Adding to Your Faith

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
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. 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.” (II Peter 1:13-18, ESV)

The above scripture has to be one of the most exciting in the entire Bible. Just think of it, God has invited us to become partakers of the divine nature. That means He wants us to become like Him. When we feel small and insignificant, we need to remember that God loves us so much that He invites us to be with Him forever with a nature like His. In another place, God speaks through the apostle Paul to tell us that “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7, ESV) This means that in Christ, we are sitting next to God in the heavenly places. This has to excite us. No other religion, no other god offers the kind of rewards that our God offers us. And I’ll bet you thought that being a Christian was just about being forgiven and that one day we get to go to heaven. Of course, those are the promises, too. But if you think that the Christian life is one of dreariness and hardship, holding on for dear life and then, if we are lucky, a trip to heaven, you need to rethink what God is calling you to be. Holy. Godly. Divine. Sitting next to Him. Not only in the future, right now!

In the second letter of Peter, the writer starts off with a list of “adds.” Isn’t it interesting, though, that he doesn’t go straight to the knowledge part? Before you become that Bible scholar that you think you should be, you need to hang out in the virtue area. We live in an age that is anything but virtuous. Those of us living in democratic countries have watched as what used to be called privileges have now become rights; we have seen law with virtue replaced with scorn for the law and nothing resembling real virtue. No longer is the criminal on trial, but the law is on trial. No lawyer has met a law that he didn’t despise and no criminal that he didn’t believe he could get off the hook with a bargain here or a deal there. Justice? The word is unknown to most victims of crime.

When you read the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, much of it appears like a court trial. God has brought suit against His people. He tells them in the 58th chapter that while they are going through all of the motions of religion, the fasting, the praying, the bowing, they are really practicing deceit before God. They think that by all of their religiosity they will be heard. But what does God say? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?” (Isaiah 58: 6-7, ESV) Virtue. Godliness. Holiness. Humility. Kindness. When we work toward being a virtuous person, God sees it. He gives us everything concerned with life and godliness. And the result? In Isaiah, He said He would hear their prayers. “Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. . .” (Isaiah 58:9, ESV) I hear people say, “I prayed and prayed and nothing happened.” Really? Could it possibly be that you are asking for yourself and not practicing the things that God calls the virtues? Are you tired of being a Christian because you spend your time trying to be religious rather than living to be like Jesus?
More on this next time. If we really want to be walking as people covered in the blood of Jesus, “incarnadine,” we need to remember that we have been called to die to self and live to Christ. Only then will others bask in the glow of the wonderful, powerful blood of Jesus.