Besides This, Give Diligence To Add To Your Faith

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: II Peter 1:5-9
Psalters: 318, 290, 36, 24
  1. The activity of adding.
    1. To “add” is to furnish or to supply.
      1. The “faith” God gifts to us is a living bond which connects the elect with Jesus (Who is life, John 11:25).
      2. He works on us as rational, moral creatures, as living children, not as stones or wood.
    2. The adding is to be done with “all diligence,” i.e., earnestness to accomplish, to do something with haste.
      1. This is a fervor which arises from being awed by God’s undeserved love.
      2. Diligence is moved by God’s command but especially by a returning love.
    3. Diligent adding makes faith fruitful.
  2. What is to be added to faith – as an outworking of the exercise of faith?
    1. “Virtue” is moral excellence.
    2. “Knowledge” of God, of Jesus, of what God has done, and of what God promises is to grow in amount and accuracy.
    3. “Temperance” is self-control of our natural desires and lusts.
    4. “Patience” is an enduring of difficulties so we do not despair.
    5. “Godliness” is a reverent, worshipful attitude and conduct.
    6. “ Brotherly kindness” (philadelphia) is a special kindness toward professing Christians.
    7. “Love” is the love which excels; a knowledge of ardent love which reflects God’s love to us.
  3. The urgent reason for our faith to be actively growing.
    1. To lack these seven fruits of faith is to be “blind” spiritually.
      1. Spiritual blindness is not seeing that we have been “purged from his own sins.”
      2. The redeemed ought not be spiritually “barren and unfruitful,” but fervently grateful as repeatedly remember God’s undeserved love.
    2. Rather our awareness of God’s grace and peace and power (which give us all things) should make us striving to abound in these additions every day.