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Keep Increasing

I received the following comment from a friend on 2 Peter chapter 1: "Dear Jim, I’ve read and reread the passage in 2 Peter, but I find myself being overwhelmed because the goal is so high—I’ll never reach it. - Your Friend."

Dear Friend,

You commented about the impossibility of the passage in 2 Peter:

“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, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. 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” (2 Pet. 1:5-8).

Really it is not impossible. It just says add to your faith these things, and if you have them, add in increasing majority. In other words, it doesn’t say that if you have them in some absolute form—just if they are always increasing, you are always adding. So as long as you are growing you will never be ineffective or unfruitful. It is not speaking of reaching some absolute portion of each of these characteristics. No, you just add and keep increasing.

I have been doing quite a bit of thinking about obedience and the relationship in the Scriptures between obedience and love, obedience and faith, and the non-relationship between obedience and works. Obedience is much more closely related to love and faith than it is to any sort of works righteousness. So as you think in terms of love for God, express it in obedience, and as you think in terms of faith toward God, express it in terms of obedience.

In His Love,

Jim Wilson


This post coordinates with today's reading in the To the Word! Bible Reading Challenge. If you are not in a daily reading plan, please join us at totheword.com. We would love to have you reading with us.

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