“In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.”
2 Peter 1:5-7 NLT
So we have “great and precious promises” and “divine power”. And through all God’s resources, we live a Godly life as we come to know Him more and more. It gets better – we have the opportunity to “share His divine nature” and “escape the world’s corruption” as we embrace all that God has for us.
Peter makes an assumption that his audience has faith and he has just been writing about “God’s promises”, faith-building pearls of God’s provision that we can find scattered throughout the Bible. The faith of his readers would have been strong because choosing to live God’s way was not an easy option in that culture. But to develop a siege mentality was the wrong response to the persecution they suffered. Peter encouraged them to find our more about God and His promises, and then do something with it. “Moral excellence”, or, as we find in other translations, “virtue” or “goodness”, must be an outworking, with “every effort”, of their faith. In their society, evil and sinful practices predominated, much as today. There was no morality standard that conformed to what God had in mind when He created human beings. Typically, we read the extent of the problem in Genesis 6:5, “The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil“. We know that God eliminated that generation with the Flood, but the problem didn’t go away. There was a conversation between Abraham and the Lord about Sodom and we read in Genesis 18:20-21, “So the Lord told Abraham, “I have heard a great outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, because their sin is so flagrant. I am going down to see if their actions are as wicked as I have heard. If not, I want to know””. And we know what happened next.
In our societies today we see the consequences of immorality working out, for example, on the battlefields, in abortion clinics and law courts. We see a society tearing itself apart in pursuit of hedonistic and wicked practices, some so vile that they don’t bear repeating. But we believers know what “moral excellence” means, because God has told us all about behaviour and morality through His Word, the Bible. And Jesus taught, as we read in Matthew 5:14-16, “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father“. The “moral excellence” Peter was writing about was, I believe, something that shows the world around us what true morality is all about. The Bible shows us the way to live God’s way, and there are very few situations we are likely to meet in society today that haven’t been covered by an appropriate verse or passage of Scripture.
Living a moral life isn’t just following a list of do’s and don’ts. It is a lifestyle that will positively impact those around us. That takes effort, hence Peter’s exhortation to “supplement” our faith. So today, as we look around us at our neighbours and friends, we pray for opportunities to work out “moral excellence” in a way that helps them see God.
Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word and the wisdom it contains, all to bring us closer to You. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 