If you would turn to 2 Peter
1, we have a homework assignment from the Lord. And so I'm going
to go over the lesson plan with you. Our job as Christians is
to be sanctified. And that's a tall order. And
let me just start off by saying that this is something I need
tremendously, so that's one reason I picked it. So I want to talk
to you today about the fruit of the Spirit and about how we're
supposed to be working on that item. In 2 Peter 1, verses 2
through 11, is one of the most clear, I think, passages in the
Bible about our duty as Christians and it's very practical too it
tells us what we can work on and it's it's very interesting
that the things we're supposed to work on as christians is mainly
inside of us and it shows on the outside but we're supposed
to go to work on the inside of us to to do these things so in
second peter let's just read the passage first and then we'll
make some comments on it second peter 1 2 through 11 Grace and peace be multiplied
to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing
that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to
life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called
us by his own glory and excellence. For by these, he has granted
to us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you
may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption
that's in the world by lust. Now, for this very reason also,
here we go, applying all diligence in your faith supply moral excellence. And in your moral excellence,
knowledge. And in your knowledge, self-control. And in your self-control, perseverance. And in your perseverance, godliness. And in your godliness, brotherly
kindness. We're getting to the end of the
list. And in your brotherly kindness, love. Now, notice what he says
about if we do this or if we don't do this, the consequences.
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render
you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our
Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities
is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from
his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the
more diligent. There it is again. to make certain
about his calling and choosing you. For as long as you practice
these things, you'll never stumble. For in this way, the entrance
into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
will be abundantly supplied to you." Fantastic passage. He gives us the building blocks
of what we're supposed to work on for our Christian lives, for
our sanctification. and we have to do it in the power
of the Holy Spirit. I think many, many Calvinists
or those who believe in the sovereignty of God are scared of the Holy
Spirit, but we needn't be, because that is, he is who the Lord Jesus
left behind when he left the earth to empower us. So the fruit of the Spirit is
from the Spirit, from the Holy Spirit. And so our job is not,
we don't get saved by grace and then all of a sudden get sanctification
by our works. I don't intend to say that today
at all. We're sanctified also by grace, but it is through the
power of the Holy Spirit and we do have to add diligence.
That's the whole message here in this passage. So I wanna compare
this passage with the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. So
let's turn there now, and then we're going to compare these
two lists of qualities. Galatians 5, 16 to 26. A very similar passage that I
had never really compared before, side by side. Making the most
of your time because the days are evil. So then, do not be foolish, but
understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk
with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit."
That's in the present tense, being filled with the Spirit.
Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always
giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ to God, even the Father. So that's the filling of the
Holy Spirit. And the list of the fruit of
the Spirit... I'm sorry, that was in Ephesians,
about being filled with the Holy Spirit. Did I say the wrong thing?
Now, in Galatians 5, 16 to 26, is the list of the fruit. But I say, walk by the Spirit,
and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the
flesh sets its desire against the Spirit. and the spirit against
the flesh. We are in a warfare, as delineated
in Romans 7. For these are in opposition to
one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. Now,
the deeds of the flesh are evident. Here's the negative list. Immorality,
impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy,
outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying,
drunkenness, carousing, and things like this." What a list! That's
the anti-fruit side. "...of which I forewarn you,
just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such
things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the
Spirit is Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is
no law. Now those who belong to Christ
Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let
us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.
All right, so the fruit of the Spirit versus the deeds of the
flesh. We are in a day-to-day war as
Christians between the flesh or the sinful nature, the old
man, the old nature, against this new nature that God has
given us in Christ. And it's our job to magnify and
to free up, through the power of the Holy Spirit, this list
of qualities that will break out if we are filled with the
Holy Spirit. You know, I've been fascinated
lately by the life of Peter. and his progression at the crucifixion
of the Lord. We were talking about the other
last Sunday. He was so impetuous in saying,
Lord, I'm going to die for you. I would never let anything happen
to you when the Lord said he was going to be crucified. made
all these fantastic promises in the flesh. And then you know
how he denied him three times. One little servant girl got him
to deny him, and then I think another servant girl, and then
another person. And so the cock crowed, and then he was crushed.
And then later on, the Lord strengthens him. He's of course filled. I
think this is the greatest example in the Bible of A person left
to himself, which is all of us, versus a person filled with the
Spirit. Because Peter was just as weak as any of us. He had
made all these promises, and yet he denied the Lord. He was
in that courtyard around that campfire, and they said, oh,
you're one of those guys that was with Jesus. No, I wasn't.
Don't know him. So this is Peter, and yet later,
He stands up in front of the Sanhedrin and he says things
like, you know, you can tell us not to preach, but we're going
to do it anyway. So two different people. What's
the difference? It's the filling of the Holy
Spirit. And now, OK, let's let's dive into this a second. If you
got a pen and paper, you could do this or if not in your mind.
Let's first of all, make the list from Galatians of the nine
fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faith or faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Nine things down the left side. Now let's make the list from
Peter. First of all, he starts with faith. He says, to your
faith add. So we're going to count that. And there's eight
things on this list. So nine things of the fruit of
the Spirit in Galatians, eight things on this list. Faith, virtue,
knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness,
and love. How many of them are the same?
There are four that are essentially the same in the two lists, although
only three, the exact Greek word. But really, perseverance and
patience are the same concept, even though they're different
Greek words. So really, you've got four of the same and 13 distinct
to make a total list of 17, right? Well, if we take off the four,
then that's 13 distinct characteristics, qualities of
the Christian. As I said, there are three exact
Greek words, agape for love, then there's pistis for faith,
and there's egratia for self-control. The others are different Greek
words, but macrothumia and hupomone both kind of mean the same thing,
or patience. To me, I'm looking at this list
of qualities. Eight of them I would classify
as mostly inner qualities. And then five of them are breaking
out into the outside world, if you agree with me. I think the
inner qualities that we should have as Christians are joy, peace,
patience, faith, self-control, virtue, knowledge, and godliness. And I believe the outward qualities
in this list would be love, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and brotherly
kindness, which is brotherly love, really. So, what's the
role of the spirit? The role of the spirit is to
empower us, such as in Peter's life, to produce the fruit And
then the spirit is Christ in us. As the Lord Jesus has left
earth, he left behind the Holy Spirit. You can read John 14
through 16, all those chapters. He's telling the disciples about
how it's gonna be with the Holy Spirit being left behind and
him helping them lead the Christian life. So in Galatians, we learn
about the spirit versus the flesh, just like Romans 7. The spirit
versus the law, that the spirit and the law are opposite each
other. The works of the flesh, and all 15 of those works of
the flesh, the scary list. The fruit of the spirit, and
he says no law against this list. The legal basis for it, the crucifixion
and the fact that the spirit is going to help us with this
or just be our power for it. And a final appeal. Ephesians
5, as we already read, tells us to be constantly being filled
with the Holy Spirit. So now I want to go back to 2
Peter, and I want to just camp there for the remainder of the
time and talk to you about that. It's such a great passage. 2
Peter 1, verses 2 through 11. So this is a really interesting
list, isn't it? To your faith, add this, and
then to this, add that, and add that. At first, it seems like
building blocks from the bottom up, and that you would finish
the assignment for one thing before you go on to the next
thing. But of course, I don't think it's exactly like that.
But maybe there is some real reason, of course there is, for
the order in which these things are listed. So let's just go
down. through the list. First of all, let me just say
this. We need divine power to live
godly. That's in verse three. That's
throughout this passage. We need the divine power to partake
of the divine nature in verse four. We can actually partake
of the divine nature. We need the divine power to escape
lust and corruption, also verse four. To be fruitful and not
useless, verse eight. To have assurance, verse nine. Now that is so key. You know,
when we start lacking assurance of our salvation, what's the
main reason? I think it's right here in this
passage. We're not working on our homework. We're not working
on these qualities. So he says here, for he who lacks
these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification
from his former sins. We start getting all wrapped
up in the world and things, and we forget our homework, our Christian
homework, and then we get short-sighted, and we even start forgetting
the forgiveness we got in the Lord, and that's lacking the
assurance of salvation. We also need the divine power
to make certain His calling and election, verse 10. We're supposed
to make certain about His calling and election of us, not just
sit back and say, you know, I believe in sovereignty of God, I'm elect,
and that's it. See you in heaven. Verse 10,
also to not stumble and to have an abundant entrance into the
kingdom, verse 11. That's quite a list in this passage
of what happens to us if we are doing this homework or not. All
right, we must apply all diligence. That's the word spude, earnestness,
eagerness, zeal, and effort. We must apply all diligence,
even though we do believe in the sovereignty of God. The antinomian
trip or trap is of laziness, just us being lazy. All right, the order of qualities.
Let's just run through them real quick. Faith, obviously not much
to say about that. Faith is a gift of God, isn't
it? It's several times in the Bible that that's proven. So
to our faith, we're adding these other things. Virtue, I love
this word, Irite. It's only used three times in
the New Testament. It means moral excellence or
goodness. In 2 Peter 1.3, he uses it. seeing his divine power has granted
to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the
true knowledge of him called by his own glory and excellence.
Excellence is that word, Arite. And so he wants us to add excellence
or virtue to our faith. Very interesting that that's
the first thing. I thought that was really interesting. Because
the next thing is knowledge. And that's, of course, not knowledge,
worldly knowledge, science, and algebra, and all that. This is
spiritual knowledge. And so he lists virtue first,
and then he lists knowledge. If knowledge was first in the
list, it would kind of lead to maybe some arrogance and stuff.
But he wants virtue first, so that when knowledge is added
to virtue, you really got something. Because if you don't have any
virtue, And then you have knowledge. You've just got an arrogant so-and-so
that spouts off a lot of spirituality, but is not virtuous. The second one is self-control. And boy, is that a good one.
This is used five times, including the verb form of it, ek-kration
in the Bible. Krateo, it's from ek and krateo. Krateo means to hold or seize. So Ecrateo is an expansion of
that. And we're supposed to just get
hold of ourselves, self-control. It's in the list of qualities
of a bishop in Titus 1.8. And Paul preached this to Felix
in Acts 24.25, which Felix really didn't appreciate. But that's
what Paul preached to Felix. So, and these would be good to
memorize, this stack of things. Faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control. OK. If you learn self-control, that's
going to lead to some patience, isn't it? So that's the next
one, is patience, perseverance. It's from Hupomone, to remain
under. To remain under is the root idea
of patience. First Timothy 6.11, six things
that we're supposed to pursue, and one of them is patience.
We could say a lot about patience. All of us know that we need more
of it. And so that probably comes out of this self-control ahead
of it. Then godliness. Now we're getting up the stack
here. Eusebius. In Second Timothy, Paul says
that we should not have just a form of godliness, but we should
have the real thing. So these six things, faith, virtue,
knowledge, self-control, patience, and godliness, I would see as
mostly internal, wouldn't you? It wouldn't hurt to memorize
this list, and maybe the spirit would bring it to mind more often
during the day when we don't exhibit these things. But these
six I would think are mostly internal, and then they pop out
into the last two, the way I see it. Brotherly kindness, this
is the word Philadelphia. Philadelphia means love of the
brother. Phila is not agape, but it's
still love. Philae Adelphi, love of the brother. We need to love each other here
and any other Christians we know. And then the top of the list,
and wouldn't you know it, maybe the hardest thing to work for,
I shouldn't say work or to achieve or get, is agape, real love,
real genuine love. So, Quite a list. Faith, virtue,
knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness,
and love. I challenge you to memorize that list and memorize
the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. And then you've got 13 unique
things that we can all work on every week with the power of
the Holy Spirit. Finally, just to to refer to
a passage in Philippians that I think is closely related. You
know, this whole thing begins in our minds, right? I think
most of these qualities begin, obviously, in our minds, whether
they're good ones or bad ones. Anger would begin in your mind,
whereas the opposite of that, of joy and these other things,
would begin in your mind. In Philippians 4.8, Paul tells
us the good things to meditate on during the week, if you have
a chance. Finally, brethren, whatever is
true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, if there's
any excellence, that's the word virtue, by the way, And if anything
worthy of praise dwell on these things. So there's another list
that's a good one.