Faith’s Worldview Guide

2 Peter 1:5-9 

5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

Because of the grace we have been called into and the promises in Christ, we need to be diligent in working out our salvation’s sanctification.  Here is a pattern of things to begin with in building on our faith we have been gifted with.  The foundation is virtue (modesty and purity of thought), then comes knowledge (knowing the word of God for who He is and  to follow), after that is self-control (mastering your desires to set them on God’s), followed by perseverance (steadfast patient endurance to run life’s race), then with godliness (becoming more like Christ in attitude and actions) built on these things, with brotherly love on that godliness and all before it, culminating in agape love that is not conditional on others’ actions, but solely on their being created by God and treated accordingly.  These mindsets and character traits form faith’s worldview guide, an outline of the path we must navigate as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  By making these our areas of effort, we allow God’s Spirit to work them into our souls.  By pursuing sanctification in these areas we will be fruitful in knowing Jesus Christ, not in an ordered set of doctrines but in a transformational relationship with our Lord at work in us for His glory and plan for good.  If we refuse to address these, we are so shortsighted that we may as well be spiritually blind as it says here.  To ignore our diligence in growth to become like Christ is to willingly forget our deliverance from the filth of sin and its due punishment of judgement.  We have been saved from sin to be like Him, not to continue to wallow within it.