WEDNESDAY 23rd
2 Peter 1:5
‘For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue’.
‘Supplement your faith with virtue’ virtue is as the NIV puts it is the quality of goodness. To supplement our faith with goodness means for the believer to aim for moral excellence. The NLT puts it this way, ‘Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence’. We almost need to say no more, nothing but excellence will do in our morality as believers.
The original Greek meaning is to do with being found without reproach, blameless. So adding virtue as a quality or supplement to our faith means that we then seek to live life with an appropriate awareness of what is right and commendable behaviour. It includes both our knowing what is morally right and to our doing what is morally right. It is to do with our actions, attitude, behaviour and response to everything that require us to make right and proper choices and decisions. This is in every area of life such as ethics, morality, relationships at work and home and in business, etc. virtue is linked with integrity and honesty in all things. We know that we will never reach perfection in this life, but we should seek to live as morally upright, to excel in virtue, goodness, or with moral excellence.
To help us in this area, Paul encourages us in this way, ‘Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things’, Philippians 4:8.
We need to have the desire to learn to live according to the standard God has set and not by the standard the world follows, we make right or righteous choices, we learn to be determined not to compromise our faith by becoming attached to or unequally yoked to anything that will dishonour our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We learn to WALK according to the way of the Spirit and the will of God. We fix our eyes on the end goal – ‘the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus’.
This way not only the things of this world will lose their attraction, but the ways of the world will become alien to us as we will seek to only live for the glory of God, so that in time we show as Peter says in his first epistle (NLT) ‘You can show others the goodness of God’ (2:9) How? Well one way is by living as examples, reflecting the virtue, goodness, moral excellence of God. Our target should be that when unbelievers look at us they will say as Pilate said about Jesus, ‘I find no fault in him’ it’s a tall order, and yes, we will never reach moral perfection this side of eternity but we can aim for it.