A Child of God's New Pursuits

Please open your Bibles again to the book of 2 Peter chapter 1.

Sometimes you can tell by the questions that someone asks whether or not they have understood what has been said. I'll give you a couple of examples in the Bible. So in Romans chapter 6, the chapter begins with the question, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? Now, that is both an informed question and an ignorant question.

It's informed because it indicates that the questioner has understood what has been said in the previous chapters, which is this. We are saved because of what someone else has done. So if we are saved because of what someone else has done, then it's a reasonable question to ask.

Then does it matter what we do? Can we live in sin? And especially if God's grace is magnified by saving desperately evil sinners, then. Isn't it reasonable that we should be desperately evil so that God will get all the more glory for having saved us?

So that's an intelligent question. It's ignorant because the questioner has not yet understood that when the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us and when we are joined by faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, it brings about a transformation in us so that we are no longer attracted to sin in the way that we once were. So the question is, shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound?

Answer, certainly not by no means. How can we who have died to sin live any longer in it? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

And it goes on so. But the question indicates that the person has understood the idea that we are saved because of what someone else has done. I'll give you another example. So in Romans Chapter nine, Paul asserts that God sovereignly chose Jacob and rejected Esau before they were ever born or had done anything good or bad. And this is part of Paul's argument, saying that God has always, even within the family of Abraham, he has always chosen certain persons from the family of Abraham. Just because they're his offspring doesn't mean that they are his children is one of the arguments that he uses. And then he wraps up that part of the argument by saying, even if you go from Abraham to Isaac and then from Isaac to the twins in the womb of Rebecca, that before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, God said the older will serve the younger.

Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. And then Paul anticipates a question being asked. What shall we say, then, is there unrighteousness with God? That question indicates that the questioner has understood what has been said. Now, there are some presentations of the doctrine of election that will not leave a person asking that question. There are certain presentations of the doctrine of election that say God chose the people that he saw were going to choose him.

Nobody says, hey, wait a second, that's not fair. But the presentation of the doctrine of election, as presented in that section of Romans Chapter 9, elicits the question, wait a second, that sounds unfair. And so he deals with that objection.

But it's an intelligent objection. Now, we don't exactly have, in fact, we don't have at all that question in my text tonight. But I dare say some of you might have this question. So what we saw last night is that God has provided everything that we need. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And this is brought to us through not our good works, but through our knowledge of him, namely Jesus Christ, who calls us by or to his own glory and excellence. And by these he has given to us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world. That's all great.

That is all great. All that God has done for us. And then it leaves us asking this question. Are our efforts significant at all? Do our efforts make any contribution to this great promise that we may become partakers of the divine nature? In light of God's sovereignty.

Do our works make any difference? In light of God's sovereignty. Does it matter if we pray if God has already planned everything exactly the way that it's going to be? And there's no possibility that it's going to turn out any way other than the way that God has planned it. Then what's the point in praying?

That's just a particular example of the broader question. If God is sovereign and God has determined that we are going to be in heaven, then do our efforts matter at all? Prayer would be one of those efforts. Well, the answer to that question that we'll see in this text tonight is yes, our efforts do matter.

Now, again, to emphasize something that I said last night. It is entirely by God's free grace that we were chosen. It's entirely by God's work that we have faith that we are enabled to repent, that we are granted the disposition to believe and obey everything that God has revealed. That disposition to believe and obey is the new birth.

It's regeneration. We would never exercise faith and repentance if it were not for God's granting us that disposition to believe and obey everything that he has revealed. It's all by his grace. But once we have been converted, here's the question. Do our efforts matter? Well, let me lay this down as a general principle. You should never let a theory about the sovereignty of God, even if it is the correct theory, keep you from doing your plainly revealed duty.

Let me say that again. You should never allow the doctrine of the sovereignty of God keep you from doing your plainly revealed duty. That is what God has said you ought to do. And so in the question, since God has determined everything that is going to happen, ought we to pray, what good does it do to pray?

Just be careful that you don't start behaving as if you have got some kind of insight into the nuances of theology that has not occurred to God. Because God has directed that we should pray. And so if for no other reason, if we can't figure out what good it does, then we still should pray and obey God. And that has relevance for other aspects of the Christian life besides the ones that we're going to consider tonight, which primarily have to do with the efforts that you and I expend towards bringing about this great promise that we may be participants in the divine nature. So, for example, in evangelism, if this is one of the questions that occurs to people when they first see that the Bible teaches that God has chosen who is going to be saved and that nobody will be saved except those whom he has chosen. The question arises, then what's the point in witnessing?

Why do it? Once again, if God has directed that something ought to be done, then we ought to do what God says, whether or not we understand how it all works together with his divine sovereignty. But having established that, this is also helpful to know. God has not only established the end, he has also established the means. So God has established that his elect should be saved, but he also has determined that he is going to provide all the means for their salvation. So that includes the work that Christ did during his life, includes the work of the Holy Spirit, includes the work that Christ is doing now from the throne. It includes the preaching of the word. It includes the prayers of the saints that are all used as the means that God has ordained, foreordained, to bring about the accomplishment of his purposes. And in our text tonight, we will see that we are directed to make every effort or or be all the more diligent in light of these great promises that God has made.

So let's take a look at that in the text. We'll begin with verse three. I just quoted verses three and four to you, but let's read it again. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. And then the text for tomorrow night begins with verse eight. It talks about the benefits of these qualities being yours.

They're wonderful. Hope that you can come back tomorrow night and see the wonderful benefits that are promised to us if these qualities are ours and are increasing. Now usually in my sermons there's two or three main points and I suppose I could say that there are two or three main points, but the first couple are very, very brief. And the first one has to do with the fact that the provision of the promise or the promise itself lays a motivation for us to be diligent in seeking to acquire these eight character qualities that are mentioned here. So for this very reason, so because these things have been made available to you, because these things have been promised for this very reason, then be diligent. Show all diligence or make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and so on through the list of eight.

This is similar to the question that I asked you last night. What would you undertake to do if you knew there was no possibility of your failing? Well, this is one of those promises that is made if you are if you are diligent in pursuing after these things, you will make progress. There are blessings that are promised to you. These are the aspects of the divine nature that are appropriate for a recovering sinner to pursue. And if you will pursue them, you will be greatly blessed.

You will become a partaker of the divine nature. And so for this very reason, make every effort, it says in my translation, you may have a translation that uses the word with all diligence, but either way. So the first point of this sermon was that the promise lays the foundation for the effort. But now secondly, look at the degree of effort that is urged upon us here. Make every effort.

This is this is not something that you are going to sleep your way into. The Christian life commences with resting, but it progresses with wrestling. The apostle Paul after saying that he wants a righteousness that comes from God through Jesus Christ says, I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold on me. I strain with all of my might to pursue after these things.

And so a strenuous effort in the pursuit of holiness is consistent with the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. So make every effort. Now, I wonder, can you think of anything in your life that you have expended every effort available to you in order to accomplish it?

I can think of a time or two when I was filled with regret and still have some doubts. Would that have succeeded if I had just put a little more effort into it? When I was in the sixth grade, I was on a football team that was going into the final game of the season undefeated, and the score was was really close, and I was playing safety on defense, and the fastest boy in the league got the ball and was sprinting down the sideline, and I was the only one who had any hope of catching him. Well, I've already said that he was the fastest in the league, so I wasn't going to run him down, but I worked the angle so that I was going to be really close, but I couldn't touch him. I always wondered, what if I had just given a great diving leap and tried to catch his ankles? Might I have caught him?

We lost the game 12 to 6. If I had just given a little more effort. What if, I'll try to choose a variety of examples here, what if you got a message from God saying you will win the Masters Golf Tournament next spring if you will give it every effort? If you're a golfer and aspire to that sort of thing, I feel sorry for you for having such a boring life, but I just thought that I'd try to be open handed with my illustrations. What if an angel from heaven said, if you will give every effort, then when the World Series is played next fall, you will be the pitcher on the winning team.

What if you put forth every effort and the next time the Olympics are held, you would be the 100 meter dash champion? I don't know what really appeals to you, but what if you were told by God, if you expend every effort, then you will be successful in that. Well, here the Word of God tells us, here is a great quality that you may enjoy. You may be a partaker of the divine nature.

It has been provided for you. Now, since it has been, therefore, let us make every effort to cooperate with the process of this divine nature being stamped on us and our nature being transformed from a sinful nature into a holy nature. So now those are the first, that's the first two points of the sermon. Now we come to the third, which is going to occupy the rest of our time, and it is what are these eight qualities?

So I don't think that this is an exhaustive list. There are other very important virtues, very important character qualities that are left out of this list. This list doesn't say anything about hope. This list doesn't mention some of the character qualities that are identified as fruits of the spirit in Galatians chapter 5, but this is an extremely good list. And if you're going to make every effort to have these eight character qualities developed in your life, then I would recommend that you pray about them. At least pray about them. And maybe right here at the first when it's fresh on your mind, the Holy Spirit will impress it upon you and you'll just open up your Bible and pray through these eight character qualities.

I hope in the next position that follows that I'll be able to give you some insight into what these various things mean and that you'll be able to pray for them intelligently and not just as a mere name of something that you think is probably pretty good. But here are eight character qualities and the one that is foundational to them all is faith. Now you see in verses one and two, this is addressed to people who have a faith like we do, a faith that is as precious as ours. And now he comes back to that and says, I know that you have faith. Faith is fundamental to all of your character development in the kingdom of God.

You know, I've already told you that faith is believing what God has said, especially when the only reason you have for believing it is because God has said it. There are truths that you will never figure out on your own. There are truths that must be revealed to you or you will not know them. And the most important truths in the world are not truths that we decipher.

They are truths that we recognize, truths that we have revealed to us and we respond with with saying, yes, that is true and I will build my life upon the fact that it is true. Earlier today, the pastor and I were having lunch and I mentioned that I had ministered for about three years with Jim Ellef and he said, oh, Jim Ellef came and preached that our church gave a weekend seminar on childhood conversion. So some of you will know Jim Ellef. Jim Ellef has a couple of remarkable sons.

He has a lovely daughter as well. The sons came to school at Boy's College when I taught there and so I got even further acquainted with the boys, both extraordinarily bright. In fact, one of these boys, the oldest of them, had probably read more books at age 14 than I'll ever read in my whole life. So he had done an incredibly extensive amount of reading and the boy was an unbeliever. But he read great books. He was a very dutiful child, very obedient to his parents, never gave them a bit of trouble. He always listened very attentively when I preached. But after I had been pastor there for three years, he was about age 17 when I left, he still was not a believer and I talked to him. We had a good relationship and I had urged upon him all the reasons for becoming a believer that I could. But when I left, he was still a non-believer. And then about a year later, I heard that he had been converted and he was coming to Boy's College. So when he arrived, he came to my office and I said, well, I've heard that you've been converted. He said, that's true. And I said, well, tell me about it. And he said, well, I wanted to be the first person who would prove from philosophy and logic that Christianity was a true religion.

And so I was working hard to try and figure that out. But all the while remaining an unbeliever. And one day my dad sat me down and said, son, under the auspices of humility, you are in fact behaving in a very arrogant way. You are never going to come to an understanding of the truth and a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ until you accept that the Bible is the word of God and receive the revelation that the Lord has given. And he said, so I realized that I had to take something on faith. I had to either take on faith that the word of God was true and I could build my life upon it or I had to take on faith that reason was a legitimate means of ascertaining truth. I don't know if that's ever occurred to you, but you can't prove that reason is a legitimate logical way of ascertaining truth, especially if there's no God. If there's no God, then your reasoning capacity is nothing more than the result of the random movement of atoms. And you know that's not a trustworthy way to ascertain truth. And yet atheists behave all the time like that's an acceptable, trustworthy way of ascertaining truth. But if there's no God, your reasoning capacity is nothing more than the result of the random movement of atoms. So anyway, he didn't go into all that.

I just threw that in for free. He said, I knew that I had to take something on faith and so I accepted that the Bible was the word of God. And he paused and I said, and so shortly after that you became a believer. He said, well, it was virtually inseparable from that because you see, I knew what the Bible said.

I knew what it said about Jesus and so on. And so when I received that the Bible was a trustworthy revelation of truth from God, then virtually at the same time I put my faith in Christ. Faith is at the basis. Faith is at the basis. All the truths that you need to know in order to be right with God are truths that have been revealed.

Man through wisdom has not figured them out. And so it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching and the foolishness of what is preached to save those who believe. So faith is at the beginning. You are never going to make any progress in being conformed to the divine nature until you first of all receive as true what God has revealed about the way to be made right with him. So faith is foundational to all of this.

Don't stop there. For this reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue. You may have a translation that says excellence. It can be translated either way. It's the same word that we saw earlier when we saw that Jesus calls us either by or to his own glory and excellence or virtue.

It's the same word. And virtue virtues, let me put it in the plural, virtues are those ideas and behaviors that strengthen your character to become more like God. I don't think that there can be any persistent virtues in a universe where there is no God.

Every motivation for doing what someone might propose to be virtuous, every motivation for continuing to do that when it involves self sacrifice ultimately fails if there is not a God. So virtue, virtues are those character qualities or they're those ideas and behaviors that strengthen your character in a universe that is governed by God. What are some of the virtues that you ought to be cultivating?

And the word of God is going to inform you that, but let me just choose some. So the ancient people said that there were four cardinal virtues. Those four cardinal virtues are courage, wisdom, temperance and justice.

And all four of those things are virtues that are taught and encouraged in the Bible. But what is courage? Well, courage is the determination to do what ought to be done when you're afraid. It doesn't mean that you never have fear, but it means that you have the determination to do what is right and to think what is right even when you may be afraid.

You don't always have to be afraid to be courageous, but to stand up for the truth, to do what is right when nobody else is doing it, to believe the truth even if nobody else is believing it, that takes courage. Wisdom, what is wisdom? Wisdom is the ability to discern what is best and to know the best means of attaining what is best.

It's the capacity to see what is the most noble goal and then to implement the most effective means of attaining that most noble goal. And you're not even going to make any progress towards real wisdom until you embrace God's revelation of himself, which I believe in the Old Testament is summarized as the fear of the Lord. So I think that the fear of the Lord is a figure of speech that represents all of religion as revealed by the true and the living God. And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You're not going to make any progress towards the most noble goal and know the most suitable means to achieving the most noble goal unless you understand what God has revealed.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so it will be very profitable for you to consider various virtues and to ask yourself, well, what is hope? Is hope a Christian virtue?

Yes, it is. Hope is one of the three Christian virtues, faith, hope and love. It would do you well to think through from a biblical perspective and in conversation with your Christian friends. What is hope? You've heard that hope is not just an optimistic perspective on the future. What is hope as it's described in the Bible and so on. But supplement your faith with virtue.

Deliberately work on the improvement of your character and seek to make it stronger and more like the Lord. This word virtue, as I said, could also be translated as excellence. And it would be very profitable for many of us just to try and do excellently the thing that we like. Do you like music? Do you think that some music is more excellent than others?

Why don't you pursue the most excellent music? Do you play basketball? How do you suppose that a Christian person ought to play basketball? Pursue that excellence.

Try to try to do excellently the thing that you have been called to do. So supplement your faith with virtue or excellence. And then the third virtue that is in this list is knowledge and your virtue with knowledge. I want to say this more than once. It's worth writing down.

It's certainly worth remembering. All Christian motive and all Christian comfort flows from Christian doctrine understood and believed. All Christian motive and all Christian comfort flow from Christian doctrine understood and believed. By all Christian motive, I mean the motivation that you have to do the things that you ought to do. Like this sermon tonight, I hope that as a result of the knowledge that you receive from this sermon tonight, your motivation to pursue after the divine nature will be increased. And then the comfort that you have, the assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, the joy that you may experience in the Holy Spirit, the increase of grace, the ability to persevere in the Christian life. These various comforts also flow from Christian doctrine understood and believed. So it is a common part of sermons. It's a common conclusion to books to say, now what is the application? And that's just fine.

I often do it myself. And so I'm not criticizing that. But the point that I'm making is that sometimes just what you have learned is going inevitably to lead to the application. I've heard that Martin Lloyd-Jones would only agree or would agree to counsel someone or a couple only after they had listened to him preach for six months. Now, I've never read that in the biography, but I had a trusted friend tell me that that was the case that he would agree to counsel someone only after they had listened to his preaching for six months.

Now, why would he do such a thing? It is based in the idea that I'm communicating right now that all Christian motive and all Christian comfort flows from Christian doctrine understood and believed. And there are just a multitude of problems that are taken care of when we are making progress in understanding and believing Christian doctrine. And so the success of your Christian life and the comfort of your Christian life rests on your increasing in knowledge. So are you making every effort to increase in knowledge? Are you reading the Bible? Are you memorizing the Bible? Are you talking about the Bible with people who are interested in the Bible?

Are you listening to good sermons? Are you making a good use of your time? Make every effort to increase in knowledge. It's amazing what you can do if you will just start devoting a little bit of time towards accomplishing it. Perhaps some of you have made the mistake of thinking that you're going to get into shape and so the first day you exercise for two hours.

And that's generally a bad idea. Why don't you start with something that's a little more manageable. You start with saying I'm going to try to exercise for five minutes a day every day this week.

And next week six minutes. You know if you say well I have a goal that I want to bench press my body weight. Well if you haven't been lifting weights you need to go into that kind of easy you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to hurt your shoulder.

You're going to hurt your elbows. Start easy. Don't think you're going to accomplish all this in just a short while. And apply that same sort of thing if you are being convicted now that you are not making every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and your virtue with knowledge and you say I need to do better at this. Start realistically. It's amazing how much you can accomplish if you will just stick with it.

Slow and steady wins the race. I not last year but the year before last I determined that I was going to read the Gospels through every month. And I determined that I was just going to read aloud for half an hour. So half an hour a day I would read aloud and if I never missed any days I finished all four Gospels on the 20th day of the month.

And I thought God sends his son into this world. He inspires four men to write a perfectly sufficient account of all that Jesus said and did so that we might know him. And you can read all four books in ten hours.

All four books in ten hours. There's really no excuse for not reading the Gospels. And if you apply that same principle say well I'm just going to read aloud for half an hour a day then you will be amazed at how quickly you get through the New Testament. Some time ago I was interim pastor at a church where I told this story and then I'll tell you the effects of the story. There is a college professor I think he teaches here in North Carolina who is an apostate from Christianity. And he teaches at a major university and his classes are very popular and he has several hundred students in his introductory classes. And at one of the first days of class he asks his students how many of you believe that the Bible is the word of God?

Well many of these freshmen you know they come from Christian families we're in the Bible Belt. Almost everyone in the class raises his or her hand. This is okay hands down. Now how many of you have read Suzanne Collins trilogy on the Hunger Games? Almost all the young people have read that so they'll almost all raise their hands.

Okay hands down. Now how many of you have read the Bible through all the way from cover to cover? And there'll just be a few hands that are raised in this auditorium that seats hundreds of students. And then this apostate from Christianity will try to grind down the faith of these young people by saying see you don't really believe that the Bible is the word of God because if you did you would read it. So I told that story at a church where I was interim pastor and later on I learned that there was an unconverted man in the church who had been attending that church for 30 years. His wife was a devout part of that church and he had been coming with her for 30 years.

Had his heels dug in. But he went home that day and he said have you read the Bible all the way through? He asked his wife and she said well no not all the way through. He said well we at least need to read the Bible. And he started reading the Bible. And several months went by and he asked me to go turkey hunting with him and he sat there and talked the whole time. You've got to be quiet when you're turkey hunting.

He sat there and talked the whole time. And when the day was finished he said Dr. Orrick I need to apologize to you. I asked you to come turkey hunting but what I really wanted to do was just sit here and talk to you about the Bible. And I called him by name and I said I would way rather sit here and talk to you about the Bible than shoot a turkey. And to make a long story short the Lord saved him through reading the Bible. And he is a dear brother.

I baptized him before I left that church. The word of God is powerful. And you will be conformed to the divine image if you read the Bible and read it praying that God will open your eyes and teach you things. There's an amazing passage of scripture in the book of 2 Timothy that says Think on these things Paul tells Timothy. For if you think on them the Lord will give you understanding. That's a pretty good promise.

Think about them and the Lord will give you understanding. Will you become some kind of great Bible scholar? Maybe not. But you will learn and day by day your knowledge will increase. Put some effort into it.

Don't stop there. So to your faith add virtue. To your virtue add knowledge.

To your knowledge add self-control. So self-control and the virtue that follows after this, steadfastness or perseverance, I believe that they are twins. I think that self-control is scripture informed reason moderating excessive desire. And steadfastness is scripture informed reason reason motivating defective desire.

Let me explain both of those. So there are times when you really want to do something but your scripture informed reason says that's not a good idea. That will hurt you or that will hurt someone else or that will bring dishonor to your family, will bring dishonor to the Lord's name.

Don't do that. And you are to be governed by scripture informed reason. You're not to be governed by your whims and fancies.

You're not to be governed by your affections. Once you were because that's one of the devastating effects of sinfulness on humans is that instead of being governed by scripture informed reason we are instead governed by our corrupt affections. And we just use reason to try and justify the corrupt choices that we've made. But when you're born again then your human nature which had been turned topsy-turvy so that affections were uppermost and reason was bottommost is righted. And once again reason is made the king of man's soul. But it is a scripture informed reason. And so when you want to do something that is going to be bad for you or dishonoring to the Lord your scripture informed reason has a little conversation with you and says that's not a good idea.

Don't do that. And you know we've always got these conversations going on in our heads. I believe that when conversion occurs the most reasonable voice and the dominant voice becomes the voice of scripture informed reason in your head. And it may just be barely in control at the first but it ought to become more and more in control so that we learn and develop self-control. So self-control is scripture informed reason moderating excessive desires. But in our sinfulness not only do we sometimes have excessive desires but sometimes we have defective desires.

We don't want to do the things that we ought to do. So you determine boy in light of brother Jim's sermon I'm going to become a more diligent student of the word. I'm going to start committing scripture to memory just taking maybe spending five minutes a day to memorize a passage of scripture.

I'm going to start small and build up from there and it'll be great for about three weeks. And then after about three weeks it'll be time for you to do your memorizing and you'll think I don't feel like doing that today. And that's when scripture informed reason says well you're not the slave of what you do and do not want to do today.

A new ruler has taken over in your life and that is scripture informed reason. And so go ahead and do what you are supposed to do even though you don't feel like doing it. One of my favorite definitions of education is that education is the process of teaching a person to do what he ought to do whether or not he feels like doing it when he ought to do it.

And that's a very good definition of education. But that's the function of self-control and steadfastness. It's scripture informed reason corralling our wayward affections and desires so that they are harnessed to pursuit after God's glory and the divine image implanted upon our souls. Now the influence of Sigmund Freud is extremely powerful even after it's not all that influential in psychology anymore.

It's still very influential in the culture, still very influential in Christian culture. And here's the way that it manifests its ugly lie. So the ugly lie of Sigmund Freud is that if you really want to do something you'll get sick if you don't do it. And of course that's so prevalent in the culture. But the way that that idea and the idea of Sigmund Freud really gets to some of you is that you think that your unconscious self is the real you.

You think that if you want to do something is bad therefore you must be a bad person and maybe all of your Christianity is just a big lie. Well these two virtues self-control and steadfastness say the real you is not the unconscious you. The real you is the deliberate you. The real you is the person that you cultivate in secret.

There is the possibility of hypocrisy but a hypocrite rarely carries on his hypocrisy when no one will know about it. And so I think it's a fairly good indication of the state of your soul. The real person that you are is what kind of person are you trying to cultivate in secret? Are you bringing your self-control and your steadfastness to bear on your desires? Then don't be tormented by the fact that you're walking with Jesus, you're seeking his word, you're deliberately praying, you're deliberately cultivating Christian fellowship and then all of a sudden this vile thought comes blasting into your mind and you think, oh that reveals the real me.

You may not even know that that kind of idea came from Sigmund Freud. That's really me. That vile pervert is the real me. John Bunyan deals with this in his Pilgrim's Progress when Christian is going through the valley of the shadow of death and as he nears the end of the valley of the shadow of death there are these demons that come up and start whispering things in his ear and Bunyan writes something like this Alas, poor man, he was so distracted he thought that they were his own thoughts and it caused him such deep distress. He wasn't able to realize that's not the real me.

That's not me. Several years ago a pastor friend of mine whom I've known for most of my life called me and he for the first time ever revealed that he was having enormous struggles with depression and accusing thoughts and he identified one particular incident that he remembered from his college days. He was getting ready to play a prank and before he threw the water balloon or whatever it was he was getting ready to do he said the thought went through my mind what if the Holy Spirit doesn't want you to do this and he said just quick as a wink a thought answered well phooey on the Holy Spirit that was not exactly it I've cleaned it up. So he said well phooey on the Holy Spirit and then this guy's talking to me on the phone he says and this is probably 20 years after that happened he said in all these years I have wondered have I committed the unpardonable sin?

I so disrespected the Holy Spirit in saying that. I said do you have a copy of Pilgrim's Progress? I do. Have you ever read it?

No. Well I want you to get it and when we get off the phone I want you to find the section that I just described to you. So we got off the phone and several weeks later he called me and he revealed that he had been so depressed that he was not even able to carry out his pastoral functions. He had been getting someone else to preach for him.

In fact he said he woke up one Sunday morning and he told his wife you're going to have to get someone else to preach for me. I just can't do it today. But he told me that passage from Pilgrim's Progress was the breaking of the sun above the horizon in my night of dark despair. And it was this principle that the real you is the you that you cultivate in secret. It's the deliberate you.

It's not that wild and crazy you that sometimes breaks out in spite of your efforts. The real you is the you that you cultivate using these twin virtues of self-control and steadfastness. And then I think that the next two virtues are also complementary. There's godliness and then there is brotherly affection or brotherly love. I think that these twin virtues remind us that there are two dangers that we face in the cultivation of virtue. One is that we will apply merely human standards. But no, your goal is god-likeness, not just Aristotelian excellence.

He uses this very word in a very famous work of his when he cultivates these 12, he says here are the 12 virtues that you ought to pursue and this will make you the excellent man. This will make you the virtuous man. It's noble but it's just human. We are aiming to be partakers of the divine nature and to become like God. Now the other extreme is that we will make the mistake of thinking that we can accomplish all this in some kind of monastic seclusion that all of this is going to take place while we're quietly in our closet with the door closed and nobody intruding upon us.

But this second in this pair, this idea of brotherly affection reminds us you've got to do this in the presence of obnoxious people. Now maybe you've had experience with thinking that you had made pretty good progress in a certain virtue until you were tested. You know it's impossible to tell if you are really submissive until the person who is your authority asks you to do something that you'd rather not do.

It's impossible to tell that you are submissive until the person who is your authority asks you to do something that you'd rather not do. Similarly it's impossible for you to know that you have patience until you are faced with a situation that you'd rather not be in. When I was about 14 I was converted and I think that I gained an immediate victory over a pretty bad anger problem. And so for about the next 13 years I can only remember getting really red in the face angry one time.

That's a pretty good record. I felt pretty good about my victory over anger. But just late in my 27th year when I was about to turn 28 I learned that my anger problem had not been conquered. For that was when I married this precious little woman sitting up on the front pew. And I discovered, much to my dismay, that loving her so deeply and wanting our relationship to be so good was a context in which I would sometimes get angry when she never behaved the way that I wanted her to behave or the relationship wasn't going the way that I wanted it to go. All those years when I thought I was not angry was because I was not being severely tested.

And if someone did make me angry then it was easy just to stop hanging around them or to go somewhere else. But here was someone that I promised God that I would be with and try to love her as Christ loved the church. And this was an attempt to practice wifely affection or to practice brotherly affection as a tendency to keep you humble and keep you praying for grace. And so don't make the mistake of just pursuing after a human excellence. We're wanting to be godly. Don't make the mistake of thinking that godliness is something that you're going to make great strides in just you and Jesus in your Bible somewhere off in the corner of some remote desert.

That's not the way. You're to supplement godliness with brotherly affection. I thought about illustrating these eight virtues as like petals coming off of a flower. In the middle if you think of a daisy like the middle would be the divine nature and then there would be faith and virtue and knowledge and self control and steadfastness and godliness and brotherly affection and love. Those eight petals would be around.

And I thought I don't really I don't really like that illustration. These are more intertwined than petals on a daisy. This is more like the petals on a rose. So you think about one of those tea hybrid tea roses that are so densely packed with petals that you can't really take it all apart without destroying the rose.

They all are meant to hang together. And then there is that that color and that fragrance that's in the rose. And I would then represent the color and fragrance of the rose by this eighth virtue that is mentioned here. And that's love. Love is really a summary of all of these seven things that have gone before. And so make sure that if you lose sight of all the rest that you love. Because if you love then you will fulfill the law. You will fulfill the because love is the fulfillment of the law. And if you love God with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength and if you love your neighbor as yourself then you will behave towards God believing his word. You'll have faith in him. You will seek to expend the effort to become what God wants you to become and so on through the seven virtues that have preceded this. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven we pray that you will help us to expend every effort to put forth all diligence to supplement our faith with virtue, our virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. And we ask this in the name of our great Savior Jesus. Amen.