2 Peter 1:8-11 “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Today's episode talks about why we should practice these qualities. It also talks about accepting forgiveness for our sins and remembering that we were cleansed from former sin. Jesus' sacrifice was enough for whatever we have done. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Am I Nearsighted and Blind?
2 Peter 1:8-11 “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Today is day three where we are talking about the same section of scripture. I didn’t intend to spend the whole week on this one section, but the more I read the more I liked it and when I started to talk about it there wasn’t enough time in one episode to cover all the important things to say. Today I will talk about 2 Peter 1:8-11 and then tomorrow I will finish this section off with 1 Peter 1:12-15. If you are tuning in today and you haven’t listened to the rest of the week, I would suggest you go back and listen to Monday’s and Tuesdays episodes because then you will have a little more context.
To give you a quick summary of the previous verses, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through His divine power. Then Peter tells us we need to supplement our faith with list of qualities, these are listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7 which says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” Right after this is where today’s verse picks up.
Today’s verse begins with “For these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Peter is telling us that these qualities are ours if we want them, and that they are increasing. Peter is calling us to do all we can to add these virtues into our daily lives. He knows we won’t do it perfectly and that is ok, we don’t need to be perfect, we just need to do our best. Peter is telling us that these qualities will keep us from being ineffective and unfruitful in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I think what we have learned over these past two days is that God has given us all we need and yet He doesn’t want us to just sit back and rely on Him to do everything. The article we have been using this week talks about this sort of tension. We don’t grown on our own, we grow by relying on the resources that God makes available to us and yet we also don’t just sit back and do nothing. We need to do all we can to add virtue into our lives, and to stake small steps forward to grow. He goes on to say that we grow by relying on Jesus and by working hard. It is not one or the other. Either we do it ourselves or we rely on Jesus. We can do both, rely on Jesus and at the same time, we keep moving forward.
The next line says, “For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” This is an interesting way to look at this as we can all blind to this at times. I think we have all forgotten at some point that we were cleansed from our former sin. Or maybe we didn’t forget, maybe we just find it hard to believe. I mean don’t we all have some sins that we struggle to believe God will forgive? We know He can do anything and yet we still feel like this thing we did was too bad to be forgiven. Actually what just popped into my mind when I was writing that is not that the sin won’t be forgiven, it’s more that we question our worthiness of being forgiven. We don’t feel like we deserve to be forgiven. When we do this though we are saying that we are not sure that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was enough. Jesus died on the cross for our sins, all of our sins. His sacrifice was enough to cover whatever we have done. It is not a question of whether we worthy of His forgiveness or not. We certainly are not and yet Jesus died for us anyway. He died for our sins even though we were still sinners. That just amazes me. I feel like if it were me I would want the people to get it together before I sacrificed for them. I would want some sort of assurance that this was not going to happen again, and yet Jesus freely chose to die for us even though he knew we were not done sinning yet, not by a long shot.
The verse ends with, “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” Wow, that seems like a pretty big statement Peter just made. “If you practice these qualities you will never fall.” Imagine what it would be like to never fall? I have no idea if that is even possible and yet I think striving to practice these qualities is definitely worth the possibility of never falling. Next he says, “For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Yes please! I would literally like nothing more than to be provided an entrance into the eternal kingdom of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Can you imagine spending eternity with Jesus, that would be so amazing. The Holy Spirit seems to be reminding me that we don’t earn our way into heaven. It is not as if these qualities are a checklist and if we do them, we get to go to heaven and if we don’t, or if we miss one then we don’t get to go to heaven.
These qualities are ways that we can grow closer to God, we can grow in our knowledge of God. They will help change us and change our hearts. When we begin to practice these qualities they will help strengthen us and help us to do the right thing more and the wrong thing less. This is what happens when we grow closer to God, we automatically want to be better people, we automatically want to sin less. Unfortunately growing closer to God doesn’t mean we will never sin again, however, it does make us want to sin less. The analogy that is coming to mind is when you have a teacher in school that you really like versus one you don’t know. If you don’t really know a teacher, if you don’t have a bond with that teacher, you don’t really feel an obligation to do any work or to go above and beyond for them. You probably aren’t volunteering much in class and the class participation isn’t great. However, if you really like your teacher, if you know them well and you both have a relationship, then you go out of your way to help that teacher. You raise your hand, you offer to help out in class, you do the work that is assigned. This is because you don’t want to let that teacher down, you don’t want to do anything to break that connection you both have.
This is the same with God. Once you have a personal connection with Him, once you feel close to Him, you don’t want to do anything to mess that up. You find yourself wanting to pray more, even when prayer used to be a struggle. You find yourself wanting to spend time with Him. I think this might be why Peter is telling us to practice these qualities, they change us and they bring us closer to God.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to want to be close to you. You are calling us to come closer, please open our ears and let us hear that call. Lord, help us to accept your forgiveness of our sins and be open to your love. Give us a desire in our hearts to practice these qualities and also the strength and persistence to keep practicing them, even when it’s hard. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. This week we have been focusing on this one section of 2 Peter 1. Tomorrow I will finish up with this section. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Article: Created To Grow by Daryl Dash