On Sunday I heard a comment that has struck something in my heart. That I thought might be profitable for someone else to hear as well. We were talking about love and self-control and a host of other rabbit trails that kept creeping up in bible class, but a comment by a fellow Christian landed in my must remember recesses of my brain.
She said, "In todays day in age instead of controlling ourselves and loving others we love ourselves and controll others." Isn't that so very true!
2 Peter 1:5-8 says:
"But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
This verse says that in order to love we must first add self-control to our faith, but back up, in order to achieve self-control we must first add the habits of virtue, knowledge and then self-control to our already established faith! That is quite a list. So today lets look at virtue what is the definition?
According to dictionary.com it is moral excellence! Ok so what are morals? Boiled down to its most basic of definitions (again taken from dictionary.com) it is the distinction of right and wrong. So the first in the list is to be virtuous or to be excellent at knowing right from wrong. That is pretty basic, next....
Knowledge. Well the definition of knowledge is: acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation...
WHOA! So basically in order to achieve love (agape) in the layering of principals I must first obtain virtue and then knowledge, but did you notice the part of the verse I put in bold, I must be doing so ALL diligently! Keeping with the rest of this blog post, what is the definition of diligence: constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken; persistent exertion of body or mind.
Ok, so this is not something that I have ever really given time to ponder. If I want to love with a greater love (agape) then I first must have virtue and then knowlege that I have sought with great perserverance and effort. Wow, I have some work to do! What is great is that studying the bible has other benefits, it will grow our faith. Romans 10:17 says,"So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." So we can grow in faith if we hear the word of God, the bible, God's written communication with us today!
So to try and love in a greater sense and to achieve controlling ourselves and loving others there is much work involved. I'm inspired to study. During the next couple of days I will study the next in the list. Have a great day!
1 comment:
I am going to read this post later, but I wanted to let you know we still have NO idea where the water came from. It has dried up, but we are still trying to find it's source. We think it is the foundation. Hopefully we will find it soon. Glad you had fun, and sorry you have a cold now!
Later, Angela
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