The same principle applies to our Christian faith. There are certain things that we must have to furnish our faith so that we can actually live by faith, putting it into practice. This is exactly what the Apostle Peter is teaching believers to do in our text. Peter is exhorting believers to add character to their faith, which will furnish their faith and make it practical. Faith must be applied to life and character is where the rubber meets the road in spiritual life. Faith itself is useless unless accompanied by character.
A Reasonable Exhortation
There are several incentives held out by the Apostle that will motivate a true believer. There are also some warnings against backsliding, or failing to grow in character. Peter says we should be diligent or earnest to add character to our faith. We must be involved in this process or it will not happen. There is a Christian proverb that tells us to “let go and let God.” But proverbs must be properly applied to the right situation. This proverb to let go and let God is certainly applicable to certain situations that are out of our control. But adding character to our faith is not one of those situations. This is something we must do, with God’s help, or it simply will not get done.
If God gives us something to do then He will also supply the ability to do it. The believer has already been given every resource needed in the spiritual life. The resources that we need come through the promises of God. I believe Peter is referring to the promises in the Gospel, though there is a sense in which all of the promises of Scripture may apply in some way to believers in Christ. Believers share in the Divine nature and therefore escape the corruption of the world. The world is going one way and believers are going in another direction. Everything Peter tells us to do in this text is contingent upon sharing in the Divine nature. It is pointless to tell unregenerate people to build godly character, though many preachers today are trying to make that happen!
Peter will go on in the heart of his epistle to argue that we must take advantage of every resource to grow in our faith because of the presence of false teachers that will infiltrate the Church and lead unstable people astray, even to their destruction.
The goal of the Christian life is to have an abundant entrance into the eternal Kingdom. Everything we do is for this single purpose. We must see our growth in character as a preparation to be forever with the Lord. If we do not see it this way it will be easy for us to lapse into legalism or to simply become moralists. But the Christian life should never be reduced to law-keeping or just being good. There is a much higher calling. We want to be ready to dwell in the courts of the Lord forever. The time we have on earth is to prepare for our heavenly home, which is ultimately going to be the New World, or the New Creation, that God will unveil when Jesus comes again.
A Relevant Exhortation
Some doctrine would make believers question the necessity of adding anything to faith. Is faith not sufficient by itself? Are we not saved by faith alone, apart from works? I would affirm that we are saved by faith alone, but true faith is never alone. It is always accompanied by works and by growth in character. Others might ask if we can really add character ourselves, through our own effort, or is this only the work of grace and the Spirit in us? This could be construed as legalism. The answer to this objection is that God has given us all the resources we need to grow, but we must be involved in the process and show diligence to the end.
Another question might be: how are we to add character? What should we do? If this were a modern preacher he would give us several ways to add to our faith. Some Christian traditions provide very structured ways for people to grow. But Peter does not do this and there is a very good reason for this omission here. We cannot grow spiritually by a routine, discipline, or even a law. We must understand the nature of spiritual life in Christ.
Peter’s instruction is a relevant word for our generation because we have so many who claim to have faith. And it is rather easy to say that you believe. But Christian character is what is often lacking from the lives of professed believers. If we are honest we all must confess a need to grow in some area of our character, even if our faith is strong. Peter’s instruction is needed today in the Church because it is often assumed that if people just believe and make some initial decision to follow Christ that this is sufficient and insures their ultimate entrance into the eternal Kingdom. But there is no certainty that an initial conversion or decision will ultimately result in a person entering the eternal Kingdom. Something must happen in between the point of conversion and the day when we leave the body and this world in death. It is also assumed that spiritual growth will just happen automatically if people are true believers and that the individual is passive and uninvolved in the process.
If the process of growth were automatic then there would be no need for this exhortation or for diligence on our part. We would simply let go and let God and coast into heaven. If building character did not really matter then God would simply take us up to heaven the very moment we believe. But God leaves us in the world for a time because there is some work that must be done. Christian character is not optional and it is not automatic.
Why Do We Need To Develop Character?
Most Church members today probably don’t feel that the exhortation in this passage is absolutely necessary. Many have been taught that once you believe there is really nothing else for you to do, except wait for heaven. We should dismiss any notion that developing Christian character is only necessary for those really spiritual Christians who might want to be clergy or go to the mission field while the regular Church members are exempt! Peter is talking to rank-and-file Christians in his epistle. It is absolutely vital that the Christian grows in character – adding virtue to his or her faith. And there is one person for whom you should be very concerned: yourself! It is not your job to make sure that everyone else is adding character to their faith, even though we are usually very good at noticing what others need to work on while ignoring our own faults.
When the Scripture tells us to do something that ought to be enough for us to obey. Peter is not giving us a suggestion here but an imperative. However, Peter is also reasoning with us because we are new creatures in Christ and we have the ability to understand the underlying reasons for this exhortation. We will likely be more motivated to do what Peter says if we understand why he said it.
To Put Our Faith into Practice
I think another way of looking at Peter’s exhortation is that we are to apply our faith to our lives so that our faith is the driving force behind who we are. There should be no area of our lives that does not connect to our faith. Christians should not live compartmentalized lives – putting faith on for Church services or during a crisis only to take it off again when it is not perceived to be needed or applicable. But I fear this is all too common in the Christian community. Religious people do not live by faith. Religion is something that can be turned on or off at our convenience. Our faith must become practical or useful. By this I mean our faith ought to have a powerful and pervasive impact on our lives. Surely this is what James meant when he said that “faith without works is dead.” If faith is not practiced there will be no clear demonstration of its authenticity. How do you know your faith is real if it has nothing to do with you personally and how you think, feel, and act? Faith should form your character and provide an overall focus and direction for your life. We build our lives around the promises of God.
I do not mean to say that faith in God allows us to get what we want out of life, as if God is just a tool for us to use. Unfortunately, this view of faith is nothing more than a way for us to be successful in this world. But God defines success very differently and faith means living to please God while participating in HIS agenda.
Faith is a dynamic force that moves people who believe the promises of God to do what they would not otherwise do by nature. Abraham was willing by faith to sacrifice his son Isaac, reasoning that God could raise Him from the dead. David was willing to fight a giant, reasoning that the battle belonged to the Lord in the first place and that God would give him victory. A person who says “I have faith” but does nothing is probably a liar and is self-deceived. Living by faith means trusting God, but not in a passive way. There are times when we cannot help ourselves and we need to sit quietly and wait on the Lord. But we must exercise our faith just like we would exercise our muscles. You don’t get in shape and lose weight passively sitting in front of the TV at home. You must get in the gym and do something! The same is true with faith. Faith must be put to use or it will atrophy. So put your faith to work and do something with it! That is what Peter is exhorting us to do.
To Replace the Works of the Flesh
Salvation is not simply getting out of something bad, it is getting into something good. We get out of Egypt like the Israelites, but we must also get into the Promises Land. The fruit or works of the flesh must be replaced by the fruit of godly character. We can forget that the purpose of salvation is for us to bear fruit unto God, not simply to be forgiven of sin and then to keep wallowing in it. We often focus on eliminating the negative things, not adding positive things. But the power to eliminate the negative is found in adding the positive character qualities.
You will notice that Peter’s exhortation is entirely positive. He is not telling us what we should avoid or eliminate from our lives but what we need to add and keep on adding. If we do add these character qualities, like self-control, then most of the negative qualities of the flesh will disappear from our lives. We have trouble with the Flesh precisely because we have not added the positive virtues. If you want to avoid getting sick, the best medicine is to be healthy.
Unfortunately Christianity is almost always viewed negatively instead of positively. People think being a Christian just means giving up everything that you might enjoy in life. The Church has managed to teach people that Christianity is morality, which means avoiding certain things. Of course, we can avoid worldly things while never getting around to actually adding any character to our faith! Being moral is not necessarily being Christian. And even morality must be about what we do, in a positive sense, and not just about what we avoid.
Don’t misunderstand me. There are things we must avoid. We must crucify the Flesh and keep it up there on the cross. But surely the reason for this crucifixion of the Flesh is so that the Holy Spirit can start producing a new kind of fruit in our lives. The cessation of carnal living should be a prelude to godly living and not just the creation of a giant vacuum in our lives. I have noticed that the Christians who only speak of what to avoid are usually not very joyful people. Let’s begin to talk more about what we are for and not just what we are against. Replace the works of Darkness with the Light and then let your light shine!
To Reflect the Character of God
We are not simply about morality for its own sake. The goal is godliness which means being like God. We have been born again and God is our heavenly Father. He has given us birth and has implanted His Divine life within us. If you are a believer in Christ you are carrying the Divine DNA around with you! And the children of God should be like their Father. So Peter is not telling believers to do something that is fundamentally against their nature. Yes, it is against the nature of the Old Man that came from our father Adam. But Peter is appealing to that part of us that has been born from above. So not only is Peter’s exhortation possible, it is something we are eager to do because we long to reflect the character of our Father.
From one perspective you were saved for no other purpose than this: that you can be a partaker of the Divine nature and be like God. God’s purpose is to conform those in Christ into the image of His Son, who is the express image of the Father. We have been given the indwelling Holy Spirit so that this amazing transformation can commence even while we are still in these clay vessels that we call our bodies. No believer should say that what Peter is telling us to do is impossible because you have been given life through the Spirit so that you are no longer a debtor to the Flesh that you have to obey its sinful desires. Now we have been joined to Christ so that we can bear fruit to God. This spiritual fruit is actually the character of God reproduced in us!
Divine Resources for Character Development
I anticipate that the response of many people would be that developing the character of God is an impossibly high goal. We must remember that man was originally made in the image of God and so we already have been made to reflect something of God’s glory, though we fall short because of sin. Salvation through Christ, who is Himself the perfect image of God, is the way that God has made to redeem that which originally bore His image. Though we fall short in Adam we are being remade in Christ in the image of our Savior, who is the image of the invisible God. So we should be able to see that salvation is much more than just morality or even law-keeping. If God wants us to be like Him then we can be assured that He will give us the means to accomplish His will. It is possible to grow in character because we already have every resource we need. Salvation is a complete package that leaves us lacking nothing, though the believer will not automatically realize everything about salvation the moment he or she believes.
There is a process of growth that begins when we believe and will eventually, unless something short-circuits the process, end up in eternal glory where will be like Christ completely. At this stage in the process, when we are still in the world and in the body, we are a work in progress. God is working in us but we must also work out our salvation. There is a sense in which we are not saved yet. Salvation has a beginning, a middle, and an end. We have been saved – that is justification. We are being saved – that is sanctification. And we will be saved – that is glorification.
Peter’s exhortation is really about our sanctification. He is writing to people who have already believed and been justified. Nothing Peter says here contradicts the doctrine of justification by faith. But now that we have been justified we must also be sanctified. Faith is just the beginning, not the end of our salvation.
The Beginning of the New Life
Everything must begin with faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11.6). Faith is not just a step in our salvation, like a one-time exercise that must be performed before we can advance to the next step. The righteous live by faith. Faith is to the spiritual life what breathing is to the health of the body. No faith means no life. Faith is like a spiritual life-line that connects us to Heaven. If we don’t have faith then Peter’s exhortation is not meant for us because we cannot add to what we don’t already possess. The trouble is that there are many professors who are not possessors. That is, there are many who say they have faith but do not manifest the evidence of faith in their lives. We are talking about faith, not religion or Church membership. It is necessary for us to examine ourselves to see if we are really believing. Our faith must be in the promises of God, which is how we then participate in the Divine Nature. Faith is the key to everything in the Christian life. Faith is not purely intellectual but is something we do in our hearts. In other words, faith involves the whole person and not just the mind. Here I am mostly interested in what faith does in us and not in defining faith, though every believer should have an understanding of what faith is (See Heb. 11.1).
In C.S. Lewis’ story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the children open the door of an old wardrobe and are transported into the world of Narnia. Lewis was not just a master storyteller, he was also a master of metaphor. The wardrobe is about what faith does for us. When a person turns to God in faith it is like a door has been opened and that person has entered into a whole new world. When we go through the wardrobe door, life will never be the same again because we will never be the same. And yet going through that Door is just the beginning of our adventure. Faith is a journey. Along this journey there are many things that we must learn, even through conflict, temptation, and pain. God wants to use us, but we must be made ready. Faith makes us ready for God to work in us.
But faith is only the beginning and not the sum total of our character transformation. No one who comes to God in faith is instantly made perfect in his or her character. God accepts us through faith, not because we have a flawless character.
Salvation is by grace through faith, not by works. We do not develop character so that God will accept us. We develop character because we are God’s children. We are already accepted and THEN we start to work on our character. We do this with God’s help, which is the work that grace does in our lives. God’s grace is God’s help. God wants to make us into new creatures who are pulsating with Divine life, love, joy, power, and beauty. Its going to take a lot of grace to make that happen. And when we finally stand before our Maker and receive praise from Him, it will only be by His grace that this glory will be ours. That journey to glory begins with faith.
The Knowledge of God
Every race has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Getting a good start is important to a runner, but does not necessarily mean he or she will finish well. Faith is our starting point, but we must then run the race that has been marked out for us. Glory is the finish line. But in between we must run the race. Christians tend to celebrate the beginning of the Race. We are overjoyed when people are converted. When our beloved brothers and sisters leave the world in death we will miss them, but we are also glad when a person dies in the Faith and enters into glory. But that time in between is more difficult and for some reason the modern Church does not talk very much about what happens in between conversion and death. But it is that in between stage that Peter is addressing. This is the time to develop character. We have everything we need to do this. We are not on our own. We have God’s grace to help us.
So how does this work? The ability to add character to our faith is found in our knowledge of God. Everything we need is found in God Himself and is realized through our intimate association with the entire Godhead. When we encounter God we are changed. I am not talking merely about intellectual knowledge. A person may know about God and yet not really know God. God is a living presence and not just a fact in a book. We come to know God through reading the Scriptures, but this is not like studying some historical figure who is passed away. We do not study God as if He were some object to be dissected. We come to know God like we come to know a person because God is a person. I do not mean that God is a man. I mean that God is personal and not just a Force or a Mind.
When we come to know God we find that we are actually entering into a Divine fellowship that consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are being welcomed into this Divine relationship that has always existed and will always exist. The knowledge of God is more like being part of a family than it is like going to school to learn algebra. Knowing God is eternal life (John 17.3). This eternal life is found in fellowship with God. Just being with God is a life-giving experience. We remember how Moses’ face radiated with the glory of God after Moses came down from Sinai. And that was a brief exposure that soon faded away. Through Christ was can gaze continually at the glory of God and we are transformed by it, even though now we see through a glass darkly. But the transformation of our character begins now as we gaze at the glory of the Lord in the face of Jesus Christ.
The knowledge of God comes through the light of the Gospel of Christ and from no other source. If our vision of God is growing dim it is because we have lost sight of the Gospel of Christ and we need to look more earnestly at the face of Jesus.
This kind of knowledge has nothing to do with a ritual or procedure. The living God cannot be packaged in a program or a discipline. That is too small of a box for the glory of God! The folks who are looking for such things do so because they do not know the living God and they are not gazing at the face of Jesus. When we have seen His glory we will have done with lesser things. When we have God we find that we need nothing else. And through Christ we have been given access to God. So let’s approach His Throne of Grace with confidence and we will find all the grace we need to be everything God wants us to be!
A Changed Affection
Peter says that we must be earnest or diligent. There must be some effort and some desire on our part or this work will not get done. It’s true that we can’t do it ourselves by our efforts alone. We need God’s grace. But God’s grace does not drag us along kicking and screaming! Some people seem to think that God will overpower them in order to bring them to a point of repentance and change. But those who have to be overpowered are seldom the recipients of a blessing from God. God may discipline His children to produce repentance and make them ready to be blessed. But the blessing does not come to us when we are resisting God. God is working to change our character, so we should be prepared to submit to this process instead of stubbornly resisting His will.
God only works with those who have a desire for Him. We cannot be passive and expect a blessing. We must be like Jacob when he wrestled with that angel all through the night and refused to let him go until he got the blessing. God can work with a man like Jacob who wants the blessing more than anything else in the world and is willing to do just about anything to get it! You may not be everything that you need to be, but you can WANT the blessing of God and that counts for something with God. In our present state while we are in these weak, mortal bodies our desire to serve God will usually fall short of our ability to actually carry it out. But God will bless our desires to grow. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness shall be filled.
Promises for the Faithful and Warnings for the Backsliders
What the Christian must beware of is beginning to think that this process of growth in character is something that just happens automatically and that once we have believed there is nothing else that we must do. This kind of thinking can lead to slothfulness in the Christian life. A routine and a discipline cannot by itself insure that we will be growing, but that does not mean that we can be sloppy and undisciplined and expect to grow. We must avoid these extremes. One person will say that there is nothing we can do but believe, while another person advocates some kind of disciplined routine. Christian people tend to go to extremes and there are trends in the Christian community where the pendulum will often swing in one direction or the other.
But Peter is teaching us a kind of balance. We must have faith, everything begins there, but we must then add to our faith and we must apply ourselves diligently. So we must avoid the extremes of being overly mystical or becoming legalistic and trusting in our works. It is not wrong to work as a Christian but it is wrong to trust in our works as the basis for our justification.
It is not our part to begin to tell people exactly how to discipline themselves and how to order their lives. Peter does not do that here and we will get off track if we emphasize how people ought to live their lives. However, there are certain things that simply must be done. You must work this out for yourself. And you must be serious about this and put some effort into this activity or it will not happen. So Peter is motivating us here to do this work of adding to our faith, but he is not giving us specific directions. The important thing is that we are motivated in a certain direction and then the Apostle is confident that people who have faith and who are guided by the Holy Spirit will be equipped to do the Lord’s will. To motivate us Peter supports his exhortation to add to our faith by showing that there are great benefits in the Christian life that come with character and great dangers when we continue to lack these character qualities. So there are promises along with warnings to conclude this passage and we may need both the promises and the warnings to motivate us, depending on where we are in this process of growth. A person who is doing well might simply need to remember the promises to be motivated to do even more. A person who is falling back will need to be warned so that they will turn things around.
Weakness and Inconsistency
There are certain things that can plague the lives of believers and contradict the very purpose for salvation through Christ. These things must be addressed because Christ did not deliver us so that we would go back to that old life. Christians who go backwards instead of forwards do not glorify God and in the process they will also probably make themselves miserable as well! If this backsliding is not corrected it will eventually lead a person away from Christ entirely.
We can be delivered from a life of weakness and inconsistency. It is possible for us to be stable and strong, with possible moments of weakness or discouragement being the exception not the norm. I fear that moments of strength and consistency are the exception and not the rule for many Church members today. We should not think that being a Christian is always a mountaintop experience. But always living in the valley of despair or always falling into temptation and sin should not be the normal state of the believer. It might surprise some people to know that Christians do not have to be weak and always stumbling and falling. Some people may not know what to do to be strong. Some people are living in a wilderness, spiritually speaking, and they don’t know where to find a well of water to refresh themselves. Some people are trying to drink out of dirty cisterns. There are all kinds of religious things our there that promise strength and yet fail to deliver. But Christians should not be constantly blaming other people for their lack of character. We may have had some serious setbacks in the past.
But the important thing is what we are doing now. We are responsible for our own spiritual lives. But if we don’t do these things and add to our faith we will be unstable and will eventually fall, possibly beyond recovery.
The Full Assurance of Faith
We can have full assurance of our calling and election. We must be able to know that we belong to the Lord, that we please Him, and that we are destined for eternal glory. It is possible to know that you have been called and elected by God. Adding these character qualities is the evidence. If you are not sure about your election you must look for the evidence. Is there any proof that you have believed? What difference has faith and salvation made in your life? Are you a different person now or are you still doing the same old things, thinking about life the same old way? If you have been saved then you must know it by the different kind of life you now have. If nothing has changed then what salvation has actually occurred? Perhaps you have not grown or you have fallen backwards into the old life.
If we know our calling and election then there can be nothing that will shake us. If we don’t know these things then almost any trial or pain could be our undoing. There are many people who seem to be doing good in the Christian life up until that moment when some trial comes their way. Then all of the sudden they are filled with doubts about their faith and even about the goodness of God. It is not uncommon to hear people say they are angry with God because they have encountered some hardship in life. That hardship has shaken their faith. I would argue that they were not adding to their faith these other character qualities and so when the storm came they were not prepared for it.
When we are not growing the first thing to leave us will be our assurance. All kinds of doubts will begin to flood our minds. This is directly from our Enemy who is constantly shooting his flaming darts at us. If we are not adding to our faith and being diligent about the Christian life the Devil will attack us and find us vulnerable. And the Devil loves to attack the Saints with doubt and discouragement. The Saints must remember who they are in Christ in order to have confidence. This is the confidence that enables us to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus!
Preparing for Eternity
The whole point of this exhortation is so that we might be prepared for the very presence of God. Someday either we will leave the world or the world itself will leave and we will stand before God. Every person is on a collision course with God and life is really about nothing else other than preparing our souls for that critical moment when we must give an account to our Creator. The Day of Judgement will be the time when the Master will inspect His servants and all their works. There are some who will not stand on that day but will be unacceptable to the Master and will be excluded from His Kingdom.
We are to add to our faith so that this terrible fate will not be ours. We want to add to our faith these character qualities so that we will hear “Well done good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Master!” When we hear those words that will be glory – having the eternal praise and pleasure of our Lord.
If we add to our faith, then we can expect to spend eternity in the presence of God. When our time on earth is done, Christ will bring us into His eternal Kingdom where we will fit perfectly, having been prepared on earth for this glory. We can have an abundant entrance there. That is, we can go on our way to heaven with our sails filled by the Winds of God, a smile on our faces, and a song in our hearts. Sometimes we might feel as if we are hanging on by our fingernails and just barely making it in the good fight of faith. Perhaps we always feel this way because we are not adding to our faith the character qualities that are necessary for us to be more than conquerors. After the dust from the Battle has cleared we shall see His face and reign forever with Christ on His throne. We must have that eternal perspective or we will find ourselves discouraged. If we are not preparing for eternity then the tyranny of the temporal will prove too much for us. The modern world is filled with distractions that try to steal our affection away from heavenly things. It has never been more important for Christians to set their affections on things above. This is not so we can escape what is unpleasant in the world, but so that we can expect to have an abundant entrance into the World to Come!
It should be the desire of every believer to keep growing and increasing. If we are not moving forward then we are in danger. This also implies some humility in realizing that we have not yet arrived. This process of growth does not stop as long as we are in the body. Even if you have made great strides in some area there is probably some other area that needs work. The Spirit has His ways of showing us where we still need some work. We should be sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit and to the Word of God to identify those areas of our lives that still need growth. So keep adding character to your faith until the day your faith becomes sight!
