learn trust in God even though God has proven Himself over and over as worthy of that trust. We are basically unbelieving people at heart, but the grace of God is at work in us.

So, adding steadfastness to self-control is the means by which the true nature of the controlling power in us is exhibited to us and to our brothers. If we are steadfast in virtue, increasing in knowledge without wavering, and we are self-controlled as a way of life, demonstrated over time - then we are encouraged ourselves and we are an encouragement to others. It is the proof of the grace and power of God at work in us. We understand Who it is that is making us to stand and to grow, and so do other believers - and all the glory goes to God. Don’t settle for anything less. Don’t fool yourself into mistaking your own efforts to suppress your old nature with the true grace and power of your redeeming Lord, at whose feet you have laid your old nature, knowing that nothing springing from it is of any avail whatsoever.

Steadfastness is a form of "proof" and the fact that the Bible so often warns against putting younger men or recent converts in positions of responsibility is itself a warning that outward virtue, knowledge and self-control can be mistaken for the real thing until they have been evidenced for a long period in a person.

GODLINESS

Piety, holiness, reverent respect. These are the meanings of the Greek word eusebeia. Reverent respect for God, for God’s people (on account of God) and for God’s creatures comes upon the understanding that steadfastness brings. When we know that it is God that is making us to stand through faith - when we see that it is His power that we abide in - when we begin to abandon all hope and faith in ourselves, in the old carnal nature and in all other men - then we start to enter into true creaturehood in the hands of omnipotent God, and we begin to find that reverent fear which is the beginning of wisdom.

Be still, and know that He is God. It is not the whole story. God is omnipotent and He is Sovereign, but it is not the whole story. It is, however, where the whole story begins. God is God and we are not. To get this simple truth into the depraved hearts of fallen men took nothing less than the eternal Son’s incarnation, death and resurrection. Both His death and His life. When He died, we died with Him. When He rose, we rose in Him. And the life we now life we live by the faith of the Son of God. O that the truth would dawn in my own heart with all the brightness of the rising of the Day Star! O that I would let God be God with my every thought and word and inclination and deed!

But I do not. I need grace and mercy even for this. Though I have all that pertains to life and godliness in Christ Jesus, and though I must move in it, apprehend it, give myself to it, claim it as my own - yet I do not. I need to hear that truth preached because it is in the hearing that my own inadequacy, my impotency, my unwillingness, my unbelief, my inertia are all confronted with the truth. It is in hearing of it that I am brought to understand that only Christ in me can overcome. Christian heart-life is a paradox. It is contrary to the carnal nature and its understanding. In order to live I must die. In order that the life of Christ may increase in me, my own life must decrease.

Only when I am dead am I truly alive because Life Himself lives in me. I know this, as do all Christians, and yet I draw a curtain over all that it implies. I speak to it and then act contrarily. I say that rivers of living water will flow out of my belly if I receive drink from Christ, and then I live as though I was in control. I regulate my spirituality. I am afraid to vacate my hovel so that the King may move in and act like the King that He is.

Godliness can come only from God. It cannot come from God on my terms, or me helping, or with my fingers in the pie. It isn’t a negotiation worked out between two equal parties and then implemented. It isn’t me and God hashing it all out with a resulting compromise of both views. It is an all-or-nothing thing. Either God is in me to do His will and I am yielded to that, or I am doing my own. He won’t help me with following my own will. He’s not interested in that. "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That is the key to godliness. And it must be God in us doing it while we are continually and consciously acknowledging that fact.

When we are doing God’s will (it’s called obedience) then God is being seen in us, we are abiding in His perfect love and will, and all of our actions, thoughts and words will be godly - they will be true and loving and will exhibit all the fruit of the Holy Spirit Who is in us to empower and to move them in us. They will be the manifestation of the character of God because we are displaying the Christ that is in us. That is what we were made and saved for - to magnify God by being the glorified objects of His abiding grace and love.