But for this very reason also, using therewith all diligence, in your faith have also virtue, in virtue knowledge,
Peter has just said that God has given us everything we need, and that we share in the divine nature through His promises. Verse 5 turns to what we must now do with that gift. The first word is not "relax" but "diligence".
The opening phrase points back to the gift. One writer says the older English wording weakens it:
It is not "And besides this." It is an energetic call for what is due to the grace of God. That grace gave the remarkable blessing of sharing a divine nature through faith in His very great and precious promises. Even a mind ruled by the flesh draws a conclusion from the power and certainty of divine grace. It sees that there is room for earnest and practical purpose of heart in the believer. But Scripture enlarges the argument, warns against sloth and easy-going, and summons us to constant diligence on all sides.
A new nature is a living thing, and living things need care.
The divine nature the believer has received loves the will of God. It is a holy nature, so it hates the corruption that is in the world through lust. But that divine nature grows and develops in the life of the child of God, and that growth needs all care and diligence. Suppose Christians say they have a new nature, are born again, and saved by grace. Then they go on living according to the old nature, enjoying the world and its sinful pleasures, without showing godliness and virtue. They are not only in a very unscriptural position, but on dangerous ground.
Older Bibles read "add to your faith virtue." One writer says that picture of adding misleads: virtue is to be found inside faith, and knowledge inside virtue.
This is not addition in the ordinary sense of the word. Verse 5 should read, "For this very reason, using also all diligence, in your faith have also virtue, in virtue knowledge," and so on. You are perfect when you do not lack any of these qualities. Someone may give you an apple to taste, because you are a good judge of apples; you taste it and say, It is very nice, but it lacks sweetness. So you may say of a Christian, "He is a nice Christian, but he lacks self-control." The Christian is to show the divine nature in all its qualities.
The word "virtue" here means courage, not politeness. It is the backbone that lets a believer refuse.
Virtue is that energy and courage of soul that knows how to refuse as well as to choose. Moses did that. He "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin." You have the faith that connects you with God, and you believe in what you cannot yet see. But now you must add virtue. That is the courage which knows how to say "No" to the thousand things that come up day by day, and to press on without wavering in the pathway set before us.
Why does virtue come first? Without it the rest have nothing to stand on.
This self-government — this virtue, this moral energy — is deliverance from evil, and it makes communion with God possible. It is the one thing that gives reality to all the rest. Without virtue we are not really with God. Can divine power develop itself in the looseness of the flesh? And if we are not really with God — if the new nature is not acting — knowledge is only the puffing up of the flesh. Patience is only a natural quality, or else hypocrisy. It is the same with the rest.
Courage on its own can do damage. It needs a guide.
In virtue we are to have knowledge. Virtue gives great strength to a person's character. But strength must follow knowledge — and that means the highest and best knowledge of all, the knowledge of God and His will. Otherwise it may become a dangerous thing.
What happens if the adding stops?
If this blessed adding is missing, there is sure to be a going back. There is no such thing as standing still. If we are not progressing, we are going backwards. "To the one who has, more will be given… but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." If there is no desire to press on, to go on with the Lord, what is left? Only a return to the things the Lord called us out of in days gone by.
- Because — "for this very reason" looks back to what God has already given. Grace is the reason for diligence, never an excuse for sloth.
- Growth — the new nature is alive, and living things grow only with care. A new nature claimed with an old lifestyle is dangerous ground.
- Supply — the call is not to bolt on extras but to lack nothing: every quality of the new life showing in the believer.
- Virtue — courage that says "No" comes first. Without it, knowledge only puffs up; with it, the knowledge of God and His will aims that strength.
- Backwards — with no adding there is no standing still. We only drift back to what the Lord called us out of.
in knowledge temperance, in temperance endurance, in endurance godliness,
This verse sits in the middle of a chain of qualities that begins with faith. Older translations call two of them "temperance" and "patience"; the ESV reads "self-control" and "steadfastness", and both words carry more than they first seem.
Many read the chain as if each quality sat on top of the last like bricks. The wording points elsewhere:
The familiar passage in 2 Peter, "Add to your faith, virtue," and so on, is not really addition. To put it in numbers, it is multiplication. It is, "Have in your faith, virtue." That is, let courage mark your faith; let knowledge mark your courage; let self-control mark your knowledge, and so on.
That turns the whole list into a test of completeness, not a ladder to climb:
The thought is having all the qualities that belong to the perfect thing. You are perfect when you do not lack any of these qualities. Someone may give you an apple to taste, because you are a good judge of apples. You taste it and say, It is very nice, but it lacks sweetness. So you may say of a Christian, "He is a nice Christian, but he lacks temperance."
The next quality, self-control, is often narrowed to food and drink. One writer widens it:
The word "temperance" in 2 Peter 1:6 means much more than people usually take it to mean. They apply it to a habit of moderation in eating and drinking. No doubt it fully involves this, but it involves much more. In fact, the Greek word the inspired apostle uses can be translated "self-control." It gives the idea of someone who keeps himself well reined in at all times.
Where does that restraint come from? One writer traces it to truth taking hold of the heart:
The very first thing, as we learn the truth, is to recognise the claim the truth has on us. That is its discipline: it separates us from other things and so gives us self-restraint, the power to command ourselves. We may be sure that we can command nothing else if we do not begin here. "In knowledge," therefore, we are to find "temperance," self-restraint. The truth is to govern us, and so to give us the power of self-government. The heart must be in the knowledge, not the head only.
Peter places self-control immediately after knowledge, and commentators see the reason in what unrestrained knowledge does to people around us:
If knowledge alone rules us, we can easily become creatures of extremes. A believer who sees things very clearly can act in a way that endangers the welfare of less discerning brothers and sisters, as Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 show us. So we need temperance.
Self-control and endurance work in opposite directions:
Temperance will keep me from saying or doing something that will wound you. Patience will keep me from being upset by anything you may do that is likely to wound me. Temperance is active, patience is passive!
The suffering in view here is suffering we did not deserve:
There is suffering for righteousness, if not for Christ's name, and it is never far from a Christian's path for long. So he needs the self-control that supplies "endurance." He is not to flinch if he is called to suffer, however unjustly. It is natural to complain about this, but how unworthy it is! Would it be any satisfaction, or real relief, if one deserved it?
The verse ends with godliness. One writer explains it as likeness that grows from the company we keep:
"And to patience godliness" — God-likeness. You walk through this world possessing the divine nature. See that you display it, show it! Show me a man's company, and I will show you what kind of man he is. If you are keeping company with God you will be a godly person, for we all resemble the thing we are occupied with. It comes out in a thousand details of our everyday life.
We lose this link most easily under pressure — and that is when we need it most:
Nothing matters more for the soul than keeping our links with God and our Lord Jesus fresh and in constant use — links of reverence and affection, of dependence and obedience. Yet work presses hard on us, and so do the course of the age, the deceitfulness of riches, the disappointment at loss, and desires for other things. That makes the danger from any earthly preoccupation great.
- In, not on. Read it as "in knowledge, self-control": each quality colours the next. The test is whether anything is missing, not how high you have climbed.
- Knowledge governs. Truth first lays its claim on the heart. Whoever cannot command himself will command nothing else.
- Self-control restrains. The word reaches far past eating and drinking: it means self kept well reined in. It also keeps our clear knowledge from harming believers who see less.
- Endurance bears. Self-control stops me wounding you. Endurance keeps me steady when others wound me — suffering I did nothing to deserve.
- Godliness walks. The chain ends in company kept with God. It shows in a thousand ordinary details, and we hold it fast when work, loss and desire pull hardest.
in godliness brotherly love, in brotherly love love
Peter's list of Christian qualities ends with two words many readers treat as the same: brotherly affection and love. The verse treats them as different. So what does love have that brotherly affection lacks?
The verse ends with two terms that older English wording tends to blur.
Scripture distinguishes between "love" and "brotherly love." The original uses distinct words for them. Love is "agape," and brotherly love is one word, "philadelphia." "Philadelphia" is more like friendly love. The Authorised Version tried to express this with the phrase "brotherly kindness." But it is more than that. It includes kindness, but it is love — love in the shape it takes between brothers and sisters. Perhaps the best rendering is "brotherly affection."
The word behind "add" is closer to furnishing a quality than piling one item on another. Commentators point out the difference this makes to how we read the whole list.
This is not addition in the ordinary sense of the word. Having all the qualities of the perfect thing is the thought. You are perfect when you do not lack any of these qualities. A person may give you an apple to taste, because you are a good judge of apples; you taste it, and say, It is very nice, but it lacks sweetness. So you may say of a Christian, "He is a nice Christian, but he lacks self-control." The divine nature in all its qualities is to be seen in the Christian.
Godliness on its own can go cold.
Dry godliness — if one may speak so — won't do. With godliness we must have the warmth of Christian friendship, brotherly affection. Sometimes a machine moves stiffly and roughly, and may not move at all, when a few drops of oil would make it run right and smooth. Love among believers works the same way. It overcomes the difficulties of the day, conquers coldness and apathy, and goes out winning the hearts of the saints to serve them.
Make brotherly affection the highest goal, and believers themselves become the measure.
Brotherly love is a most sweet and precious fruit of grace. That is entirely true. It is precious in the heart that is filled with it, and precious as it grows between us. But it is not love in the full sense. We are told to add love to brotherly love. The reason is simple. In brotherly love, brothers and sisters are the object. When it is genuine and pure, it does flow from grace. But in us it easily takes on the character its object gives it. It tends to limit itself to the people it is taken up with, and to be ruled by its feeling toward them. It tends to stop in its objects. It avoids anything that might hurt them or spoil the pleasantness between them. So it makes them the measure of the Christian's conduct.
Love brings God into the room, and that changes what love will tolerate.
Love will not tolerate evil. That is because it is God's presence, and because we feel His presence and look to Him in it. In mere brotherly kindness, the brother is the object before my mind. So I put man before God, cover up evil, keep the kindness going, and so far shut God out. Love is His active presence, though it will be shown in love to man; but it gives to God all His rights.
The difference shows up when the two pull in opposite directions.
These last two qualities are not the same. "Love" is a great deal more and deeper than "brotherly kindness." The latter makes one's brother the prominent object; the former tests everything by God and His will and glory. So you may find a Christian very full of brotherly love, but sadly at fault when the test of love comes. Love feels and insists that the first of all duties is that God should have His way.
Love reaches wider than the circle of believers, and plays no favourites inside it.
With brotherly love we are also to have love — divine love. Otherwise our love may go no further than our brothers and sisters, instead of flowing out in the largeness of the love of God to the world around. Also, brotherly love may easily sink into partiality and mere human affection.
Where affection waits to be drawn out, love carries its own source.
In brotherly kindness there is an object for my love that draws it out, but love is a nature, and it looks for an object on which to spend itself.
- Supply, don't stack. The list is not arithmetic. All these qualities belong in one character, and it is complete only when none of them is missing.
- Godliness first. Godliness comes before affection for people. But dry godliness won't do. Brotherly affection is the oil that keeps it moving.
- Affection has a ceiling. When fellow believers are the object, they become the measure. Kindness then starts covering what should be faced.
- Love brings God in. Love is deeper than affection. It tests everything by God's will, and it will not shut Him out to keep things pleasant.
- Love reaches further. Love has its own source. It does not wait to be drawn out, it plays no favourites, and it flows past the circle of believers to the world outside.
for these things existing and abounding in you make [you] to be neither idle nor unfruitful as regards the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ;
Peter has just listed the qualities that mark Christian life. Here he turns that list into a test: what do these qualities produce, and why is their outcome tied to knowing Christ?
Peter's first condition is that these qualities are "yours." They belong to the person, not to the occasion.
Notice that these things are to be in us and abound. They are not like garments put on us, for then they could be taken off on occasions. Like fruit, they are the product and expansion of the divine life within. If they abound in us, they prove us to be neither "barren" — or "idle" — "nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Being present is not enough. Peter asks for increase, and increase has a source: a heart occupied with Christ.
But the apostle was led to seek more. He urges that these things should "abound" also. They do so where Christ dwells in the heart by faith… Christ is and must be the spring and strength of the heart for all that is acceptable to God. The exercise of the heart in the full confidence of Christ's love promotes growth in what is good. So these things are not only really present in the Christian. They also abound through dependence on His grace.
The first of Peter's two words describes a person who is doing nothing. (The ESV renders it "ineffective.")
What is the effect? They "make you not idle nor unfruitful for the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." It was a change for the worse when the older version put "barren" in place of "idle." That change led many readers and preachers to guess what the difference could be between "barren" and "unfruitful." But there is no room for doubt or difficulty. Translators render this first word "idle" elsewhere, and they should do so here.
Idleness is not just a missed opportunity. God has given the believer a new nature and a new relationship, and idleness fits neither.
How unworthy to be idle! We stand in such a blessed relationship, and grace has given us a new nature so excellent that it turns away every evil thing. How unworthy to be fruitless, if we are branches in the True Vine! The Father prunes such branches so that they may bear more fruit (John 15:2; 1 Peter 1:17). "By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:8).
The fruit of this life runs in two directions.
Here the Apostle sets out the blessed effects of having these qualities. He also sets out the serious consequences for the one whose life lacks them. A life marked by these qualities would be a full and abundant life. This matches the Lord's desire that His sheep should not only have life but have it abundantly (John 10:10). So too our knowledge of the Lord Jesus would not be barren and unfruitful. A life of practical godliness bears fruit for God. It also brings usefulness and blessing to people.
Peter measures all this fruit by one standard: "the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The end of every dealing of God with our souls is to make Christ better known to us. If a Christian goes on in the exercise of these three verses, you find about that person the fragrance of Christ. Peter felt that everything was sheer loss that did not lead the saints to a deeper knowledge of Christ. What puts us nearer to Christ has this effect: we feel how unlike Christ we are. It also draws us away from the world, so that we are more fit in character to pass through it.
- Given — these qualities are not clothing put on from outside. They grow out of the divine life already within.
- Grown — Peter wants them abounding, not just present. They abound where Christ dwells in the heart by faith.
- Idle — the older word "barren" hid the plain sense. The failure Peter warns against is doing nothing.
- Fruitful — such a life is full and abundant. It bears fruit for God and brings blessing to people.
- Christ known — the whole line ends in knowing Him better. That is the aim of every dealing God has with us.