“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with…” (2 Peter 1:5)
God’s plan for your life isn’t just to hand you a one-way ticket out of hell and into heaven, even as incredible as that is. His great plan is to actually change you from the inside out.
He didn’t show up at your front doorstep to patch up a few cracks in your old life or fix the leaky plumbing of your habits. No, He actually came to tear the entire house down, so he could rebuild it upon a brand new foundation: Jesus Christ.
Our old foundation was unstable, built on the ever shifting ground of success, pleasure, or possessions. It couldn’t bear the weight of real life. So God invites us to partner with Him as He does a radical renovation of our hearts and character from the ground up. And make no mistake: this new building project cost God everything He had. The price of his Son’s life for your new life.
The Blueprint for a New Life
Peter lays out God’s blueprint for us in verses 5–7: “make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
Each quality is a building material in the architecture of the Christian life. Jesus Christ is the foundation, without Him nothing else stands. So our faith in Him is where it begins. But this faith is not static. As Spurgeon said, true faith is never alone; it always builds virtue upon virtue. Like framing and roofing a house, we add goodness, knowledge, and love not to earn salvation, but to work it out and make the most of this gift we’ve been given.
Partnering with the Master Builder
Your faith in Jesus gives you the privilege to partner with the Master Builder in this reconstruction. It’s a cooperative work where God supplies the power, and you supply the effort. All these qualities flow from God’s grace, yet Peter calls us to “make every effort.” So we see that grace never cancels our efforts, it actually fuels it.
There’s Two Options
Does this sound like a lot of hard work? It is.
But what’s the alternative? Peter warns that the opposite of this leads to spiritual decay.
Instead, God invites you to partner with Him by becoming more like Jesus, who perfectly embodies these very qualities: goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love.
Building Questions for Your Week
- Where in your home or workplace need more integrity and goodness from you this week?
- How can you grow in knowledge that deepens your understanding and experience of God?
- Where is God strengthening your self-control muscle right now?
- Where have you been tempted to give up, but God is calling you to endure?
- How can you reflect godliness and reveal Jesus through your actions?
- Who needs to feel your brotherly affection and shown love today?
One Nail at a Time
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all this talk of spiritual construction. That’s where faith in God comes in, not faith in yourself.
Faith is saying, “God, I’ll partner with You, and trust you will give me what I need to do what you’re asking me to do.”
You’re not rebuilding alone. The Master Builder has the blueprint, the materials, and the strength you need. All He asks is that you keep hammering one nail at a time.
So what are you planning to work on today?