03 What Peter Teaches About Virtue, Knowledge, and Self-Control (2 Peter 1:5–6)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that not only explains what scripture means, but teaches you how to figure it out. I'm Krisan Marotta. The lecture notes for today's talk are on my website at wednesdayintheword.com slash two Peter 3. Or you can click on the link below this podcast. This is the third talk in our series on the book of 2 Peter, and today we're going to be looking at chapter 1, verses 5 and 6. If you missed last week's podcast, I really encourage you to go back to listen to it because this is a continuation of last week. Last week we covered the context for what we're looking at today, and we looked at how to approach a list like this in Scripture. If you're just joining us, I'm going to review briefly, but I really encourage you to go back and listen to the podcast because I'm going to assume you know what I said last week and I don't have to explain it. So just to review a little bit, Peter is writing to churches who are troubled by false teachers. The false teachers are distorting the gospel and they are encouraging others to pursue an immoral lifestyle. And Peter began this letter by reminding them that the gospel is meant to lead us into eternal life and godliness. So all of humanity has these two great needs. We need to be forgiven for our sinfulness and we need to be freed from the corruption of our sins. We need to be made holy. We need to be given a character like the character of God, and God is solving those two problems through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The false teachers loose among his readers are preaching a different gospel. Their goal is not life, not godliness, and they are leading others astray, distorting the gospel of Jesus. So in the section we're looking at today, Peter is explaining the connection between believing the gospel and pursuing a lifestyle of godliness. And that's the purpose, that's the end that to which he is giving us this list in one five through seven. So these qualities are associated with belief in the gospel. And I argued last week that the order of these qualities is a not only this but also that kind of order. It's not a logical progression. I don't think it's a progression or priority, but rather he's filling out an idea and not only this, but also that. I also argued that these qualities are not add-ons or bonus extras that help you become a nice person, nor are they the things you need to pursue in order to grow in spiritual maturity. So I argued that these are not the cause of spiritual maturity, rather they result from spiritual maturity. They are the inevitable result of a heart attitude change of coming to faith. When we come to believe the gospel, these qualities follow. They're not things we do to gain God's favor, to prove we're believers, they are things God does for us as he grows us in faith. So they become the very things that we want to pursue, the things we want out of life, and in that sense, they follow from a heart of faith. And again, I explained that in detail in the last podcast, and I encourage you to back up a week and listen to it. What we're going to do today then is look at the qualities in the list and ask what this quality is, what it means, what he's describing, and then why would Peter include it in the list? What does it have to do with faith, and why would he put this here? So I'm going to read five through seven. We will probably only get through the qualities in five and six, and then we will finish the ones in seven in the next podcast. But I'm going to go ahead and read all three verses. This is Second Peter chapter one verses five through seven, and I'm reading from the English Standard Version. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness. And godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. Okay, so last week we looked at the context and we talked about what he means by this very reason. This week we're going to look at the words themselves, the virtues in this list. And the first one, we are to diligently and zealously pursue a faith that leads to virtue or moral excellence. The Greek word here is arate. It's translated virtue and in some translations moral excellence. The word is not used very often in the New Testament, but it is used very frequently in classical Greek literature. The basic idea of the word is excellence or imminence. It describes not settling for average but pursuing the highest, pursuing the best a human being can be. And in classical Greek literature, then we find it in many contexts. Different philosophers had different ideas of what constituted moral excellence in human beings, but the basic idea was being the best you ought to be. For example, for a warrior to be morally excellent, he might need to be strong or courageous or maybe shrewd or crafty. For a spouse, moral excellence wouldn't probably involve faithfulness, honesty, and commitment, and so forth in different roles, you might need different kinds of qualities, but the basic idea underlying it is that you are the best you ought to be or the best you can be. So the question we need to ask is Bible students is what what's the nuance, what's the flavor Peter has in mind here? Since the New Testament authors don't use this word much, we don't have a definitive clue from Scripture to help us sort out what Peter means. This word is used only four times in the New Testament. Twice it refers to the excellence of God, and twice it refers to the excellence that we human beings should pursue. But two of those four uses are right here in Second Peter. One of them refers to God and one refers to humans, but they're in the same context, so it'd be reasonable to conclude that they're related. In fact, we just saw this word in verse three of chapter one, and there it refers to God. This is Second Peter one three. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence. That word excellence is Arate, our word from one five. So it's God calling us by his own glory and his excellence. Let's examine the context. So the excellence of God is part of what God is calling us to. We saw this when we talked about the first three verses. It's part of his divine nature, and it's part of the divine nature that we will come to share. It is through his glory and arate or moral excellence that he has called us and that he has promised we will share in that glory and in that moral excellence. In short, we will be holy like he is holy. Once we are freed from the slavery of sin and all its corruption, we will have a character that is excellent like God's character is excellent. We will be the kind of people human beings were meant to be, and we will share in that aspect of God's character, his holiness. So becoming like God is coming to share in his arate or in his moral excellence. So then in one five, he says faith leads to a pursuit of this moral excellence. This is a pursuit of God's arate or excellent holy character. That righteousness that God has promised to give us fully one day in his kingdom is something that we should be pursuing now as people of faith. Now there are many things about God's excellence that we are not going to share. We are not going to share his power, we're not going to share his omniscience, and we could go on in that list. But one thing we have been promised is we will share his holy character. We will be holy, morally excellent, arate, like he is holy. So our faith tells us that the highest goal in life is to share this moral excellence, that we are hoping to be freed from sin and fully and finally freed from it and given a character like God's character. So freed from the corruption of sin and sharing the moral excellence of God. That's our destiny, that's our hope. That's what the gospel promises us. It promises to save us from death and sin and condemnation and lead us into holiness or excellence. We will be everything a human being ought to be because we will be like our Creator, sharing his glorious moral excellence, or this word. So if we really believe the gospel, then this moral excellence is the primary goal of our lives. It is something we long for, something we hope for. It is the reason, part at least in large part, why we turned away from our sin and turned to the gospel. Because we want to be freed from sin and we want to be made holy like God is holy. So it is not something that we would be indifferent to now. Rather, we would long for it, hope for it, strive for it, hunger and thirst for it. It's part of the nature of faith. I think this is what Jesus meant in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 6, where he said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. So to embrace the gospel is to recognize that there is this huge gap between who I am now and who God has promised I will become or who I'm going to be, and as I grow in faith, increasingly the great longing of my life is to see that gap closed. So if I believe the promises of God are true and I want to share what God offers in the gospel, then I will be grieved by my moral failures, my sinfulness, my corruption now, and long for the day when God releases me from them. I will hunger and thirst for that holiness, that righteousness, that moral excellence He's promised. Now Peter is not suggesting that I can be morally perfect right now, or that we believers can be holy whenever we want to be. Rather, that this pursuit of holiness will become my guiding star, so to speak. It will become a mark of my character, it will become something I long for and hope eagerly for and trust God to provide in His way and in His time. So we won't be made perfect now. We are still sinners, but we are forgiven. We've been given a down payment in the Holy Spirit, and we've been given the promise that through this journey of faith we will eventually become the people we long to be. So the fundamental longing of my life is that I want to be holy like God is holy, I want to be freed from this slavery to sin. And this, of course, contrasts greatly with what the false teachers are teaching. Peter says they are marked by a pursuit of greed and self-indulgence. They are not marked by a pursuit of holiness. So in this first virtue, in this first statement, he captures one of the main themes of this letter. Since the gospel teaches us that we will share in God's moral excellence, then having come to faith, that will lead us to want that moral excellence. I won't be indifferent to the moral quality of my life because I have recognized that gaining moral excellence is the hope of the gospel. Okay, let's look at the next one. He says, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, that's Arte, and virtue with knowledge. So he's saying moral excellence also involves knowledge or understanding or wisdom. We should pursue that kind of knowledge and understanding. Now morality without knowledge can turn into an empty kind of moralism. The Pharisees, of course, being the case in point. Jesus criticized the Pharisees for talking about the law and for exercising a very strict morality, but lacking any real understanding of it, lacking any real grasp of what God was all about. And given the context, I would argue that the source of this knowledge in question is the prophets and the apostles. It is scripture, the word of God. So the prophets and the apostles receive this revelation from God, and then they proclaim it to us, and that is the knowledge we are seeking. And as we read the rest of the letter, he's going to make that point very clear. To gain knowledge is to come to understand what God has revealed in His Word. So then the real question is why is this knowledge tied to saving faith, and why is this tied to a pursuit of moral excellence? I would argue that knowledge is in part a question of the will, because we believe what we want to believe. We human beings have this amazing ability to completely disregard the facts directly in front of our noses and believe exactly what we want to believe. If you doubt me on that, just tune into any political debate and watch how they handle facts that don't fall in line with their political ideology. We all believe what we want to believe, sometimes despite the evidence to the contrary. But ultimately, if I'm pursuing knowledge, I have to bend my will to accept it. Knowledge requires a certain kind of humility, a humility that allows me to change my mind and a willingness to admit that I was wrong. There comes a point where I have to decide that I want to know the truth and I'm willing to learn it even if that truth contradicts one of my favorite beliefs that I've held for a long time. The easiest way to reject the gospel is just to ignore it, just to refuse to even consider it. That's a question of knowledge, but it also involves this question of will. Am I willing to investigate? Am I willing to come to believe? Am I willing to listen and let my mind be changed? We have a really good example of this recorded in the Gospel of John. This is John chapter eight, verses thirty-one and thirty-two. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So here you have Jesus imparting knowledge or truth in his word, but you have to abide in it, you have to remain in it, you have to continue to believe it. When he challenges you with hard ideas, things that you think, whoa, wait, what does that mean? How does that fit? You stay, you're willing to learn, you don't walk away. So things that contradict maybe some of your basic desires, some of the ways you've always thought, and you have to change your mind, and you do change your mind because you want to know the truth, you're willing to believe. And in this context, in John 8, that walking away is exactly what happens. He's speaking to a group of Jews who believe him because they've seen his signs and miracles, but then he says some more hard things to them, and now they're offended, and by the end of the story, they're picking up stones to throw at him. So that's an example of not remaining or not abiding in the word. When it comes to the gospel and biblical theology, much of learning involves unlearning. The gospel challenges me with new ideas, and I have to confront things that I've long held and change them. I have to stop looking at the world in the old way I used to look at it and start looking at it from a different perspective. So it is this unlearning. I unlearn habits and attitudes and responses and replace them with new habits and attitudes and responses. And all of that requires the desire to change, the humility to be willing to be changed. That's the sense I mean that knowledge is a matter of the will. It's that humility of wanting to be changed, of a of being willing to be changed. So the knowledge of God is this kind of knowledge that cuts deep. It speaks very directly to some of my most basic and fundamental beliefs about who I am, how important I am, how my needs are going to get met, and what this life is all about. So the gospel speaks directly to how I treat people and the way I live my life, and sometimes I have to unlearn things I used to believe and learn what I now have come to see as true. So the pursuit of knowledge motivated by faith is the pursuit of truth, the pursuit of reality. It's this willingness to learn the truth as God has revealed it. Truth is sometimes difficult to hear, but I want to know it anyway. Because part of knowledge is whether I am open to knowing, whether I am willing to hear it. That makes it an essential part of faith. I want to know God, I want to know the truth, I'm open and willing to learn from Him, and that it's in that sense that I pursue knowledge. Now, of course, again, this contrasts with the false teachers who have turned away from knowledge and changed the gospel to suit their own ends. All right, let's look at verse six, the next three in verse six. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control. Self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness. So we're going to look at self-control next. Again, this Greek word translated self-control does not appear very frequently in the New Testament, but again, it is a word that would have been well known to the Greeks of the day. It's something that appears in classical literature, and it's a virtue that they would have prized. In fact, every item on our list, I believe that's true of that if they were well known ideas of the day. These are qualities that an enlightened pagan of the time would have valued. And as I understand it, what these ancient Greeks valued was a kind of self-mastery. The self-controlled person they considered strong and free from his animal passions. So he would be contrasted to the person who is a slave to his passions, his lusts, his animal desires. They saw something noble in being in control of your passions, being in control of your emotions, and having mastery over them. Those with self-control were not slaves to their appetites or their greeds or their ambitions, and they were free. Christians tend to embrace that same idea. We're familiar with this sense of shame or humiliation when we fail to exercise self-control and we let our emotions get the better of us, we say things we shouldn't, or maybe we do things we shouldn't, and so forth. And we're also familiar with the opposite of that, that feeling of satisfaction, of job well done, when we do exercise self-control and say no to ourselves in the pursuit of goodness. But in this list, the focus is not really on how our behavior makes us feel or how our behavior makes us nice people to be around, or how our behavior makes us better Christians. The focus is on how this behavior results from coming to faith. So God has revealed to us what is true and what is false, what is worthwhile, what is fleeting, what we should pursue and what we should avoid. And now with that knowledge, sometimes we have to learn to say no to our desires in order to follow God. So there you see the connection. Self-control is connected to a genuine faith. If I have faith, then I want the things God wants, and when my values conflict with his values, I have to say no to myself and change my desires. As I said, this word doesn't appear very often in the New Testament, but when it does show up, it shows up in some kind of interesting places. For example, it is one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 23, but that's another list, and I don't want to get into that list. I want to look at a different one. This is in Acts 24. Paul is under arrest and he's been sent to the Roman procurator Felix, and he is testifying before him. And this is Acts twenty-four, twenty four through twenty-six. After some days Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, and he sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. And as he reasoned about righteousness and self control, that's our word, and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, Go away for the present, when I get an opportunity I will summon you. At the same time he hoped that money would be given him by Palm, so he sent for him often and conversed with him. Okay, that's our word in Acts twenty four twenty four. five and he re Paul, speaking of Paul, he reasoned about righteousness and self control. Okay, that's interesting. Felix was the governor of Samaria at the time, and he has a reputation and history of being a very immoral man. And we can see right here in twenty six it tells us that Felix hoped Paul would bribe him to gain his freedom. His wife Drusilla was originally married to someone else. Felix convinced her to leave her husband and marry him. And the Roman historian Tacitus says that Felix practiced every kind of power and lust and then I love this phrase, wielding the power of a king with the instincts of a slave. Well there is some truth to that. Felix according to history was a freed slave who had been exalted to a high position by the Emperor Claudius and he was not a person who exercised much self control. So when Paul preaches the gospel to Felix, part of his message concerns righteousness, self control, and the coming judgment and I suspect this is Paul tailoring his message to his audience. He understands who he's talking to. Felix is used to doing whatever he wants and getting away with it because of his position of power. He is not in the habit of saying no to himself, what he wants he takes. Paul then wanting to impress upon Felix the nature of God, what righteousness is all about and the fact that there is a judgment coming speaks about self-control. He's calling Felix to repent, to see the difference between what we want in our selfish, sinful desires and what God wants in his holiness. So he's speaking of righteousness or holiness and self-control. And when you see that gap between your own sinfulness and God's holiness the appropriate response is to humbly repent and ask for forgiveness. Felix is alarmed however and sends Paul away but it gives us an idea what he means there by self-control. Saying no to your own desires and instead pursuing what God would value or desire. Now a lack of self-control is more than a regrettable personal weakness. There is judgment coming one day we will face the author and creator of the universe the God who is holy and morally excellent and we will be held accountable for our lack of self-control. So there's a sense in which there's no way to follow God without self-control. We have to want to say no to our sinful desires, repent of them and seek to desire what God desires. Now as you know left to ourselves we will never get there but this is what the gospel is all about that Jesus dying on the cross in our place paying the penalty for our sins so that we can be forgiven and reconciled to God and then God will give us a heart transplant metaphorically speaking so that we become people who want what he wants and desires what he desires. This word also appears this word self-control also appears in 1 Corinthians 9 but first let me back up and give you a little bit of context in 1 Corinthians 8 Paul is talking about what was a controversial issue in the young church at the time and that was eating meat that has been sacrificed to idols. There was this debate over whether it is okay for believers to buy and eat meat that has been first sacrificed to idols. And Paul argues that on the one hand there is nothing wrong with eating meat sacrificed to idols. It's just meat he says go ahead and eat it. But on the other hand some of the less mature believers have a problem with this practice they see it as wrong to eat such meat and we have a situation in Corinth where the more mature believers are flaunting their freedom to the less mature believers and putting pressure on them to violate what for them is a matter of conscience. And that's what Paul takes issue with these younger believers are not yet convinced that the practice is okay and if they are pressured into eating meat then they will be going against what they believe to be the right thing to do. And Paul tells the more mature believers you have the freedom to eat this meat but when exercising your freedom puts pressure on someone else to violate his or her conscience you should limit your freedom for their sake. Not because eating meat is morally wrong eating meat sacrificed to idols is morally wrong but because you care about them and you don't want to pressure them into taking an action that they believe to be wrong. Then in 1 Corinthians 9 Paul uses his own behavior as an example of this principle. He talks about situations where he knows he is free to do something but he refrains from doing it because of its impact on others. So when he's preaching to the Gentiles he feels free to eat like a gentile and ignore all the dietary rules but when he's preaching to Jews he limits his freedom and joins the Jews in their dietary practices. This is how Paul wants the Corinthians to approach the issue of meat sacrifice to idols. If it isn't negatively influencing someone else go ahead and eat it but if it does negatively affect someone else don't eat it. Refrain. Then he says in first Corinthians nine twenty four and twenty five Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath but we an imperishable so everyone who competes in the games exercises self control that's our word and Paul is using this analogy of an athlete an athlete has a goal they want to win and because they want to win they exercise self-control so they may be free to do lots of things watch movies play video games eat junk food but they avoid doing those things because it hinders their goal they're in training so instead they train physically they practice they eat healthy foods they get in a good night's sleep because that furthers their goal their goal is to win so they exercise self-control in the way they live their life so that they reach that goal. And by analogy Paul's saying believers have a goal we want to be saved we want to find eternal life in the kingdom of God. In addition to being a believer Paul is also an apostle who has been charged with preaching the gospel particularly to Gentiles but also to Jews and so he lives his life in such a way to reach that goal he exercises self-control. So when he's preaching to the Jews he doesn't sit down and eat a ham sandwich technically he's free to eat it but his actions would be putting an obstacle in front of the Jews in their coming to faith. He would be making it more difficult for them to hear the gospel without distraction. In effect he would be saying look my eating a ham sandwich is more important to me than your salvation and that communicates the wrong message. So he exercises self-control he limits his freedom because he values the gospel and he wants the Jews to hear it clearly and he's calling the Corinthians to exercise a similar kind of self-control. So nothing is more important than how a person relates to God and to entice another person to disobey God even if they're wrong in their theology shows a contempt for them and the gospel. So this example shows us that self-control involves more than just keeping a set of rules yes we have prohibitions and precepts about what kind of behavior is appropriate in what circumstances and yes self-control is necessary to follow those rules but fundamentally I think what Peter's getting at in this list is that self-control is about this gap between my sinful desires and the truth. When I come to faith in Jesus I learn how deep that gap is and I learn that some of my desires are not in keeping with my new faith they're not worthy of it and I flee those desires I repent and turn from them and I learn to pursue other desires that are more in keeping with my new faith and those are the ones I want to pursue and making that choice is self-control. And it can mean refraining from doing some things that are okay because something in the situation makes it wrong. Loving my neighbor as myself suggests that there are times when I will refrain and limit my freedom. Now the false teachers are not exercising this self-control in fact Peter's going to go on to say in chapter two they are actually enticing deliberately enticing others to sin again I am not saying that believers are suddenly going to have perfect consistent self-control in all situations at all times. That's not true. We are still sinners and we are still going to fail in this area like many others. But if we are open to the gospel then we will also be open to the fact that we need to change and part of that change is learning and wanting to say no to our sinful desires and then repenting when we fail. So the need for self-control is implied by faith in the gospel all right the next one then he says in your self-control perseverance and in your perseverance godliness let's look at perseverance or steadfastness to constancy this is really one of the key themes in the New Testament. It comes up in virtually every letter in the New Testament and it comes up in the teaching of Jesus himself. So here's the basic concept as I understand it. God has done a permanent work in the hearts of his people. He has taken people who were once spiritually dead and rebellious by nature and trapped in our sin and he has given them or us a metaphorical heart transplant such that we, such that his people are now open to him and the truths of the gospel and we are now humbly willing to trust and follow him. And God finishes what he starts he ensures that his children will remain faithful to him. Therefore one of the most significant marks of the children of God is that we will continue to believe in the hard times. So when the pressure is on not to believe when the temptation is there to walk away when the gospel requires us to be in a hard place or to make a hard choice we continue to believe and we don't walk away I think further the New Testament goes on to argue that perseverance is so significant that God deliberately puts us through difficult circumstances what the New Testament authors call trials and that these are just any kind of hard circumstance that puts pressure on our faith and it reveals whether our faith is genuine or fake. So trials force us to ask those basic questions of life Am I willing to follow God? Do I trust him? What do I want out of life? Do I want what the gospel promises? Am I willing to give up whatever if that's what it takes to follow God? Trials come in all shapes and sizes but in the midst of them we are forced to come to grips with what do I truly believe in am I going to live like it? Do I really believe God is in control or not? Can I really trust Him or not? And then having gone through these trials our faith becomes stronger it becomes more mature and it has a confidence a kind of sturdiness to it because we have faced a trial and come out the other side with our faith intact. So we have faced the question do I really believe God's promises or not and answered yes I believe and that gives us a wisdom and maturity that we lacked before the trial and I would argue that God puts us through these trials, these tough times for our own sakes because well they teach us a number of things but in part they teach us that God is trustworthy and in part they reveal to us that we are people of faith. When we face those moments of doubts of am I kidding? Do I really believe God or am I just fooling myself and going through the motions you can look back at a trial and say I went through that and I'm still here so we grow through those trials. Pseudo faith fake faith lip service kind of faith it will walk away when life gets hard but the real deal real faith continues. Now we could spend weeks looking at different passages that explain that concept we could look at first Peter chapter one James 1 Romans 5 the parable of the sower of the seed and many others but we won't go into that here it's not surprising to me that Peter would include perseverance in this list because perseverance is a mark of a growing faith and that concept comes up in so many other letters it's one of the hallmarks of a believer's life okay the last one we'll look at today then is godliness. Notice this ties us back to the beginning of the letter where in one three he said his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Again like many of the words in this list this Greek word is not used very often in the New Testament but it was very familiar to Greek culture. And it basically means having a reverent devotion to the gods to be pious to be devout when used in the New Testament it refers to the one God not many gods but the one God the Father of Jesus Christ. So why does Peter add this to the list? I think he's making it explicit what has been implied up to this point and that is that God is the focus of all these virtues most of the words would have been considered virtues by enlightened pagans of the day they would have said of course every human strives for these things and we could pursue them from a very human standpoint and not give a fig about the gospel at all. So we could exercise moral excellence and self-control because we believe it's a better way to live. Life goes more smoothly when we do we feel better about ourselves when we exercise self-control knowledge enriches our existence in a way that ignorance does not and we gain more accolades and praise from our family and friends and are considered praiseworthy when we practice these kinds of things. So we could pursue all the ideas on this list and not care about the gospel but adding godliness to the list then he is explicitly stating that God is the focus of all these virtues that we are to understand them in light of our relationship to him and we pursue these things out of a love for God and our belief in the gospel. So we strive for knowledge and moral excellence because we have come to believe in the claims of the gospel. And I think adding this to the list makes it clear we're not just talking about philosophical ideas, we're not talking about abstract philosophical concepts rather we are talking about living the kind of life that God would want us to live that these are foundational parts of the character of God and we now that we believe the gospel are striving to be like him so we seek to follow him and submit to him and these things then become marks of the person of faith because to pursue loving God is to pursue godliness. Again in contrast to the false teachers who are not pursuing godliness and have no intention of submitting to or following their creator I'm going to stop there for today and we'll finish the list in the next podcast and look at how Peter concludes but let me summarize what we've seen so far. I'm just going to run through the virtues the first one is virtue or moral excellence. So the purpose of the gospel is to grant us holiness or moral excellence to free us from our sin and part of believing the gospel is recognizing that that kind of excellence or moral perfection is our great call and hope and while we will still struggle with sin we now care deeply about holiness so that we will not join the false teachers in pursuing ungodliness. Knowledge the second one God has made himself known through the writings of the prophets and the apostles part of coming to faith is we now want to know more about that truth more about who God is and what he has revealed to us in his word and so the heart touched by God wants to know who God is and what this life is all about and so we will not join the false teachers in the rejection of the truth of the gospel. Instead we will pursue greater and deeper understanding of God as he has revealed himself in his word third self control if I have faith I now long for what God wants and value what he wants and when his values and my sinful values conflict I have to learn to say no to my desires and change them or at least I'm willing to people of faith are learning to say no to those sinful desires repent of them and seek what God desires instead. Again as in all of these that is something we will fail in but it will become one of the hallmarks of our life fourth perseverance faith is a gift of God and God has promised that he will get us to the finish line. When trials and troubles come believers stay true to God's word they remain believers they continue believing even when life gets hard so they persevere they remain and stand firm in his word and then godliness points that we are not just talking about philosophical ideals. We are talking about pursuing the kind of life God would want striving to be like him and seeking to follow and submit to him so that again godliness is a mark of the person of faith because we are pursuing loving God and therefore pursuing godliness. Now I'm just going to say one more time none of us have attained these qualities yet or as we should faith is a long journey and a long progress toward a goal. We will not reach perfection in this life there is a sense that every sin is a lapse of self-control and obviously we are still going to sin. But the goal of this life is maturing our faith and we're going to look at next time he says if these qualities are yours and are increasing he has a picture of faith starting out small and increasing and growing the Bible teaches us two things are true. Believers still sin and yet our hearts remain open to God. So yes we are sinners but we are also forgiven and we will remain hopeful and longing and trusting God. So we will genuinely trust God and desire to be like him while at the same time in this life we will continue to struggle with sin. And we're going to feel the tension between those two things our whole lives this side of heaven we are not marked by unbroken success and perfect obedience we are marked by this growing understanding and desire and maturity to be a godly person and sometimes we're going to succeed in those areas and sometimes we won't. But ultimately these are the things we value these are the things we're seeking we may go through seasons where the struggle is really intense and we turn our backs on self-control for example but God will not leave us there. Ultimately he will humble us and bring us back to him stronger and with a mature faith. So the overall tone and tenor of our lives will be marked by these things as we grow in faith by the grace of God. Thanks so much for listening to Wednesday in the Word today. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage means but also shows you how to figure it out. If you've only been listening to my podcast please let me take a moment to invite you to visit my website wednesdayintheword.com where you can find a wealth of Bible study materials to help you improve your study skills. I have no advertising on my site and I ask for no financial support. Everything there is free and easy to download and it's my gift to you. So please enjoy it and share it with a friend. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find more of his music on heartfeltmusic.org Thanks for listening today and I hope you'll join me next week for Wednesday in the Word