The Devotional – Search the Scriptures – 257


The Devotional – Search the Scriptures – 257

Christ’s Example to Be Followed

2 Peter 1:5-11 – Fruitful Growth in the Faith
But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.


Jesus, the Christ, God’s Messiah
If you remember when we began to look into the epistles of the apostle Peter, we began with 1 Corinthians 13, the entire chapter. We looked at the all-important roll of, ‘faith, hope, and love’ and how these gifts of God the Holy Spirit function in our everyday life as we walk about with one another. If we are not using the gifts of God, then we are not abiding or building up our faith in God’s promises either. It takes diligence to experience God’s Will, sadly we miss the mark of being diligent since we willingly disconnect our spiritual walk with the LORD and continue to harden our hearts to the promise of abundant Glory. A lack of Diligence to walk by faith, hope, and love; open the door for us to walk away from the promises of God. This must be very unpleasant for our Father as He sees us better than we see ourselves.

Virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance (patience), godliness, brotherly kindness, and love! All of these describe a child of God who is walking in the Spiritual control of God the Holy Spirit in the midst of everyday life. Does this describe you? If not, we have a serious but solvable problem, most likely we desire to do better, but a solvable problem and a desire to do better are mere words that have little or no power without submitting to the Will of God to be DILIGENT to the calling and election of God in our lives. How is it that we know from scripture that we live in the last hour, (1 John 2:18 – Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour).

Peter is very sober-minded about a fruitful life for those who are reading his epistles. The question in my mind is, are we sober-minded to be diligent, to hear and apply obedience to what he is saying. He is not ‘negligent’ to remind us always of these things. We are established in this Truth, yet we need to be reminded, simply because we are not as ‘diligent’ as God would have us to be, we are the ‘negligent ones’. Saying this, there is no preaching or teaching or any exhortation that will do the work of diligence unless we submit to God the Holy Spirit who is always willing to guide us, see; John 16:13.

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