Grace and peace to you in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.
Hear the Word of God, from 2 Peter 1.3-8:
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.
When I turned age 50, I began taking daily vitamin supplements.
I must admit: It wasn’t upon my doctor’s advice or as a result of unacceptable medical tests. Every time I walked past a vitamin display in a grocery store or waited for a prescription at a pharmacy, it seemed that my eyes always came to rest upon signs and labels that announced the need for men over 50 years of age to take certain daily supplements in order to stay healthy. When I turned 50, it was almost as if my mind had been programmed by all of that advertising: “You’re 50 now…start taking your daily vitamin supplements ASAP if you want to live!”
I wasn’t sure which supplements were relevant for my particular health status, so I decided I would take as many as seemed likely to apply to me. Thankfully, my doctor informed me at my next office visit that I didn’t need to take that many vitamins, so I was able to cut back to a reasonable number of supplements that directly address my health status at my age and stage of life.
Based on a number of factors, I believed that my daily vitamin supplements had an overall positive impact on my everyday health. Of course, they didn’t turn out to be “magical pills” that would prevent all heath crises…did I mention that I had quadruple-bypass heart surgery this past Christmas? Oh, the wonders of hereditary cholesterol!
Needless to say, the daily vitamin supplements sort of “fell by the wayside” in recent months; the prescribed medications I’ve been taking on a strict daily schedule since my heart surgery have made mealtimes seem like trips to my pharmacy, so my focus has been on following this routine in my recovery. Finally, I’m now starting to be able to reduce the number of medications I take on a daily basis, and, in consultation with my doctor, I’m looking at returning to some dietary supplements for my ongoing health and well-being.
I couldn’t help but think of the use of daily vitamin supplements as I read today’s Scripture passage from 2 Peter 1.3-8: “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life… In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence…”
God has given us everything we need for living a godly life…this is God’s promise. It’s simply up to us to receive what He has given by His divine power, which we do by faith. Faith is the essential diet of life; without it, we decay and die, while, with it, we live and do so abundantly. In order to keep our faith healthy and active, the Apostle Peter calls on us to “supplement our faith” with a list of character traits in verses 5-7: moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, patient endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love for everyone. Peter goes on to write that “the more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” If Lent is a season in which the Church gives special attention to the need for individual and corporate spiritual growth, it seems that Peter’s list of character traits is a good list of “dietary supplements” we need to be taking in order to keep our faith healthy, active, and productive.
Consider the first supplement: “a generous provision of moral excellence.” Moral excellence? In today’s world? On top of our natural “bent to sinning,” as Charles Wesley calls it in one of his famous hymns? It’s readily apparent that Peter did not have access to broadcast/cable news or social media in his day! But what is Peter actually talking about? In the original New Testament Greek language, he uses the term “arete,” which the Apostle Paul uses in Philippians 4.8: “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” While it is not a word used commonly in the New Testament, it was frequently used in the larger culture of the time as “honorable behavior” based on one’s standard of virtue. It’s little wonder that Paul urges followers of Jesus to “think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise,” since the thought is always parent to the deed. Moral excellence is nothing more and nothing less than focusing our thoughts of Jesus, the One who is truly “excellent and worthy of praise,” and setting His character as the standard of virtue by which we live within our daily social context.
In The Glorious Pursuit, Gary Thomas writes:
"Relationally, there are few things so obnoxious as self-righteousness. Spiritually, there are few things so injurious or even lethal as pride. The irony is, the more we experience the character of Christ, the more natural reason we’ll have to become prideful. If we’re not careful, spiritual growth can sabotage itself. Maybe that’s why you cannot read far in the Christian classics without having people testify to the absolute necessity and foundation of humility…but “humility is thinking less about yourself, not thinking less of yourself.” From a Christian perspective, any obsession with the self still is considered pride. Some Christians think that humility means denying what we know to be true with falsely self-deprecating statements. Being humble doesn’t mean pretending we don’t have gifts; Jesus never pretended that He wasn’t the Son of God. Instead of leading us into denial, humility leads us into using our gifts to SERVE rather than to IMPRESS. When people try to prove themselves by their gifts instead of serving people with their gifts, they shrink their lives…Selfless living is liberated living. It recaptures the present, enabling us to live for today without letting our thirst for more destroy our present enjoyment. When we become content to live in the present, God has given us our lives back in a vivid way; we no longer destroy the present by looking for a better future or a more celebrated now. We are set free to live the life that God created uniquely for us…the more we put our own egos out of the way, the more the life and power and purpose of God can pass through us. When this happens, something glorious takes place: We get to experience the quality of eternal life without the taint of our own control and small ego demands."
So, how do we add a “generous provision of moral excellence” to our lives?
Recall the Apostle Paul’s words in Philippians 2:
"You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Moral excellence is generated from a life surrendered in faith to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. We add “a generous provision of moral excellence” to our lives when we focus on Jesus as the Ultimate and Eternal standard of our virtue. It’s not about living UP to His standard in order to “qualify” as “morally excellent persons”…it’s about humbling living our everyday lives THROUGH Jesus by allowing Him to live THROUGH us in SERVICE TO OTHERS! Moral excellence is fundamentally about how we live in relationship to ourselves and to others; it is not about the stress of struggle, but rather it is about the satisfying surrender of service.
Take a look at the world around us today. Can we imagine what it would be like if followers of Christ supplemented their daily faith diet with a generous provision of this moral excellence…including how we express ourselves on social media?
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always.
Amen.
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