FRIDAY 18th
2 Peter 1:5–7
‘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.’
Those of us who know the Bible reasonably well will remember that there is another list of qualities mentioned in Scripture that should be evident in the life of the Christian, we know them as the fruit of the Spirit and they overlap with those we have read about in our text, and they are listed for us in Galatians 5:22-23, ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.’
To allow these qualities to be in our lives, we need to know what it is to set our minds on the things of the Spirit, ‘For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.’ Romans 8:5.
As God’s children we are called to be different, but sometimes it is not as easy as it sounds, we are still living in a fallen world, we are still tempted and can so easily be overcome by temptation, so what can we do? Well we heed the Word of God, we seek to live according to the desires of the Spirit rather than that of the flesh, and we accept what God offers to us, going back to verse 3 in 2 Peter 1, which says ‘His divine power which has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness’, in other words can I say respectfully, we come to God’s supplement store, it is not a physical health store, rather instead it is a spiritual health store, and he encourages us to take and to add to our faith these supplements or qualities, those listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7 and also in Galatians 5, and as we do we will begin to understand what it is to be putting off the old self and putting on the new, our lives will shine as godly examples in this godless generation in which we live and we will begin to live effectively.