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When I taught reading to sixth graders, they were required to write book reports. I stood over the desk of one young man. He wrote down what he thought was a sentence.
I said, “That’s not a sentence.” He said, “Why not?” I answered, “It doesn’t have a complete thought.” He replied, “Yes, it does. That’s all the thought I have about it.” Point taken.
Three years later, faced with writing an essay, that same young man sat in my freshman English class. I happened by his desk and viewed his progress. Sure enough, in the midst of his scribbles, he had written a sentence fragment.
I pointed it out and said, “That’s not a complete thought.” He smiled and said, “It’s as complete a thought as I can make it.” Point taken. Loved that kid.
While a high school student can get away with minimal progress in his studies, we believers aren’t allowed the same path in our spiritual journey. Peter makes this clear in his first epistle: “…you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5)
Sounds both daunting and a bit general. What’s it mean to be a ‘living stone,’ ‘a spiritual house,’ ‘a holy priesthood?’ What do ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God’ look like?
Peter offers a concrete path in his second epistle: “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.” (2 Peter 1:5-6)
The idea behind ‘moral excellence’ contains two levels. First, we gain moral excellence through our salvation. As verse three states, “…seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”
Once a person becomes a believer, his moral excellence before his Holy God is established forevermore.
But we can’t be like the English student who says his incomplete thought is as complete as it needs to be.
Believers are called to demonstrate the blessing of moral excellence gifted to us by God.
Verse 5 provides the word we attach to our demonstration: diligence. We are to be diligent by way of our faith to move forward, to blossom in growth.
Through diligent moral excellence, we develop our knowledge of God and all pertaining to Him through learning His Word.
The Greek word for knowledge is ‘gnosis.’ When the Greeks used this word, they pointed to an experiential knowledge rather than an exact knowledge.
Knowing your best friend is alive and well is exact knowledge; knowing God is alive and well is experiential knowledge.
Wouldn’t it be better to have exact knowledge rather than experiential knowledge? Not at all. A believer’s unshakable faith in his invisible God is both profound and powerful. It’s truly a strength of the entire Christian religion.
Verse 6 begins a stacking of qualities. A believer’s unshakable faith leads to self-control. Self-control leads to perseverance. The fruit of persevering self-control leads to godliness.
With the fruit of godliness, the stacking takes an unexpected turn. If the world imagined a godly person, it might dream up a haloed monk, draped in scripture verses from head to toe. He possesses a weird haircut, a trim beard and clean fingernails.
Instead, the fruit of godliness leads to brotherly kindness, which leads to selfless love. The emphasis isn’t on the appearance of godly character, but what godly character stirs the person to do.
Peter affirms this in verse 8: “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.
Note this. The word ‘knowledge’ in verse 8 is not ‘gnosis.’ It’s ‘epignosis,’ the Greek word for exact knowledge. Experiential knowledge becomes exact knowledge. That’s extremely cool.
And expected. Yes, that’s not a complete sentence. Yet, it completes my thought. I thank my former student for teaching me that.