Ephesians 1.3-6
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…”
Yesterday we looked at Ephesians 1:3 where Paul writes that God has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” Another scripture which teaches the same truth is 2 Peter 1.3: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” In both places the bible tells us that God has given us incredible blessings and resources.
What is helpful about the 2 Peter passage is that it goes on to describe what we need to do in order to fully experience and utilize the blessings that the Lord has given to us.
“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. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” (2 Peter 1.5-9)
This is an enormously important passage. It communicates fundamental principles about spiritual growth that every Christian needs to understand. The message is that we must take disciplined action in order to experience and utilize the blessings that we have in Christ. The passage also warns that if we do not make the effort and if we do not take disciplined action, we will not experience the fullness of God’s blessings in our life.
To better understand what this passage teaches, I have restated the 2 Peter passage and included explanations in brackets.
“For this very reason, make every effort [work very hard] to supplement your faith with virtue [build specific character attributes into your life], and virtue with knowledge [understand what those virtues are and why they are important], and knowledge with self-control [discipline yourself to practice the virtues in response to specific situations], and self-control with steadfastness [do this repeatedly over time], and steadfastness with godliness [the purpose is to display fruit that glorifies God], and godliness with brotherly affection [do this in fellowship and community with others], and brotherly affection with love [your efforts should be motivated by agape love for God & others].
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 [if you don’t fully engage in working hard to grow spiritually, you will not be effective for the Kingdom]. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind [if you are not actively building these attributes into your life, you are monumentally foolish], having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins [and you don’t understand the reason why God saved you].
I love this passage because it describes real spiritual growth in the real world. It tells us with exceptional clarity that we are responsible for building these specific attributes and qualities into our life.
Peter tells us in this passage that faith-driven effort is very much a part of the Christian faith. Peter says that if you don’t put forth effort and work hard to develop yourself in Christ, you “are shortsighted and blind” and have “forgotten that you have been cleansed from you old sins.” Indeed, we work hard at building discipline into our lives because we trust in Christ!
Peter paints a crystal clear picture of the process of spiritual growth. We must build specific virtues (moral excellence) into our life by first understanding what those virtues are and why they are important (knowledge), and then choosing to practice them (self-control) repeatedly over time (patient endurance). This is something we must choose to do through effort and discipline. God does not—will not—do it for us.
Yet we cannot do it without a close, intimate relationship with God. The power to do this comes from the Lord. We abide in him and we strive. We have faith in Jesus and we work. We trust in the power of the Spirit and we labor.
If you are not making every effort, you are making a mistake. The message of scripture is this: Here is what God has done, and here is what you must do. Because we believe in Jesus, and because he has blessed us so richly, we have a lot of work to do.
Trust God and do the work.
