Automatic Growth

Believers are partakers of God's divine nature, His holiness. He has given us everything needed to be and live godly and victoriously in every situation by His divine power. But He will not give us good character or make us live rightly; we must diligently work at these to grow spiritually. Growth of any kind DOES NOT automatically happen. Peter listed seven qualities we should nourish our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ with: virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity.

Virtue, or moral excellence is fulfilling your life’s purpose, producing qualities that make you more like Jesus. One such quality is knowledge, a growing discernment of God’s will that distinguishes evil and good. In that knowledge, we must practice temperance or self-control. Self-discipline, will not allow, will guard against any evil inclination or evil desire to overtake us. In exercising self-control, patience, the ability to endure difficult circumstances grows. We would not learn perseverance without experiencing life’s pressures and problems. Although the unsaved can show amazing self-control and endurance, the virtues point to them, not God. But God receives praise and glory when the nature of His Son is seen through His children’s lives. Godliness, or Godlikeness, describes the person who is right with God, one who seeks to do God’s will and the welfare of others. Lastly, Peter listed two kinds of love: Brotherly kindness is a genuine love for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, evidence we are born of God (1 John 5:1–2); charity is a love for all of humanity, despite our differences.

“For if these things be in you, they make you that ye shall never be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:8). Over and over God gives grace and peace to us who have a genuine knowledge of Him and Jesus, our Lord (v. 2).