Kootenai Church Morning Worship

I'm going to begin reading at verse 5. We'll read through the end of verse 11.
5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge,
6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,
7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.
8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.
10 Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;
11 for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. (2 Pet. 1:5–11 NASB)
And may God bless the reading of His Word.
I am somebody who likes lists, all kinds of lists. I like shopping lists, packing lists, to-do lists, reminder lists, playlists, wish lists, contact lists, task lists, bucket lists, booklists, movie lists, guest lists, and idea lists. And what I just gave you was a list of my lists. And for somebody like me who loves lists, technology makes list keeping and list management an absolute dream because I can have all of my lists—almost saying lisps, but those are different than lists—I can have all of my lists with me on my phone everywhere I go, and I can add to them and take off of them and check them off kind of, without a pencil.
And there's some satisfaction in watching things that are on one of my lists sort of disappear and go away, or hearing the bing! that goes with the accomplishment of the task. There's a sense in which it almost feels like when you accomplish something off the list and you click on the list and it goes away, that you've done it twice. Do you have that sensation? Like you do it and you think, OK, I'm done with the task, but then I get to take it off my list. You click it and it goes away, and it feels like I just did the whole thing all over again. So it's double satisfaction. In fact, and this has to be a condition of some sort, but there are times when I will take something that I have just accomplished and add it to one of my lists, because I forgot to put it on there, just so I can have the joy of checking it off the list and feeling the satisfaction of watching it disappear off my list.
We have a list here in 2 Peter 1, but it's not like a to-do list. It's a list of virtues, character qualities, things that should characterize the believer. This is a different kind of list. This is not a checklist where you start at the top and you walk through and you check one off and you watch it disappear and then move on to the next one and then get to the end and have that sense of satisfaction that I have accomplished everything that's on the list. This is not one of those kinds of lists. This is more a list of something that is intended to be ever before us, always in front of us, always in our minds, always running through our hearts, something that we come back to time and again to evaluate ourselves, to check ourselves, an inventory we return to time and again as a reminder of the fruit of genuine, saving, God-given faith.
This list is a list of things toward which we should strive, applying all diligence, giving every effort, making every effort to see that these things are qualities in our faith, in our lives. These things on this list, a redeemed person should grow in them, all of them, continually, progressively, year by year. In fact, this is a checklist of things that should always be increasingly characteristic of the life and the character of a believer. Not things that we check off, but things that we check ourselves next to, to come back to and say, “OK, last year I was kind of at this point in this virtue and now I have seen that I have progressed” or “I sort of have not been doing well in this area and I need to apply all diligence to make sure that this begins to characterize me more from here on out.”
We looked briefly last week at this whole list in its totality. We kind of looked at Peter's command to us to supply these things and to make all diligence in making these things part of our lives. We noticed how grace comes first. First, in verses 1–2 and 3–4, we are given everything we need for life and for godliness. And having been supplied everything we need, Peter then turns around in verse 5 and says therefore, in light of that, for this reason—that you have been given everything that you need—here is how a genuine believer responds to that. You make all diligence to supply these things in this faith that you have been given that he just talked about in verse 1.
So we are then, as recipients of grace, enabled to strive and to work, to work out our salvation, not working for our salvation, to labor in and by that grace, striving after holiness and sanctification because we are assured that we have been provided in salvation everything we need to endeavor to do this. And if we don't give all diligence in it, then we're not going to make any progress in these things. In other words, we don't sit back and just say, “Well, Lord, make this happen to me,” and do nothing. But instead, synergistically, we are called to work with the Holy Spirit by the Word of God in the power and the grace that He has given to us to pursue these qualities.
And one final thing that we considered last week was how all of these virtues, all eight of them there, how they all go together. They are present in the life of a believer in one measure or another, and they are linked together like a chain. They grow together. They grow with each other, each one contributing to the growth and characterizing the other virtues. And here are our eight virtues: faith, moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. Those are the eight virtues you see listed in verses 5, 6, and 7.
We're going to take four of them at a time. We'll take four of them today. And then next week, we'll jump into and look at the last four. So today, we're going to look at faith, moral excellence, knowledge, and self-control. We’re just going to go through and talk about how these are related to one another, what they mean, what they would have meant to the ancients, what the language of it means, and what this looks like in the life of a believer.
So first up is faith. Look at verse 5: “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence.” I've included faith here as a virtue because it is listed in Galatians 5:22 as one of the fruits of the Spirit. And it's the same word. Whether it's translated as “faith” or “faithfulness,” it's the same word. So that word can be used to describe the faith, the confident trust, that we place in God. It can also be used to describe the outworking of that, which is our individual faithfulness and steadfastness in that faith.
So it is a virtue. It is something that is granted to us, this belief, faith. You see that in verse 1, that we have received this faith. But it is also something that we cultivate and add to and build upon. We saw first of all, in verse 1, that this is a faith that we have received. Look at what Peter says in verse 1: “To those who have received the same kind of faith as ours.” There he describes a faith that brings the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Believers are those who have received this faith, and we have to receive it, and we have to be granted this and given this by a sovereign and gracious act of God because we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And that faith that God grants to us is a faith that brings the righteousness of Jesus Christ, a saving faith that redeems sinners and supplies us with everything we need for life and for godliness. This is the faith which we have been saved with, this is the faith that has supplied us with everything that we need for our sanctification, and this is a faith that secures us everlastingly all the way through to God's eternal kingdom.
So faith is the foundation upon which all of these other virtues are built. And faith is at the head of the list for a very important reason. Peter, when he is giving this list of virtues, places faith at the top of it, and by putting faith at the top of it, he gives a distinctly Christian flavor to every other virtue in the list. Ancient moral philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle and others would have had similar lists of virtues, and Peter is not simply adopting them and saying, “Hey, look at this pagan moral philosopher who also talked about virtues and values and honor and dignity, etc. Adopt these into your life.” Peter begins with faith because in Peter's mind, all of these virtues, if they're not rooted and grounded in faith, are merely external conformity to some man-made standard.
So pagans can look at men and say it is better when men are virtuous, when they are honorable, when they have integrity, when they are dignified, when they have knowledge, when they have wisdom, when they have self-control, etc. Any pagan can recognize that. But the Christian looks at it and says ultimately those values and virtues only glorify Jesus Christ when they are wrought in the heart of a believer who grounds those things in his faith and does those things because they please and glorify his King and because it conforms him to the image of Christ.
A pagan can say life will be better if you're honest. Life will be better if you're courageous. Life will be better if you're dignified. Life will be better if you exercise self-control. And that's true to an extent, but only a Christian who begins with faith can say not that your life will be better but God will be glorified and there will be a reward for you if these things characterize you. If they don't, you are short-sighted and blind, having forgotten your former purification from sins, Peter says in verses 8–11, but if they are yours and you are diligent in these things, then that is the means by which that entrance into the kingdom is supplied to you. There is a reward for that in the heart of a believer.
So a believer approaches this list not because it benefits us. It does. Life is better when it is lived God's way. But a believer approaches this and does these things not because he benefits from it but because he wants to please his King. He wants to be like Christ. And that is what motivates the believer to pursue these things.
Faith, the word that is used here for faith, which is also translated as “faithfulness” in Galatians, means a trust or dependence or a confidence in God when it is used of our submission to God and our trust and confidence in God, believing that what God has said is true. It’s defined in Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The believer is promised things that are yet unseen, and he is convinced that it is true. Remember our study in Hebrews 11? The believer hears of a promise from God or something that God has said, and though it has not been realized yet, the believer is absolutely certain that it will come to pass. That's what faith is. All the faithful man needs, all the man of faith or the woman of faith needs, is that God has said it, and that is enough to believe with utter confidence and assurance that it will indeed come to pass. It must come to pass because God has promised it.
We trust and believe things that we have never seen. We trust in a God we have never seen to save us from a wrath we have never experienced by the work of a Man we have never met, Jesus Christ. But we are confident that two thousand years ago He did something that we did not witness, and that that doing and His dying has secured for us a salvation that we cannot touch and we cannot see and we cannot hear, and that through His death and His burial and resurrection He has provided sufficient payment, a payment that we have never seen—we have never witnessed it—but a payment that is sufficient to pay the price for all of our sin. And He has promised to give us a righteousness and to transact that righteousness to our account, something we have never witnessed, and to do all of that on the basis of simple trust. And we accept all of that on the two-thousand-year-old testimony of men we have never met. That is faith. It is the assurance of things that we hope for. It is the absolute confidence in things that we have not seen.
And by the way, the absurdity—in the world sense, the way the world would describe it—the absurdity of everything I have just described to you is why that faith and that confidence is a gift from God. Because that is foolishness to the unbeliever, to embrace all of that. Foolishness to the unbeliever. But the one in whom God is working for salvation hears that and says, “Yeah, I believe every word of what these men wrote, and I am banking my eternal soul on it.” That is faith. That faith is the foundation upon which we build all these other virtues.
What is the fruit of that faith? There must be a fruit of it. In the book of Hebrews 11, at the end of that chapter—he defines faith at the beginning, but then at the end of the chapter he says those who had that faith
33 conquered kingdoms, performed righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions,
34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong from weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. . . .
36 [They] experienced mockings and floggings [and scourgings], yes, also chains and imprisonment.
37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, mistreated
38 (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in desolate places and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. (Heb. 11:33–34, 36–38 LSB)
What was the evidence of their faith? Is the evidence of your faith that you go to church, that you're baptized, that you're a member of a church, that you partake of communion, that you show up here once a week? You can be a pagan and do all of those things. You can be as lost as a dog in tall grass and do everything that I just told you, with no actual genuine faith at all.
So the apostles command us to test ourselves (2 Cor. 13:5) “to see if you are in the faith.” “Examine yourselves!” Paul says. “Or do you not recognize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” (v. 5) That was a warning to the church. That was a warning to believers. Paul said you need to examine yourself to see if you are in the faith. Because if your relationship with Jesus has not produced the fruits of repentance, a changed heart, a changed life, a different orientation toward sin, holy desires and affections, a change of loves, a change of desires, a change of lifestyle, a change of mind, if your faith in Jesus has not produced any of that, your faith in Jesus is not a saving faith. It's an unbelieving faith.
Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (NKJV). If you're not new, you're not in Christ. That's it. There are two groups, those who have been made new and those who are still outside of Jesus Christ. And do not deceive yourself into thinking that if you have not been made new, that you can still be in Christ. To be in Christ is to be made new.
This is what Peter is talking about. Look down at verse 10 in our chapter:
10 Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble;
11 for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. (2 Pet. 1:10–11 NASB)
Peter says make your calling—that is, make your calling to Christ and His choosing of you—certain. How can you be certain of it? Do these qualities evidence themselves in your life? Or do you pretend to be a believer while all the time not practicing any of these virtues? Jesus warned about a group of people who would say to Him, “Lord, Lord, did we not do all of these things, cast out demons, heal the sick, sing praises to Your name? Did we not do these things?” And Jesus will say to them, “Depart from Me. I never knew you, you who practice lawlessness.” Because while that group of people professed to know Him with their mouths, they never actually did anything but lawlessness.
There are people who are genuinely saved who wrestle with their assurance of salvation. They overly examine themselves, wondering constantly—because they sin, because they have to fight against sin—if they are truly and genuinely saved. Even though they pursue holiness and draw near, they lack assurance. And I would say that they needlessly question their salvation. That is a tragedy. But equally tragic is the one who never examines themselves and either thinks they are saved or pretends to be saved only to cover up all of their iniquity and their sin. The first over-examines himself and the other never examines himself, and both of those are tragedies.
So, Peter says, this genuine faith will produce these qualities, this godliness. Upon our faith, we supply the second one, which is moral excellence. Moral excellence. Look at verse 5: “In your faith supply moral excellence.” The LSB and the NASB translate it as “moral excellence.” The ESV, the King James, and the New King James call it “virtue.” And the NIV translates it as “goodness.” And I think you will see that the word goodness there is a little bit of a weak translation. Virtue is better. It is difficult to capture exactly everything that this singular Greek word means. The word is arete. It was common outside the New Testament. It is actually only used five times in the New Testament, four times by Peter and once by Paul. It means a virtue or a valor or a moral heroism.
Now let me describe this word to you. You can see how robust of a word this is to try and capture in even a word or a couple of words. It describes a moral virtuousness, that which is excellent, noble, inherently good and outstanding. There is an element of courageous virtue in it. This moral excellence has an element of courage in it as well—that is, doing that which is good and being that which is good and needing the courage to do it. It speaks of an excellence of achievement or a heroism or valor, the courageous accomplishment of a noble or virtuous or valorous deed.
So you can see that goodness is kind of a bit weak. Good is what you are at Walmart when you take something off the top shelf to hand to somebody who’s short that is next to you there. That's good. Good is what you do when you show up at the same time at the four-way stop with somebody on the other side and you kind of wave somebody through and you let them have the right of way. That's good.
But this word is far more profound than that. This word describes the eminence—that's a good word—the eminence of a thing or a person. So for instance, you would say that this word would be used to describe the characteristic that gave a thing its eminence. So let me give you some examples of that. The eminence or the arete of a knife is that it cuts, OK? So if you have a knife that doesn't cut, what good is that? Useless. Or the arete of a horse is that it runs and works. You get some usefulness out of it. The excellence of the soil is that it is fertile and produces a crop. The excellence of a fire is its ability to give heat and light. That is what gives it its excellence.
So philosophers would use this word to describe that characteristic of a thing or a person which kind of gave it its eminent quality, its singular quality that sets it apart from all else. So moral philosophers in ancient Greek would debate then, what is the arete of a man? What is the quality of humanity that makes them virtuous, morally excellent? What is it that makes somebody eminent? What is that quality of a man that sets him apart from all the rest of creation and sort of fulfills his purpose, like sharpness with a knife, like fertility with the soil, like heat and light with fire? What is the quality of a man that gives him his excellence? Moral philosophers would debate that.
But Peter has an answer for us. And it's actually contained up in verse 3 when he says that by His divine power, Christ “has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” Same word. So he uses this word to describe Christ. So let's answer the question. What is the thing about humanity that gives it its eminence? Peter's answer would be Christlikeness. Christ Himself possesses that quality. He is that quality. And therefore, the more like Him His people are, the more like His character and His nature that we are, the more excellent, morally excellent, virtuous, and arete we are. Christ is the one after whom we pursue. He is the one who is excellent.
In 1 Peter 2:9—this is back in Peter's previous Epistle. I'm giving you the places where Peter has used this word. First Peter 2:9: “You are a chosen family, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies [that's the word] of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” So the goal of the believer is to proclaim those very virtues of Christ that calls us out of darkness and into light.
The same kind of moral excellence and virtue is to characterize the mind of a believer in our thoughts, according to Paul. This is the fifth place that it’s used in the New Testament, Philippians 4:8, where Paul says, “Whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things.” So that thing which characterizes Christ, that thing which ought to characterize our thinking, that is the type of moral, virtuous, courageous, valorous excellence that we are to add to our faith. To your faith, add this quality.
Now, since Peter used this word to describe the Lord's character, he is in this passage commanding us to also pursue Christlikeness. The very excellence of Christ that draws the sinner to Himself is to be reflected in the lives of those whom He has drawn to Himself. His excellencies are our goal in our life and character, in our conduct. The highest ideal, the best blessing, the greatest usefulness for the child of God is to be like Christ. There is nothing more excellent. If you achieve that, Christlikeness, you will have achieved the highest excellence that can be achieved by any of humanity. Now, you're never going to achieve it here, but you will be made like Him when we see Him. And then you will be virtuous and excellent in every way. That is His promise.
In verse 3, this word is used as a divine quality. In verse 5, it is the human reflection of that quality that we are to pursue and add to our faith. There is an ethical and moral quality to this word. Do you walk in purity? Do you guard your heart? Do you capture your thoughts, control your mind and your desires? Can you possibly describe as morally excellent somebody who is immoral and licentious and unpure? Can you describe somebody who lacks the strength and the courage to do what is right—would you ever call them morally excellent in this way? No, you would never use this word to describe such a person. The Christian who is lazy in the pursuit of knowledge, double-minded, fork-tongued, two-faced, unfaithful, untrustworthy, unreliable, dishonest, prideful—none of that is morally excellent.
You can see how much is subsumed under this one category of morally excellent. This moral excellence is to characterize all of the other virtues in this list. It is to mark our faith. It is to mark our perseverance. It is to mark our love, our brotherly kindness, our self-control. Everything in the list is characterized by everything else in the list. That's why I say that they all go together. So how do you supply this? Well, we can't make excuses for our sin. We have to turn from it and confess it, flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness and holiness, as Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:22. We are to “abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). We are to, in the words of Romans 6:19, “present [our] members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.”
How do you become courageous? By doing courageous things. How do you become virtuous? By practicing virtuousness. How do you become marked by righteousness in your life? By practicing righteousness. We supply moral excellence by pursuing the God-glorifying, Christlike path of obedience and holiness and purity. We develop these virtues by practicing these virtues. To your faith, supply moral excellence, eminence that characterizes Christ.
Third, knowledge. In verse 5, knowledge. In your moral excellence, we are to give all diligence to supply knowledge. Now the words know, knowing, known, and knowledge occur seventeen times in this little three-chapter book. That tells us something. It tells us that it is a major theme by Peter in this book. And the reason for that is because he is writing to contradict and to correct some of the teaching of false teachers and to warn believers of the reality of false teachers. One of the predominant false teachings that was just getting into the church in its early, nascent stages was Gnosticism, which comes from this word for knowledge, gnosis. It was the idea that the false teachers had some sort of special insight or knowledge that you could only get from them, some special revelation, a private revelation that they had access to that nobody else had access to. So Peter, in turning the tables on the false teachers, kind of comes in and takes the legs right out from underneath of them in saying you have already received the full knowledge of God in Jesus Christ, which is your salvation, and you have received everything you need for life and godliness through that full knowledge that God has given to you in Christ, and now you are to supply to your faith moral excellence, and to your moral excellence this type of knowledge, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of God's will.
This is a slightly different word than what is used in verses 2–3. You'll notice in verse 2 it says, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God.” Down in verse 3 it says He has given to us “everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” The word translated “full knowledge” in verses 2–3 is the word epignosis. And the difference between this word and that word is just that word epi. And there is all kinds of debate that's interesting to read between commentators as to whether there is any real significant difference between epignosis and gnosis. Because Peter uses both of those words throughout the Epistle. And so people spend a lot of time trying to figure out, “Is epignosis different than gnosis, or is Peter using just two synonyms to describe the same thing?”
It does seem as if there is a slightly different emphasis between these two words. The full knowledge or the epignosis seems to be Peter describing that understanding of who God is in Christ and the gospel that brings salvation, by which He supplies us with everything we need for life and godliness. But then we are to add to that faith, to that understanding, we are to add knowledge to it. So we have a full knowledge of certain things that has resulted in our salvation, but we don't have a full knowledge of everything, do we? And so therefore, we have to pursue this wisdom, this knowledge, which I think is a practical knowledge, a wisdom, a discretion, a spiritual discernment like Paul describes in Colossians 1:9 when he says, “For this reason also, since the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”
So gnosis, the way Peter uses it throughout the Epistle, seems to describe the practical aspect of knowledge, the wisdom and discretion, the spiritual discernment, the knowledge that is applied. The goal of this is to rightly understand and apply God's truth. Because you can know a lot about the Bible, about the events of the Bible, the stories of the Bible, the doctrines of the Bible, the people mentioned in the Bible, the structure of the Bible, even the history of the Bible, and you can know more theology than the Westminster Divines and still be lost because none of that knowledge saves you. And so Peter here is saying not that he wants us to stop with our knowledge of God, which has resulted in our salvation, but to press in and to pursue adding to that faith, which has come to us through this full knowledge of God, to add to that the practical aspect of knowledge.
This is necessary for a virtuous life because moral excellence is impossible without a knowledge of the truth and a knowledge of what God demands. I have to know who Christ is. I have to know what He expects of us. I have to know what He demands of me in order to be like Him. And God's moral will is revealed in Scripture. And if I am negligent of Scripture and do not know Scripture, then I cannot possibly be morally excellent. Knowledge must inform my moral excellence, and moral excellence has to characterize my knowledge so that my knowledge doesn't merely end with me being able to recite a Bible verse and tell you what the truth is, but that knowledge has to itself blossom into a moral excellence and eminence that is Christlike. And if we don't have that kind of knowledge, then we do not have the kind of knowledge that Peter is discussing here.
It's necessary not only for a virtuous life but also to avoid false teachers. As I mentioned, they are the ones who think that they have the knowledge and communicate knowledge, but if you don't have the ability to discern between what is true and what is false, between a true teacher and a false teacher, then you will be led astray by the errors of unprincipled men, as Peter talks about later in chapter 3. It's necessary for a virtuous life and for an obedient life. We must know who God is and what He demands of us so that we are able to walk in the knowledge of that truth. So this is wisdom, discretion, discernment. These are the practical matters that will affect you every single day. Discerning the truth and knowing the truth and rejecting error and walking in obedience to the truth—this is indispensable to a virtuous and Christ-honoring, Christ-glorifying life.
So how are you to do this? How do you supply this to your faith? Well, do you have a full knowledge of everything that Scripture says? No. Do you pursue such knowledge? Have you identified in your life, in your thinking, in your mind, and in your heart areas where you are weak and ignorant and where you need to study more, learn more, and do more, and then have you put into place a plan to remedy that? Do you read your Scriptures regularly, doing Bible study on your own? If your only exposure to truth is on a Sunday morning here, you will be spiritually weak, and that cannot be avoided. You will be spiritually anemic if this is all you get.
Second Timothy 2:15 says to “be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” Yeah, that was given to the junior of the apostle, Timothy, who took over a position that Paul had given to him. Yes, that's given to people in pastoral ministry. And yes, it applies to those who are elders and pastors in churches. But it also ought to characterize every single believer. Every believer should read and study Scripture to feed their own soul. Even if you're not a teacher, you should be studious to work at that.
I know the most common objection that I hear when I say something like this is, “Jim, you don't know me. I'm not the studious student type.” But I promise you that if I were to ask you about your favorite hobby, your favorite subject, your favorite sport, you would be able to rattle off for hours information about that. How did you get that information? Were you born with it? No, at some point, because it interested you, because you desired it, you sat down, you watched a YouTube video, you learned how to do it, you applied it, you practiced it, you pursued it, you studied it out, you researched it. Do the same thing with God in His Word. Every person here is a studious person of the things that we care about and that we are passionate about.
Let me speak directly to the men here in our congregation for just a moment. Every man should be a student of the Word of God so that you can shepherd and teach your family. There are no exceptions to that. If not you, men, then whom? Am I supposed to do that? Am I supposed to show up at your house and shepherd your wife and your children? This is what God has called you to. This is what He has made you for. This is in fact the most important thing that you will do in this life. Set aside your job, set aside your neighborhood responsibilities, set aside your yard work, your equipment, your hobbies. None of that is as important as becoming yourself a student of the Word of God, who disciplines himself to grow in his knowledge so you can shepherd your family in grace and love and kindness and model to your wife and children what it means to walk before the Lord in humility and holiness and truth. Nobody else can do that for you. That is what God has called you to do. So every man should be that to his wife and to his family.
If you have time for all manner of distractions and fripperies and trifles and trivialities, but you neglect this one thing, you are neglecting the most important thing that God has put you on the planet to do. And you will give an account for that. So we pursue the knowledge of God in Christ as He is revealed in His Word, applying all diligence and making every effort.
Peter begins this Epistle by telling us to add knowledge to our moral excellence, but look at chapter 3, verse 18, how he ends the Epistle. You are to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” So he begins it by saying add knowledge. He ends the Epistle by saying now grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
So supply virtue to your faith, supply knowledge to your virtue, and now the fourth one, self-control. This is a word that I expected to see used more in the New Testament than it actually is. It's only used four times in the New Testament and twice in this passage. So it's only used in two other places. It's used in Acts 24:25, when Paul was reasoning with Felix, when he was under house arrest in Rome in Caesarea. And we read in Acts 24:25, “But as he [that is, Paul] was discussing righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix became frightened and said, ‘Go away for the present, and when I find time I will summon you.’” So Paul was there walking through the gospel with Felix, and his sin, his guilt, and his sinfulness before God made Felix realize just how much he lacked self-control. As you're going to see in a moment, you just have to drill in on what self-control is and it will expose every other sin.
The other place that it's used is in the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22–23: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,” and Paul ends the list by saying self-control. In Scripture, synonyms to this would be ideas like temperance, moderation, even discipline. It's related to self-denial. The word that's translated “self-control” here literally means to hold oneself in, to hold oneself in. It describes mastery over yourself, self-restraint. The word is used often, though not exclusively, but often to describe sexual restraint, which requires the kind of discipline that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 9:27 when he says, “I discipline my body and make it my slave.” He's describing there, using different words, self-control. I control my body and make it, my outer man—I make my outer man my slave. It's odd to hear somebody talk about making themselves their own slave, but that's what we're describing with self-control. Paul says he does this so that “after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27).
It is a quality that is used of elders. The adjective is used to describe elders in Titus 1:8. Elders are to be “hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled.” And there it's used to describe eldership. We must apply all diligence, Peter says, to control our passions so that our passions do not control us.
Now, it's not surprising that Peter would mention this, since false teachers always divorce their faith, their theology, and their teaching from their lifestyle. False teachers will always say something publicly—they will always say one thing and do something entirely different. So later on in the chapter—look in chapter 2. Look how Peter describes these false teachers. And he describes their lack of self-control. Second Peter 2:2: “Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned.”
Look down at verse 10 of chapter 2: “Especially those who go after the flesh in its corrupt lust and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme glorious ones.”
Look at verse 13: “Suffering unrighteousness as the wages of their unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime—they are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they feast with you.”
Look at verse 14: “Having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children.”
Look down at verse 19: “Promising [others] freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.”
People will follow false teachers who tell them what they want to hear because false teachers make people comfortable with their own lack of self-control in their sin. So what is the answer to that? Master yourself. Become a master of yourself. Rule your own desires. Either you rule your desires or your desires will rule you, and you do not want to be their slave.
And knowledge is key to this. To be able to know the truth, to know what the answer is, to know that you have been set free from sin, to know that you are no longer a slave of unrighteousness, to know that God has made you a slave of righteousness, and to know that there is a reward and a joy that is to come for those who will say no to sin and exercise self-control, to know all of that is to inform our self-control. So it is tied to knowledge. In fact, in Peter's first Epistle, he connects lusts with ignorance. First Peter 1:14: “As obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance.” Lust and ignorance go hand in hand. Knowledge and self-control also go hand in hand.
Now self-control doesn't come naturally. It is a discipline that we must nurture and pursue and cultivate, giving all diligence, applying all diligence to work and to supply this in our faith. And this issue of self-control addresses so many areas. Listen to this. This applies to our sexual appetites, lusts, desires, and thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our passions, the mind, how we use our mind, what we think upon, which includes our fears and our anxiety and our mistrust, the tongue, the language that we use, whether we gossip, slander, revile, or speak evil of our neighbor. Self-control touches on anger, on impatience, on rage, how you speak, what you speak, when you speak, the tone of voice that you use with your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, your employer, the person next to you in the checkout line, a client. This applies to the use of our time, whether we waste it or spend it well. It applies to our use of food and to drink, to exercise and to health.
Sometimes self-control is required for the opposite direction. And we rightly do this—we think of self-control in terms of holding oneself in and restraining oneself. But think of it also as the need to sometimes put yourself out and make yourself do what you don't want to do, because it also applies to laziness and indolence and sloth. Self-control is not just not letting myself do what I want to do, but making myself do what I don't want to do. That is an issue of self-control as well.
These are just a few of the things that must be mastered. Our cravings are endless, and they are insatiable, and they must be mastered. A believer is called to apply all diligence to master our passions. And listen, brother, sister, there is a glorious freedom in self-control, a glorious freedom in it. The ability to say, “No, I'm not going to do it, and nobody can make me do it”—because I control what I think about, you control what you think about, you control how you respond, you control your emotions, you control your lusts, and you control your passions. Nothing about your body can make you sin. Nobody else can make you sin. The only thing that can allow us or make us to sin is my inner man. To recognize that mastery of myself is the essence of saying no to sin. Making myself a slave of righteousness requires that I say to myself, “No, you will not do this no matter how much you desire it. No matter how natural that seems, you're not going to do that. Instead, you are going to do this,” and you make yourself do it.
You say, “Jim, I can't do that.” Then you're not a believer. This is the fruit of the Spirit, self-control. If the Spirit dwells in you, you can control yourself. You can control how you speak, you can control how you think, you can control what you do and what you don't do. There is glorious freedom in that, to know that I do not have to serve any of my passions or desires. Nothing can make me do what I do not want to do. I will do it. I must hold myself in, and I must make myself do that which is right and true and beautiful and holy. And in doing that, we become slaves of righteousness and we are set free from sin. There is a glorious freedom in the discipline and in the ability to control yourself.
The one who cannot master themself is a slave of sin. And the one who is a slave of sin, you're in the worst slavery of all because it is a relentless, unforgiving, brutal taskmaster. I would rather be a slave on a plantation serving somebody in a hot summer sun and be owned by somebody else than to be a slave to sin. It's a far better slavery. So examine yourself to see if you are in the faith.
By the way, part of saying no to yourself with self-control is also the ability to realize that when I say no, I'm not going to die. I'll survive. I can live without doing this. I don't have to respond in anger, and if I don't respond in anger, I'll survive and see another day. I don't have to indulge my lust. If I don't indulge my lust, I will survive and I will see another day. It's self-control. To your faith add moral excellence, and to your moral excellence, knowledge, and to your knowledge, self-control.