Make every effort

Carrying on from yesterdays thoughts on 2 Peter 1, it is striking that Peter exhorts the believers to 'Make every effort to add to your faith'. Peter is not saying we can earn forgiveness and right standing before God because he has already said that the believers righteousness comes by faith in Christ and his achievements on the believers behalf. He goes on to say that (v3) God by his divine power grants us all we need for godliness and life. So God gives us everything we need but that does not remove the need to take and utilise what God has given us!

The word 'add' that Peter uses carried with it the notion of costly and generous cooperation. We are not just to pull our socks up on our own but we are to generously cooperate with God as he through his Word, Son and Spirit works in us to add to our faith these characteristics. How do we do that? I would suggest that it involve spending time in the Bible, the word of God, finding out what those characteristics look like en-fleshed as we see them in the life of Jesus. That making every effort is about having the desire to develop these godly attributes, it is to do with putting off sin and striving for Christ likeness.

It poses the question am I making every effort? Maybe even am I making any effort to cooperate with God? To reject such a great offer of help would be foolish in the extreme and as Peter says would show that one had not grasped the magnitude of events at the cross.