Add to Your Faith..

"...add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge" (2 Pet 1:5).

This word "add" means there is something we have to do. We have to "add to" and "work out" the salvation that God has already worked within us (Phil 2:12). As one author has noted, "we cannot do what God does, and God will not do what we can. We cannot save ourselves nor sanctify ourselves, God does that; but God will not give us good habits, nor will He give us character, or force us to walk aright; we must choose that ourselves."

It is true that God has already given us "all things that pertain to life and godliness" (2 Pet 1:3). However, if we continue reading, we will discover that these "things" are only given "through the knowledge of Him that called us". Therefore, we still must ADD to our faith; we still must seek the knowledge of God. There is no getting around it (Phil 4:8). God gives seed to "the sower", him that is adding to his faith and who is seeking fruition, not to him who idolizes his own spiritual slothfulness (2 Cor 9:10). For the latter, his testimony shall always be one of catastrophe: "But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins" (2 Pet 1:9). What a shame that this man purposefully "closes his eyes" (as the literal Greek denotes), even as unable to see distant, heavenly objects, and fixes his gaze on present and earthly things, which alone he can see. In other words, if we do not continually "add to" our faith, we will essentially be given over to the temporal qualities of life, remaining spiritually stagnant, and neglecting any true heavenly vision, which is to be our rightful possession. This type of man reminds me of Esau, who despised the spiritual greatness of his birthright for a temporal and earthly satisfaction (Heb 12:16). How scary! Friend, if we do not "add to" our faith, we will surely be subtracting from it: "Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward" (2 Jn 1:8).

However, on the contrary, he who does indeed add to his faith will possess a strikingly opposite assertion. The later verses of the same chapter give us insight: "For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ... for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Pet 1:8, 10-11). Notice that if we "add to" our faith here, we will similarly possess an "abundance" in the coming kingdom: "ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom". How wonderful! What more convincing do we need?