Advice from an apostle...building on the Rock

It comes as no surprise that any process of spiritual growth starts with faith. Faith must come first for we are saved by faith. We are not saved by any process, work, activity or goodness. It is simply through true, honest faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord. However, our spiritual growth after salvation is often comparable to a house whose foundation has been laid. We have had a bunch of dirt and junk dug out of us and a true, strong foundation laid, which foundation is Christ in us. Paul even uses this metaphor in 1 Corinthians 3 to illustrate how we are responsible to build on the foundation Christ puts in our lives through His work of grace. We do have a responsibility to work with the gifts God gives us, to act and obey, to build on the foundation. That is what Peter tells us here, he says to add to your faith moral excellence. The step which best follows our surrender to Christ’s Lordship is clearly to begin lining up the motivations, attitudes and actions of our lives with His values. This will mean some changes in the why and the what we do in our daily lives. These changes are not “works salvation” but simply the next step in the construction process. God will begin to convict us and lead us into the image of Christ. I suppose for some this may be a quick process, I don’t know; but it certainly wasn’t for me. I concur with Paul’s complaints about the difficulty of lining up his actions with the desires of the Holy Spirit who was working within him to change his desires to fit his Lord’s. Our natural course is to follow the desires of our sinful nature, usually just the opposite of God’s choice. The journey to change has indeed been a long process for me, and one which is far from over. The Lord works in me like a master craftsman shaping the details of the structure upon the foundation of Christ. He encourages me to choose and step out in obedience, not to shrink back in fear. I know that I am not capable on my own, none of us are, yet that is not to make us slothful in simply ‘waiting on the Lord to guide us’. Peter encourages us here to act, to add, to add, to add, to continue acting, to do something ourselves. This is important, for though it is through Christ that we get the power, still we must take proactive steps ourselves. The first and perhaps only proactive step necessary or dare I say possible, is obedience.

After moral excellence in this list comes knowledge. We are urged to add knowledge to our moral excellence. Now I am a firm believer in the simplicity of the gospel and of our need to be like children in our faith, but I am also aware of the power we receive by knowledge. We should seek to have our eyes open til we can see and understand the true nature of the reality of this world we live in. This type of knowledge comes only through study and the learning of details beyond the simple faith and moral goodness of popular Christianity. As we look deeper into Christ’s parables, for example, we learn how the kingdom of God works and apply the truth to our lives. Another illustration of the importance of knowledge for me personally is the understanding God is giving me through studying about the image of God in humanity. I want to understand what it means for us to live out his likeness in our world today. Or, knowledge can even come from study in school, as unbelievable as that may be :) I was blessed deeply a couple years ago in Christian Theology class studying the academic understanding of the nature of God Himself. All these are simply examples that occur to me to illustrate the value of knowledge to the Christian. Paul urges us to seek the meat of the word, not the milk only. We are to search for knowledge.

Of course the caution in all this is the reminder that knowledge puffs up and creates prideful people apart from humility and love. Worldly knowledge is diametrically opposed to the knowledge of God, so we must use discernment when choosing where and what we search for, but search we must if we wish to continue the growth process. They say that knowledge is power, and through knowledge of Truth we truly do gain spiritual power to overcome and live victoriously. More on this later.
The next step is self control. I wonder sometimes what caused Peter to put these in the particular order he did. I almost think I would have put this one earlier, perhaps paired beside moral excellence. They seem to go together well, but for some reason Peter didn’t ask me. Perhaps he knew that until we have developed a knowledge base to inform our theology and our worldview we could be in danger from too much focus on morality. With self control can come legalism, criticism and judgment. Could it be that people focusing solely on morality and self control without a deeper knowledge of how our lives are supposed to work, they could easily become caught in a trap of pharisaism? Besides that, it may be here that we apply the knowledge in another way. It is through the knowledge we gain from studying spiritual warfare, for example, that we are empowered to overcome temptations and to live victoriously over sloth and any bad habit that opposes self control. Perhaps that is why Peter put self control in the list where he did. Certainly it is something we cannot neglect, else we live like yo-yo Christians, sin and repent, sin and repent, time after time without any true change. We must build up our habits just like supports within a house to keep everything up, or the walls will fall every time we prop them up again with good intentions.

So knowledge leads us into self control, and Peter says we must continue in perseverance. It would not work to build and support one wall of the house and stop. A persevering builder will keep on keepin’ on and git–r-done. Perseverance is continuing when all the world tells you “hey by the way, nobody uses those old outdated foundations anymore”. Perseverance is going on when your generator power goes out, when your subcontractor steals your supplies, your hammer arm feels like it’s been run over by the cement truck and the government raises your property taxes through the roof. Literally. Or something like that. We must not grow tired of doing good, but persevere in the process of growth, of moral excellence, knowledge and self control, all infused with divine power by our faith in our foundation.

In our perseverance we are told to add godliness. Now, I tend to think that if anyone can do the first few steps in this process, they must have already achieved a level of godliness so far beyond my scope that it would be like the Empire State Building compared to my little house I think I am building. Nonetheless, the list goes on. My uncertainty about this step in Peter’s process tells me I must not have reached this point yet, but here are a few thoughts that occur to me. As these are simply my thoughts, who know how close they lie to reality, but I try to think, what could change to make a person more godly at this point in the growth process? In what other way is God different from humanity that we must change to be more like Him? Moving beyond personal goodness, I see the other completely un-human thing about God is His care for others. He is focused on the well being of us humans, rather than on ease or enjoyment for Himself. Up to this point in the process, everything we are told to work on relates only to ourselves and our choices. We believe in Christ, we try to please Him in our actions and our desires; we try to control ourselves and persevere. Here perhaps, God wishes to change our focus outward to help others also become like Him. I notice that every one of the rest of the following steps in this process relate to other people, not to our self only. Perhaps there comes a point at which God has developed our actions and thoughts to the level that we see the world to some extent as if through His eyes. Then we can begin to know how to invest in other people around us. In fact, the next step in our growth process is brotherly kindness, the treating of everyone around us as family. Now in reality Christians ARE our family and even more, they are parts of our very own body if we are truly part of the body of Christ. Knowing this, I am astounded by the unbelievable level of segregation and criticism and general dysfunction within the church. We aren’t just speaking of a house divided, but of a body whose limbs and organs are seeking to perform completely different and often counter-productive and self destructive goals. I never wish to meet a person whose physical body functions as poorly as much of the body of Christ does today.
We are urged elsewhere in Scripture to rather treat others with love “especially those of the household of faith”. In addition, since we are taught to love everyone, including our enemies, we know that this idea should carry over to those who are not Christians and even those who are directly opposed to us. Love is, in fact the next and final point in Peter’s process here. Love moves beyond merely treating others like family, for it is the most important and fundamental thing according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, where he ranks love even higher than the very faith that began this whole journey.

The reason, perhaps, is that love is truly the deepest motivation for all the good that has, will, is, or can take place. It was God’s desire to share His love that brought about our creation, and love of course, was the motive for our salvation and is the most profound level of our growth. Love is more than selflessness, love is more than action, it is more than giving up for others. Love is a heart-level choice, powered by our will. It is deeper than the mind, much deeper than emotion. It is a value choice to put another individual in the place of self. With love, our innate instinct for self preservation begins to vanish, replaced by a powerful drive for His glorification. There is no need, and we have no ability, to preserve or protect the person or safety of God as we desire to do for our own. Our responsibility is for His name. Our life becomes a sacrifice poured out to bolster His reputation. That is the choice that empowers our drive to love other people. It matters not whether they deserve love, return our love, or even know we exist. We are to love them regardless. Now we make the same choice for other people that we made in regards to God. Their well-being becomes more important to us than our own. Of course, remember that it is their well-being we seek, not whatever they may want from us or expect us to do or not to do. There is a reality in tough love that is true. At times the most loving thing we can do for a person is the very thing they don’t want. The motivation is key, for love is a will level motivation. When making difficult relational decisions, those inspired by love are never at the same time driven by spite, self interest, ego or any other sinful desire. This is; of course, completely foreign to any natural human motivation, but that is truly the point. If we submit to God’s process of spiritual growth I believe the love of Christ truly will compel us to love others, to glorify God and live as He desires. Peter put it this way: For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

That is a goal I am willing to work for
What about you?

In Truth,
Stephen