A call to confess our sins from 2 Peter 1:5-11.
"giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue....
be even more diligent to make your call and election sure."
As we will see in the message, there is a kind of knowledge of JC that is barren and unfruitful. As James says, there is an empty and dead pseudo-faith that doesn’t save anyone. True faith adds to itself, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, and love. True faith is diligent to repent, to act, to serve. So work to make sure of your election.
Many Calvinist Christians, zealous for the doctrines of grace, maintain a studied apathy to works and piety and any effort put forth in the Christian life. That might imply we are trying to earn our salvation. Well, it is easy to slip into that works righteousness mentality – we want to watch out for it, definitely. But Scripture in many places urges us on to strive, to press on for the upward call. Of course our calling and election are as sure as can be in heaven, in the book of life, from God’s decrees. But we also have the call to work that out in our lives.
So let us confess times we have let down our guard, gotten lazy or casual about our purity, or our prayers or Scripture reading. Times we have neglected to add virtue to our faith.
8/20/18
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