Grace and peace to you in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.
Hear the Word of God, from 2 Peter 1.1-11:
1 This letter is from Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ. I am writing to you who share the same precious faith we have. This faith was given to you because of the justice and fairness of Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. 2 May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. 3 By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 4 And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. 5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. 10 So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away. 11 Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I still remember the day I learned the most important mathematical concept in the universe.
No, I wasn’t in a class on mathematics, and, no, I wasn’t studying Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein.
I was in seminary, in a graduate-level class on theology.
The professor walked to the blackboard (yes, I’m giving away my age again by mentioning blackboards!), picked up a piece of chalk (ditto on the age thing), and wrote the following equation:
Grace + Response = Growth
According to my professor, all of theology (at least in the tradition in which I was educated and have served) can be categorized and summarized in this one equation. Frankly, I thought he was oversimplifying things WAY too much.
Then, I read what the Apostle Peter wrote in his second letter, preserved in the pages of the New Testament.
Yes, Peter…the same fisherman from Galilee who spent three years as Jesus’ disciple, listening to His preaching and teaching first-hand, witnessing His miraculous power at work, and gradually (in fits and starts, granted) growing into the name Jesus gave him: Peter, which means “rock” (Matthew 16.18).
If anyone ought to know his theology (which simply means “the study of God”), it’s Peter, and in the first chapter of his second letter, Peter reminds those of us who follow Jesus as Savior and Lord of these pertinent points:
"May God give you more and more grace and peace as you grow in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life."
Grace is entirely of God and is entirely from God.
"In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence."
We are called to respond in faith to what God has done in Jesus.
"The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins."
When we respond in faith to God’s grace, we grow.
Notice that Peter uses the word “grow” as bookends in his discussion. He begins by praying that God will give the readers of his letter “more and more grace as you GROW in your knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord.” He concludes by affirming that “the more you GROW like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Growth is not optional; it is an expectation of the Christian life.
Yet, growth is not a legalistic demand; it is an opportunity to become as productive and useful to Jesus in life as possible!
The season of Lent is the 40-day period of preparation that annually precede Easter. The Church has used this season for centuries to emphasize the cruciality of the death and resurrection of Jesus; the cross and the empty tomb are the all-important pivot-points of human history, and, through them, we as individuals can experience the abundant life Jesus promises in John 10.10.
In The Glorious Pursuit, author Gary Thomas writes that we are called “to live the truly abundant life as God defines it – a life made possible by God’s grace, empowered by God’s Spirit, and modeled by God’s Son…most of us as Christians can fall into seasons where we spend far more time and energy trying to look our best, lower our golf handicap, increase our social-media followers, lose weight, regrow hair, and increase the size of our financial investments far more than we think about growing in humility, surrender, discernment, and patience. This, even though Scripture teaches us otherwise (in 2 Peter 1)…”
In our Scripture, Peter lists the “virtues” of the Christian life:
"Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone."
The season of Lent reminds us of the important of growing these virtues in the gardens of our lives. As Thomas writes, “Growing in the virtues won’t save us; but salvation must lead to growing in the virtues or one could question the reality of our salvation experience…the truth is, we need a process of renewal, a deep digging and infilling of our souls with something new so that on the site of our former life, a new life stands. We want God to take us as people who are stuck in old habits, trapped in the living death of boredom or irrelevance, possessed by our own possessions, and to deliver us from ourselves by a long miracle of spiritual transformation. We need Him to dig out those abrasive aspects of our character and replace them with a refreshing vitality, ultimately creating a new personality, the promised life of Christ in us.”
Is this possible? Peter writes that “by his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life.” This is God’s intention; this is God’s promise; it starts with God.
Grace + Response = Growth
This Lent, after the year 2020 turned out to be, I want to follow Peter’s instruction to supplement my faith “with a generous provision of moral excellence.” I’m going to devote myself to a study of…and, more importantly, a faithful commitment to…the virtues of a godly life that Peter lists. Because, more than anything else, I want my life to ultimately “add up” in Jesus.
How about you?
The GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always!
Amen.
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