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2 Peter 1:5-11 "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. But he
that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off,
and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
Wherefore the rather,
brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election
sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so
an entrance shall be
ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." A couple of devotions
ago, we looked at the
definition of the word "virtue." It means to voluntarily
obey truth. Notice, in the verses above that we are supposed
to add certain things to
our spiritual life with all dilligence, that means that
these things are very important. First of all you must have
faith, you must be saved ("For
by grace are ye saved through faith...") It is interesting
that the very next thing that you should add to your faith
is virtue. The first thing
that the Lord wants you to learn after being saved is how to
obey His Word. That is the most important thing to learn
after being saved,
because if you don't get it you can't go any farther. Notice
that you must add these things to your faith in the specific
order that they are
listed; you can't go to knowledge until you add virtue. You
must learn to apply the knowledge and obey it before you
gain a knowledge of the Word
of God. I am not going to take the time to define the rest
of these things, that would be a good study for you to do on
your on. What I do
want to get to is the result of the addition of these
things, they will make you fruitful and able to bear fruit.
However, if you lack these
things you cannot see afar off, you will have no vision, no
thankfulness for what the Lord has done and no fruit. If you
add these things you will
never fall, but will live abundantly in the Lord both now
and in eternity.
Until next time, may the Lord bless you.
Sis. Tanya |
in the
