Kootenai Church Morning Worship

One of my hobbies is gardening. I love to work in the dirt. There's something therapeutic about it. I don't shy away from hard work. I enjoy hard work, and so I look forward every spring to getting out and tilling the ground. I look forward to the planning of my garden. And if you think I'm obsessive with lists, you should see what I do with my garden and measuring everything off, and all the rows are parallel, and everything's equally spaced, and I love all of that. I love the planning, I love the purchasing, I love the preparation, I love the planting, and I love the harvest. I love the weeding, I love the watering, the fertilizing, all the stuff that goes with gardening. I enjoy every aspect of it.
And I have found that the productivity of my garden is directly related to the amount of time, toil, and sweat that I put into it, directly proportional to it. In fact, I have found also that if I invest a little bit of time at just the right time of the year and I do the right kind of work at the right time of the year, it will pay off in dividends later on. I have also found that if I go through all of the work of planning and purchasing the items for my garden and then I prepare the soil and I plant it and then I walk away from it, that I will get far less than if I maintain the garden all the way through the year and work consistently at it.
The productivity of my garden, and this stands for my trees as well, except for that plum tree that I talked about months ago—this is the exception to the rule. That thing is no more. That thing has been cast into the fire where it deserved to go. With the exception of that, I have found that with all of my trees and all of my plants, the amount of effort that I put into it will determine the amount of fruit that I get to yield from it. And if I work hard, then I will get a lot of return. And if I work but a little, then I will get a little bit of return. If I don't work at all, there is no garden, and there is no return. But if I work just a little bit, I enjoy a little bit of fruit. If I work a lot, I get a lot of fruit.
And if I abandon the work halfway through, then the curse of Eden comes in with a vengeance and spoils me of all of the work that I have put into it up until that time. That is the law of nature. There is no cheating it. There's ways of kind of helping it one way or the other, but there's no getting around this law of the universe that the fruit that we enjoy in our garden is directly proportional to the amount of work, toil, and sweat that we put into it.
And so it is in the Christian's life, and so it is with Christian character. Your level of godliness, your amount of holiness, your knowledge of the truth, your love for the truth, your growth in the graces of Christian virtue will be in some measure directly tied to the amount of work and effort and toil and sweat that you put into cultivating and developing those character qualities. There's no way around it.
Paul speaks of that work and encourages us to it in Philippians 2:12–13 when he says, “My beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Notice the two sides of that coin, the two aspects of it. You work out your salvation with fear and with trembling. That's serious. That's effort. That's exertion. That's energy, toil, sweat. Man, does it all rest on me? No, it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Both the willing and the doing is the grace of God, but the working and the sweating is yours. It's His to will and work in you, it's yours to work and sweat. That's the two beautiful sides of that coin of sanctification. Can't get around it. You will bear as much fruit spiritually as the effort you put into pursuing Christian virtues.
Paul describes himself in this very way in 1 Corinthians 15. This is one of my favorite little passages in the New Testament. In the midst of his argument on the resurrection, Paul, talking about his own calling to apostleship, says in verses 9–10, “For I am the least of the apostles, and not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But [now listen to what Paul says] by the grace of God I am what I am.” Not just an apostle, but who he was, his fruitfulness, his character, his leadership, his integrity. “By the grace of God,” Paul says, “I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (v. 10). You hear that? The grace of God made me what I am, but I worked like a dog to become what I am, harder than anybody else, but it wasn't me working, it was the grace of God working through me. That's the two sides. It is the grace of God and it is our effort. So yes, we labor and strive, we work hard, but we trust upon the grace of God to do that work through the effort that we expend.
First Timothy 4:7: “But refuse godless myths fit only for old women [nothing against old women]. On the other hand, train yourself for the purpose of godliness.” Not that any women here are old. Let's just say that. There we go. Avoid myths meant for only old women, and since there are no old women here, that doesn't apply to any of you. You’ll not like myths. “On the other hand, train yourself for the purpose of godliness, for bodily training is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (vv. 7–8). Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Train, work, exert the effort. That is what we are called to do.
That is what Peter calls us to do in the passage that we've been looking at last week and this week—actually two weeks ago. This is our third week in verses 5–7. He says in verse 5 to make every effort and apply all diligence to add to your faith these qualities. Then he gives a list of them. Make every effort, do the work, be diligent. And this is our text this morning. So let's pick it up. We'll read beginning at verse 5. We'll read through the end of verse 11. Actually, we'll read through the end of verse 9. Verses 5–9:
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. (2 Pet. 1:5–9 NASB)
Now we covered last week the first four of these virtues: faith, moral excellence, knowledge, and self-control. And we have been observing that it is the grace of God that has supplied us the ability to work at these things. He has given to us everything that pertains to life and to godliness. So we have been called to this. God has supplied us with everything we need through the true knowledge which we have in Christ that has brought us salvation. That faith, which is the gift of God that has brought salvation, has with that salvation, through faith, brought to us everything we need to diligently work at all of these virtues.
That is why Peter says at the beginning of verse 5, “For this very reason.” Because you have been supplied everything necessary for life and godliness, because you have then become partakers of the divine nature, and because you have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, you and I have no excuse to not pursue these qualities and to grow in these qualities regularly and increasingly. And the one who does not grow in these qualities, the best thing you could say about them is that they are blind, shortsighted, and they've forgotten their former purification from their sins. But, Peter says, if these things are yours, then you will be neither useless nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of Christ. Cultivate these things and you will enjoy the fruit of them. Neglect these things and you will suffer want.
So this passage is describing the sufficiency of our sanctification. We looked at faith last week, which is our trust, our confidence in God, that belief in God and His Word, which takes at face value what He has said and trusts Him for that. We looked at moral excellence, which is eminence. It is virtue, valor. There's an element of courage in moral excellence. We looked at knowledge, which is not the knowledge that brings salvation but a growth in the knowledge of the truth, which is discretion, wisdom, knowing how to live, knowing God's will for us in this world. And then we looked at self-control, which is to hold oneself in and to restrain oneself.
And we observed last week how much of our sin comes down to a lack of self-control. Can you think of any sin that we commit that doesn't come down to a lack of self-control at its most fundamental level. Gluttony, drunkenness, sins of the mind, sins of the heart, sins of the tongue, all of those are self-control. Our emotions getting out of control, spinning out of control, that is a lack of self-control. The lack of discipline, the lack of hard work, it's a lack of self-control. It is the inability to make my passions my slave instead of being enslaved to our passions. That's what the lack of self-control is.
So today, we're looking at the last four of these character qualities: perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. Perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. So let's start with perseverance. This is in verse 6: “In your knowledge, self-control, in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness.” The Legacy Standard Bible, the NASB, the New King James, and the NIV all translate it as “perseverance.” The ESV translates that as “steadfastness.” And I think probably the weakest of all English translations is the translation “patience,” which is what the King James translates it as. I'm not trying to slight or attack the King James, but how the King James translates it is “patience.” Patience is far too weak of a word for this. Patience is what you have when you have to wait an extra twenty minutes for your steak to come out because they're down one chef in the kitchen. It's patience. You’re waiting twenty minutes. You're waiting three days instead of two days for your Amazon package to arrive. That's patience.
That's not what this is describing. This word describes patient endurance, bearing up under something, under a weight. It has an element of courage to it. It is a courageous endurance, a courageous perseverance. It's the patient enduring and persevering in what is right, even when that is difficult. It is used in the New Testament to describe enduring or persevering through affliction. Romans 12:9–10 says, “Let love be without hypocrisy—by abhorring what is evil, clinging to what is good, being devoted to one another in brotherly love.” And then toward the end of that list in Romans 12, Paul says, “Persevering in affliction” (v. 12). Enduring in affliction. In persecution, trials, tribulations, difficulties.
It also describes—this idea of persevering has something of a forward or an upward look to it as well. It's not just sort of stoically buckling down and saying, “All right, I'm strong enough to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm not going to have any emotion. I'm not going to have any feelings in the midst of this. I'm just going to do it. Buckle down and do it.” That's not what this is describing. This is looking up and looking out at the hope of deliverance. You endure through something with the hope of a reward or a deliverance on the other side of what you're enduring. Like, for instance, Romans 8:25: “If we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we eagerly wait for it.” We're eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons. And until that time, we are persevering through the afflictions and the difficulties, the trials and tribulations of this life, looking forward and looking up for the end of it. There's a forward look to it.
It describes standing strong under trial. James 1:12: “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” Notice how James holds out the crown of life. You persevere, you receive the crown of life. So it is the bearing up. It's not just waiting patiently without grumbling. It certainly involves that, but it is far more than that. It is patiently enduring what is right, what is necessary, in the midst of affliction with an upward and forward look to it in hope of the reward, the crown, and the relief that is certainly to come. That's what this word describes.
It's not the stoic, emotionless indifference with which we endure. We recognize in the midst of the trials that the emotional toil is real. It's real. It's difficult. The emotional toil can be real, and it's OK to feel it. It's OK to say it. It's OK to acknowledge it, that this is not easy. We don't have to pretend that it is easy in the midst of enduring. So it's OK to be honest that this is affecting us deeply when we're in the midst of trials, but the virtue is that we endure through it.
William Barclay in his commentary on the passage quotes Didymus of Alexandria. In case you're curious, I have no idea who Didymus of Alexandria was, and I didn't bother googling him, but if you're interested in him and his significance, feel free to tackle it. Probably only one Didymus of Alexandria; it's a unique name. Barclay quotes him, and he says this: “It is not that the righteous man must be without feeling, although he must patiently bear the things which afflict him; but it is true virtue when a man deeply feels the things he toils against, but nevertheless despises sorrows for the sake of God.” It's true virtue when you deeply feel the things you toil, work, strive against, that there is resistance, but you persevere through the sorrow because you despise the sorrow and you're looking upward, you're looking forward, and God will give the crown of life.
Paul uses this word to describe his steadfast hope to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 1, but ultimately this is the character quality that was modeled by the Lord Jesus, and the author of Hebrews notes this in Hebrews 12:2 when he says that we are to fix our eyes on Jesus, “the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Same word, endured. It's not that it was without pain, and it's not that Jesus didn't express the pain. He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46) He felt the anguish of being punished for the sins of all of His people. He felt that; it was real. But He endured the affliction of that cross, looking upward, looking outward, realizing that it would come to an end. So for the joy that was set before Him, He endured. He bore up underneath of that. That is the word that is used.
Now this virtue has a relationship to other virtues, like faith, for instance. We look to God in faith as we endure so that we endure in a proper way, in a right way. We endure in a way that honors Him, and we receive hardship and affliction from His hand, and we do it by faith as an act of obedience and worship.
Now unbelievers can endure, can't they? Unbelievers can endure, and sometimes unbelievers can endure horrific things. One of my favorite books of all time—it's got to be in my top ten—it’s not written by a Christian, not written about Christians. It's called Endurance by Alfred Lansing. It's the story of the twenty-two, I think, sailors who sailed with Ernest Shackleton in the early 1900s on a trans-Antarctic voyage. I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but the book chronicles the incredible endurance of a group of men who just had the grit to try and survive unimaginable trials, unimaginable difficulties, and unimaginable circumstances. And I don't know that any of those twenty-two men were believers. The book doesn't say. I've never read anything about them that suggests that any of them were men of faith. But that story tells—and it's called Endurance because the name of the ship was Endurance, and ironically enough, that became the one word that you would use to describe everything those men went through—endurance. And I have never read anything that suggests any of them were men of faith, but it does demonstrate the ability of humanity in grit, with an instinct to survive, to endure almost unimaginable circumstances.
The unbeliever can do it out of grit. The believer does it out of grace. The unbeliever can do it because he wants to survive. The believer does it because he wants to worship and he wants to obey and he wants to be like Christ. See, our motive for enduring is different. A pagan can endure a lot of things, but a Christian endures them as an act of worship.
This virtue perseverance is also tied to moral excellence because it has a degree of courageousness in it. It is with courage that we endure. You have to have the ability to restrain yourself and to control yourself if you are to persevere in anything because your passions, your desires, will cause you to want to give up and to give out and to give in at the first sign of difficulty. We like ease and we like comfort, and so if you're going to have the type of perseverance and endurance here, you have to be the man or the woman who says, “I will control myself by the grace of God. Because He has given this ability to me, I will control myself so that I may persevere and bear up under this affliction.”
Perseverance also is the quality that adds an element to all of the other virtues. We persevere in faith. We persevere in our moral virtue. We persevere in our pursuit of wisdom and knowledge and discretion and understanding of God's will. And we persevere in our self-control. So what does a life of endurance and perseverance look like? It doesn't look like this: “Well, I resisted temptation this week for three days in a row, but it came four days in a row. You can't expect me to go four days without that, can you?” That's not perseverance. It certainly doesn't look like somebody saying, “Well, I read and I studied and I pursued knowledge and truth, but it really got confusing and on day three I decided to abandon that task.” That's not perseverance.
Instead perseverance says I will battle sin and will resist temptation and I will do what is right by patient endurance. I will endure difficulties and afflictions and trials with steadfast hope. This is how we change our habits. This is how we develop virtues. This is how we pursue holiness, with perseverance. We change our marriages. We fix our relationships. We persevere in obedience. We are made slaves of righteousness by our perseverance in self-control. We say no to sin, we do not yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness, and we say yes to righteousness, and we make our minds, our hearts, and our passions serve that which is good and true and beautiful, and we do it by the grace of God.
It is not easy. This is why Paul says, “I work harder than them all.” “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). Be diligent and discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. It takes effort. It takes work. But by the grace of God, we are what we are. And His grace toward us is not in vain. He will give us the grace for sanctification. He will give us the grace to develop all of these, but we have to do the work of persevering in them. In your self-control supply perseverance.
The next one, second, our sixth of the list of eight, is godliness. Verse 6: “And in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness.” The reference there to godliness connects this back up to what Peter says in verse 3 when he says we have been given or granted everything that pertains to life and to godliness. It's the same word. And Peter is there simply saying that we've already been given what we need for these virtues. He has given to us everything that pertains to life and godliness, and therefore because He has given this, we are to work out everything that pertains to life and godliness. And so we are to pursue and add godliness to this list of virtues, the things that should characterize us. We have been fully supplied with everything we need, and therefore we are to fully apply all diligence in making sure that our lives reflect this.
This word for godliness is a generic word that describes somebody who has a reverence for God. The pagans would often use this; moral philosophers use this word. It is sometimes translated as “true religion” or “true worship” and sometimes “piety.” Piety kind of has the idea of this word. It's the attitude of the heart or mind which has a Godward focus. It seeks to live all of life before the face of God so that we are facing toward God and doing our duty to God, keeping Him at the forefront of our heart and our mind in all that we pursue.
Piety kind of has that word, but it describes—in our minds and our modern age, piety kind of has some negative connotations, doesn't it? In fact, we sometimes use pietistic as if it is a slur. Oh, that guy is so pietistic. And by that, we kind of think he's kind of self-righteous. He thinks he's better than the rest of us. But that's not what the word piety means. It simply means a life that is lived properly, honorably, before God and men for the glory of God. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:2 that we are to pray “for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may live a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” So it's just the general characteristic that describes a life that is lived out truly religious in a pure biblical sense before the face of God.
This piety or godliness grows out of faith since faith is the orientation of the heart toward God. It's connected to moral excellence in that virtue, honor, valor, and courageous excellence and eminence are all qualities of Christlikeness. Remember, it is Christ who drew us to Himself by His own virtue, glory, and moral excellence. That became to us an endearing quality that we had to have as God drew us to the Son by His Spirit. We come to Christ because of His moral excellence. And then the author says we're to work out that moral excellence, and this is, in fact, what makes us Christlike, Godlike, or godly. Second Peter 1:3 describes that drawing. Knowledge is what we need in order to know what is the right way to live in a godly fashion. We don't know what godliness is unless God were to reveal to us in His Word exactly what godliness is.
And self-control is that aspect of our character which causes us to persevere in that godliness so that we're not godly for a day or two or a week here or there, for four or five days after a really emotional conference or church service, but instead that we are godly as a pattern of life in which we live. We persevere in it. And if we are without self-control, we will end up being slaves to everything but Christ, everything but Christ. It is self-control which makes us slaves of righteousness.
It goes without saying that false teachers lack this quality of godliness. They don't have it at all. In fact, Paul in 2 Timothy 3—listen to how he describes ungodly men and false teachers in the context of false teaching. Chapter 3, verses 1–3: ”Know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control.” That's an interesting description, isn't it, in the list of all of those? They will be “without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Keep away from such men as these” (vv. 3–5), Paul says. They have a form of godliness, an outward veneer of it, but they deny its power.
False teachers have a thin veneer of godliness that masks or disguises their true motives. They only look godly, they pretend to be godly, but Peter's going to say later on in chapter 2, they are sensual, they are driven by their lusts, they are enslaved by their lusts, and they want to do nothing but exploit other people. The false teacher has a veneer of godliness, a form of it, but he denies its real power. He's not truly godly. He pretends to be for selfish gain.
Peter begins this Epistle by commending us to be godly here in this verse. He ends the Epistle by reminding us that we ought to pursue this. Look back at 2 Peter 3:11. After describing the destruction and the judgment that is to come, Peter says in verses 11–12, “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” Here you can see how some of these qualities like knowledge, as mentioned in verse 5, is also mentioned at the end in chapter 3, verse 18. Godliness, which is mentioned here in chapter 1, is also mentioned at the end of the Epistle. He's bracketing everything he's saying about false teachers by reminding us we need to pursue these virtues that he has listed. We look forward in hope, we look forward in perseverance, and we endure with self-control. So to your perseverance, supply godliness.
And now the third one for today, the seventh, is brotherly kindness. That's in 2 Peter 1:7: “And in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.” The word translated “brotherly kindness” here is philadelphia, from phileo, which is a form of love, a kind of love, the Greek word for love, and adelphos, which was the word for brother. The philadelphia, or philadelphio, is the brotherly love that Scripture speaks of. It is a familial affection, a family devotion. It's the type of love that exists between siblings, close friends, brothers in Christ. You and your neighbor when you're getting along and things are going well, you have that brotherly love between the two of you. That's the philadelphia.
It is the distinguishing mark of the Christian, though it was something known in the ancient Greek world. And moral philosophers would speak of brotherly love as a commendable virtue, and it is. It is a concept or an idea that was taken by Christians in the New Testament and given an entirely new depth of meaning because of how frequently it is used in Scripture to describe the relationships within the body of Christ. So there is a love of the brethren that is the unique characteristic of being a Christian. First John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. The one who does not love abides in death.” By this we know that we have gone from death to life, because we love the brethren.
When I became a believer, and I know that this is certain for most, if not all, of you—when you became a believer, you went at some point around your conversion from not really caring about Christians and not really wanting to be around Christians to all of a sudden wanting to be around Christians and caring a lot about Christians. And that was a change that took place in my heart almost instantaneously. I didn't have brotherly love for anybody before I was saved unless they could do something for me. But after I got saved, all of a sudden I liked Christians. I mean, when I travel and I meet Christians—I'm having lunch today with a couple that is here, people that I've only met once. And I love them. I have a love for these people. I have a love for complete strangers. When I find out that they're believers in Christ and we share that in common, there's an affection and a love there that is inexplicable. That is brotherly love. Peter says we are to add that as a virtue to our faith.
The lack of that kind of brotherly love indicates that we don't have a love for God. First John 4:20, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar [he doesn't love God]; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Love for the brethren is an obvious, the most fundamental, and the most natural expression and affection of a truly redeemed heart, so much so that Paul, even though he only spent three weeks in Thessalonica, could write to the Thessalonians and say, “Now concerning love of the brothers, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another, for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to excel still more” (1 Thess. 4:9–10). Paul says that he spent three weeks with the Thessalonians, and he didn't have to sit down and give them a three-week course on how to love the brethren. He said, “This is just the fruit and the work of God in your lives. You're taught by God how to do it, and you have this. I don't even need to write to you about it except to say this natural thing that is going on in your body, encourage it, continue it, do it still more and more.” Brotherly kindness.
We are commanded to love one another. That's true. Hebrews 13:1: “Let love of the brothers continue.” Romans 12:10: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.” This is a kindness that is expressed in how it treats others. A brotherly love shows preference for others, considers others more important than himself or herself. It expresses it with respect and kindness, devotion, grace, charitableness, gentleness, meekness, humility, service, affection, a kind demeanor, a kind word, a kind love, an expression to somebody else that shows them that you are not hostile to them.
And I would daresay to you that the best place to practice this is in the home—how we treat our spouses, how we treat our kids, how we treat our neighbors, how we treat people who come to our door. And then it expands to the church of God, where we gather together for worship, where we love one another and we treat one another in a way that demonstrates that kind of brotherly love.
False teachers that Peter criticizes or critiques in the next chapter, they do not have this attribute because they're not part of the family of God. Now, they will act loving toward you. They can pretend to be loving. But Peter is going to show that they pretend to be loving because they want to exploit you with their false words. False teachers pretend to be loving and act loving only so that they can get something out of you. That is the opposite of what the Bible says about brotherly love.
So are you cultivating brotherly kindness, intentionally showing grace, kindness, goodness, forgiveness, gentleness, meekness, humility, preference for others, to those who are in your home and in the body of Christ? This, by the way, is how the church is built up, when we love and serve one another with brotherly kindness, spending time praying for one another, caring for one another, counseling one another, teaching, admonishing one another, bearing one another's burdens. And I feel toward this body like Paul felt toward the Thessalonians. You're taught how to do this, and you guys do this magnificently. So just excel at it. As Paul says to the Thessalonians, just keep excelling at it. You do it well. Keep doing it well.
To your godliness supply brotherly kindness, and finally, love. It's in verse 7: “And in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.” Now this is love of a different kind. This is not phileo love, which is the familial affection of brothers in a family. This is agape love, which is the sacrificial, selfless love. It is an act of the will, not an act of the emotions. It is not connected at all to the lovability of the object. This is not familial love. You could have agape love expressed inside of a family, but familial love will be there as well. Agape love is not erotic love, a passion between two lovers. This love looks to the good of its object. It is an act of the will that does good to another irrespective of the lovableness of the object being loved. It doesn't care whether it gets anything back in return. In fact, the greatest expression of this love is when it is one-directional. It goes out to the other without any expectation that this will be returned or rewarded or enjoyed or even acknowledged. That's agape love.
This is the love that characterizes God in His love for us. When it says in Scripture, 1 John 4:8, “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love,” it uses this word, agape. God is agape. He is the sacrificial, self-giving love who, in eternity past, among the members of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—loved one another to an infinite degree, in an infinite glory, in an infinite measure, and that love spilled out of the Trinity in His plan to create mankind and then to lavish a redeemed people with that love for all of eternity. It's that love. Sacrificial, servant love. “For God so loved the world, that He gave [that's the sacrifice] His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). It is an act. This type of love expresses itself as an act of pure and sheer grace in God when it comes to us.
Michael Green in his commentary on 2 Peter writes this:
In friendship [that's phileo], the partners seek mutual solace. In sexual love, which is eros, mutual satisfaction. In both cases, these feelings are aroused because of what the loved one is. With agape, it is the reverse. God's love is evoked not by what we are, but by what He is. It has its origin in the agent, not in the object. It is not that we are lovable, but that He is love. This agape might be defined as a deliberate desire for the highest good of the one loved, which shows itself in sacrificial action for that person's good. This is what God did for us.
Now tie that in with self-control and perseverance. We love perseveringly. We love with brotherly love. And we love in self-control, as an act of the will, not as a desire or affection of the emotions. It is the intentional or deliberate desire for the highest good of another that motivates that one-directional, self-giving, sacrificial love. And we do this not for a moment, not for a day, not for a few hours, but we do this in perseverance. We have to endure in that love perseveringly.
This love is the highest love. It is the highest virtue. This is the goal of Christian teaching. Paul says, “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart . . . and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). This love is to be put on above all others as the perfect bond of unity, Colossians 3:14 says. This love is to mark everything we do. First Corinthians 16:14: “Let all that you do be done in love.”
This is the love, by the way, which must characterize all of the other virtues. We persevere because we love. We control ourselves because we love others. We have faith because we love God and we grow in it. We pursue knowledge because we love truth and we love other people and we want to be of usefulness and helpfulness to them. This love must motivate all of our pursuit of all of these virtues. And all of these virtues must be characterized and colored by love because if all the other virtues are there but you don't have love, you don't have any of the other virtues. You can pretend to have those virtues. You can put a show of those virtues on for a period of time, but if true agape love does not characterize everything we do, then we really have nothing.
This was Paul's point in 1 Corinthians 13 when he talks about this love, that it's patient, it's kind, etc. At the beginning of that passage, Paul says, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong” (v. 1). It's just sound. And if I have faith so as to remove mountains and have gifts, I'm nothing without love. And if I give my body to be burned, I have all these things, I give up everything, but I have not love, I have nothing. In other words, you can do everything, but if you do it without love, it's useless. You can have everything, but if you have it all without love, it's useless. You can pursue all of these virtues and try and cultivate them in your life, but if you're not doing it out of love, it's useless. So love is the quality, the virtue, that characterizes all of this. So let everything that we do be done in an attitude and with a spirit of love. Ephesians 5:1–2 says we are to be imitators of God and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself for us. Love and sacrifice go together, and we are to imitate Him, His glory and His excellence, by walking in that same kind of love.
What good is knowledge without love? It is easy for us in a church like this where we value sound doctrine, we value the preaching of the Word, we value having good teachers like Phil Johnson and Justin Peters and others come and share this pulpit and teach us, and we value those types of things, conferences and solid teaching, etc., it is easy in a church like this to think that knowledge is the end result and that love doesn't have to characterize what we do. And I don't believe that we have to choose between those two things. We can have knowledge and be very astute doctrinally and theologically and precise in what we do and still do that with a spirit of love and gentleness and meekness for the interests of others.
Can one be godly without being loving? Can one be morally virtuous without being loving? Can you exercise real, true self-control without it having the motive of love? How do you cultivate this? Showing love is something of a habit. You start doing it, showing the love, and you persevere in it and endure in it. So faith, moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. Faith begins it, and love caps it off. So love is like a fondue fountain. It just pours down over all of the other virtues. It's on top of all of it. On your faith, you build these virtues, and when we get to the top, love pours down over all of them and gives a distinctly Christian flavor to the life that is characterized by these things.
And if these things are yours, you will be well-suited for life and godliness. If these things are yours, you will be well-suited for fruitful Christian service. And if these things are yours, you will be well-suited for death. And that, I think, is the best of all. So when that time comes, you will not fear death. You will not dread standing before your Savior and giving an account for your life. You're not going to regret the legacy you left behind. You're not going to regret or lament time that was wasted and opportunity squandered. And instead, you will be glad that you spent the time and the work and the effort to tend that garden because when there is a harvest at the end of it, that reward will be rich, and you will enjoy the fruits of righteousness and the reward that is to come in that day. You will be well-suited not just for life, but you will be well-suited for death. And next week, we will look at the other blessings that come to the one who has these virtues and increases in them.