Add virtue to faith
Key Verses: 1, 3, 8, 13, not done 16, 20, 21
How do we become pleasing to God? Peter answers this in very plain language. We are acceptable to God because of His righteousness and not our own. Our righteousness “is as filthy rags” in God’s sight. Think of the most disgusting, maggot infested stuff you could ever imagine put on a rag. That is what our own efforts at obtaining a righteous life look like. They are stinky.
Have you ever watched the food network when they have the cake designing contests? The desserts those people come up with are amazing. Now imagine an Easy Bake Oven cake entered right next to them. Is there any comparison? Is there any chance the judges will pick your entry rather than the magnificent works of art? Of course not! And yet that is what we do when we expect our efforts to match up to Jesus’ perfection.
In Jesus we have every we need to live lives pleasing to God. Notice that we get this power through our knowledge of Him, not our knowledge about Him. We can have a personal knowledge of God. His is not a distant watchmaker who wound up creation and then let it go. He is intimately involved in creating and sustaining our world. He stays connected so that we can experience His glory and goodness. And this glory and goodness bring us promises that have His power and character backing them up. We can count on them coming true.
So if we know Him, what is our next move? Peter lays out a list of character qualities that we should add to our faith. And then he says that if we have these qualities we will be effective and productive in our relationship with Jesus. To put it another way, God will fulfill His purpose in us, and we will fulfill our purpose in Him.
One of the important facts to grasp is that we are all going to die. Peter likens it to a living in a tent, a temporary dwelling. Someday we will get a permanent home. And he knows this because he is an eyewitness to the events. He saw Jesus in His glory. He witnesses the miracles, the Transfiguration, His death, and His resurrection. The words Jesus spoke came true right before his eyes. That is how he knows with certainty that this life is temporary, that a permanent home awaits.
Not only was Peter an eyewitness of the events, but he also had the writings of the Prophets. He knew he could trust the Scriptures. The Scriptures were filled with Truth about Jesus that unfolded over time and came to fulfillment. He came to trust it because the things written came to pass. That is because Scripture is not an invention of human beings. God breathed the Scriptures. Man wrote as they received this inbreathing of God. That is how things written hundreds of years before could come to pass in statistically impossible detail.
We can trust the Scriptures.
The Arnold Journey 