And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8)
I love these verses for a number of different reasons, many of which stem more from the writer of the words than the words themselves. You and I know Peter fairly well. The New Testament is literally filled with his name, and quite frankly, that name is not always associated with the most appropriate behaviors. After all, it was Peter who denied Christ three times leading up to the crucifixion. It was Peter who had to be told, “Get behind me Satan.” Even after he matured in the faith, Paul had to “resist him to his face” when Peter showed partiality to the Jews.
Because of these things, we can often be a little hard on Peter, just as we can be a little hard on ourselves. Yet, in these passages, Peter might as well be writing a commentary about his own life in God’s words. He finally figured it out. Spiritual success is not an all-at-once event, but rather it is an “adding to” enterprise. Spiritual success is not found in a single flash point explosion of spiritual clarity, but spiritual maturity occurs little by little as we build each day upon our faith with the lessons learned, often through our failures.
It is so easy to get ahead of ourselves spiritually and desire an instantaneous-just-add-water kind of faith that ends up frustrating our best efforts, leaving us feeling lost and inadequate. You can’t, however, cheat Christianity from running its natural course for your life. You can’t go to the end of the book of your life without having first lived. Wisdom for living is simply not attained by reading a few chapters in the Bible but through a lifetime of reading as well as trial and error in our attempts to use the things we read every day.
If you ask folks what “Christianity is all about,” more than likely the vast majority will jump right to the end of it all and say something like “heaven” or “eternal life.” While we do not want to minimize the grandness of that reward or to urge you in any way to take your eye off the prize, it seems unreasonable to skip right over the small, daily victories that occur often and define our path to the end, which would not exist without them. You see, when you decided not to browse for porn, overcame your distractions to finish that read through the Bible program, held your tongue when it wanted desperately to unleash its fury or quit that habit that has plagued you for years and wasted your income, then, you are victorious. You have added to your faith, and in adding to it, you grew closer to the assurance of never being barren, even into eternity.
Heaven is the ultimate goal, but it is the long-term objective that is only achieved with short-term victories. Celebrate your spiritual victories as you add to your faith and grow in your understanding.
