For This Very Reason: A Devotional on 2 Peter 1

For This Very Reason: A Devotional on 2 Peter 1

There are two roads. One is clean and well-traveled and easy. The other is narrow and harder and less populated. We already know which one Peter is calling us to walk.

Before he calls for anything, though, he tells us what has already been done.

"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, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." (2 Peter 1:3-4, ESV)

Read that twice. The grant is already in our hands. The promises are already deposited. The escape from corruption is complete. Peter is not building toward a demand. He is standing on a foundation God already laid and pointing at it before he calls us to take a single step.

Then comes verse five.

"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. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:5-8, ESV)

For this very reason. Not as a starting whistle, but as a response. Because the grant has been given, supply the sequence.

A word before going further. Knowledge is the hard one for many of us. The hours run short and the books outpace the time we have to read them. The temptation is to read this passage and treat the gap between where we are and where Peter is calling us to be as a knowledge gap. It is not.

Faith is the source. Faith is the fuel. Faith is what God gives — not as one quality in the sequence alongside seven others, but as the energy that drives the whole thing forward into the lives it produces. Paul says it directly:

"For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love." (Galatians 5:6, ESV)

The image in that "working" is of active force moving through. Faith is the force. Love is the direction it is meant to flow. Peter is not handing us a ladder where faith is the bottom rung. He is telling us what fueled faith looks like when it is doing what it was given to do. Virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love. We can see them better as faith burning than as a climb to be made.

Look at the verb Peter uses for supplement. In the world he was writing into, that word described a wealthy patron lavishly underwriting a chorus or a public festival. It is generous addition. Abundance laid on abundance. Peter is not after grudging effort. He is calling us to be the patron, to lay generosity on top of what God has already lavished on us.

And he says these qualities must be increasing. Not started once and finished. Ongoing. The faith that does not produce an increasing supply is the faith that has forgotten where the fuel comes from. Peter says it bluntly two verses later:

"For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins." (2 Peter 1:9, ESV)

The diagnostic is not rebellion but forgetting. He stopped looking back at the grant. The cleansing happened, but the memory of it dimmed, and the supply stopped because the source went unseen.

This is where the two roads emerge.

"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." (Matthew 7:13-14, ESV)

Jesus said this. David said it long before:

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers." (Psalm 1:1-3, ESV)

The blessed man is the tree planted by water. The fruit comes in its season because the root is in the right place. The leaf does not wither because the supply does not stop. That is the same picture Peter is painting. The increasing supply is the visible outflow of a root in the right place.

We all know them. The faithful stakeholders in the Lord's body. They are the ones in the parking lot before the doors are unlocked. They are the ones still at the building when the lights go out. They serve in places nobody sees and they do work nobody counts. They are not loud, they do not build platforms, they are not chasing positions. They are walking the narrower road, and most of them would not name it that way. They would just say they are doing what needs to be done.

That is what fueled faith looks like. The work is not dramatic. It just keeps happening because the supply does not stop. They have been climbing the same road for thirty years and most of them would say they are still beginners.

We know this type without always being able to name them. That is what the world cannot see. That is what the comfort road has no instrument for measuring.

But here is where Peter cuts close to the bone. The danger he warns about is settling. The faith that was real at twenty-five, still present at fifty, but no longer increasing. The walls of the building we built around our Christianity twenty years ago, still standing, still respectable, still recognizable from the outside, but no longer growing. The believer who has not added a new room in two decades looks stable. He is dormant. Like a muscle that goes unused, a faith never tested in any new direction loses what it had. It just keeps the shape it had when the supply stopped.

This is the warning embedded in verse 8. If these qualities are yours and are increasing. The increase is not optional. Peter does not say "if you have these qualities." He says if they are yours and are increasing. When the supply stops, the believer has begun to forget.

Paul calls us back to the gift.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV)

The faith is the gift. The works are the path God already built for us to walk. Both halves were prepared. Our job is to walk the road that was already laid down on the fuel that was already given. The supply Peter calls for is what that walking looks like.

So this is where Peter's call arrives.

We are giving ourselves up for something. Right now. Today. Every day of our lives we spend ourselves for something. For a career, for a comfort, for a reputation, for a distraction that will be obsolete in three years, for a possession that will not survive our funeral. The world is built to take what we give. It takes our hours, our attention, our money, our strength, our years, and at the end of the transaction it gives us back nothing it can keep.

We give ourselves up so easily for things that are falling apart in the world. We sacrifice for the comfort road and call it being responsible. We sacrifice for the appearance of stability and call it being mature. The things that will outlast us are the things we hold back from.

The sacrifice is happening already, whether we choose it or not. What we direct it toward is in our hands.

We will give ourselves to something. The world is built to take what we give. Jesus Christ gave Himself for us first. Everything Peter calls us to do flows from that gift.

Scripture references: 2 Peter 1:3-4; 2 Peter 1:5-8; 2 Peter 1:9; Galatians 5:6; Matthew 7:13-14; Psalm 1:1-3; Ephesians 2:8-10. All quotations ESV.