More on 2 Peter’s description of God’s gifts to us—specifically the first three tools.

Foundationally, faith is the gift God gives us so we can believe:  Peter writes to "those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours….”

Then he commands us to add to our faith the other gifts in a specific order, and to do so with “every effort."

First, “..make every effort to add to your faith virtue….”  Virtue is basically agreeing with God, doing what He wants us to do. And it involves making up our minds ahead of time to obey. To give a couple of simple examples, I don’t wait until Sunday morning to decide to go to church or not; no, I make up my mind to just go every Sunday. Or I don’t wait until each  morning to decide to have a quiet time or not; I just make a decision to do it every day. This is true for every decision: not adultery, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, etc.

Then to virtue, we are to add knowledge. This is application of virtue, delving into the Word, reading, memorizing, meditating. Thus we can think God’s thoughts and know what He wants us to do. Without this knowledge we are left to flounder with our warped natural ideas.

Then to knowledge we are to add self-control. Simply put, this means doing what we know to be right. We now have the knowledge to know what is right. We don’t always want to do that, but acting out of virtue, and taking up and using self-control, we can overcome our negative natural desires and do what is right, good, godly.

Next comes endurance. This is next because even when we do the right thing, we may get flack. Share about Jesus and some will object. But we shouldn’t give up because of that opposition. We press on with endurance, which means “moving through with power.” (Hebrews 12:2) Jesus is our example:" fixing our eyes on Jesus” who “for the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” So we, too can endure as we take up His endurance.

More tomorrow.

Picture: endurance