We're going to be spending some time in 2 Peter chapter 1, if you want to turn there. So first, let me just give this a little bit of an introduction. What I'm going to focus on today are verses 5 through 7. I realized yesterday or the day before that this is going to have to be a two-part sermon. I couldn't get through it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do them sequentially. I think Greg will do next week and then I'll do the week after. My goal with these verses ultimately, which I think is ultimately the goal in the verses, is to stir us up to holiness. to stir us up to every good work and ultimately to love. But that's not just a simple thing. I've spent a lot of time meditating on verses 5 through 7 for quite some time, spanning a decent amount of time, months or even years ago, just kind of questioning, you know, what's the core? What is Peter really trying to get across here? And so when I read these again not long ago, I really wanted to dig into them and all of a sudden just I feel like a sermon just kind of flowed out of it, so I wanted to deal with this. But also, there was a situation where I was walking through a coffee shop, and I came upon a conversation just walking by where it was two women having a Bible study, and it was a younger woman, maybe in her 30s, and an older woman, and I heard the younger woman say, you know, I just, I don't care about personal growth. I don't care about personal growth. I don't care about that. She's like, I just want to go and talk about Jesus. I just want to go talk to people about Jesus. And then the older woman, you know, just agreed with her and that kind of thing. And it bothered me. I almost wanted to say something, but I was like, that's not going to be probably helpful at that moment. But that is a common mindset, right? That's a common mindset. I think it comes from a place probably of not understanding God's sovereignty, first of all. Because if you don't understand God's sovereignty, in your human logic, you can say, okay, I'm saved. And you have heart to do good, and that's great. You have heart to share Jesus. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But there is something wrong with saying, I don't care about my personal holiness. God just needs me to do something. And that's where the problem comes in. God needs me. I've heard a lot of people say the term, you know, we just need to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And if you've used that, I'm not saying that's a terrible thing. It's the way some people use it in the sense that, oh, God's, Jesus is the head and we're the body. And without us, he's kind of helpless. Like we need to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And if you think that God's kind of helpless without us and he needs us, I'm not going to waste time on myself and personal holiness and that. I just got to be out doing something. I got to be out serving Jesus, spreading the gospel. I got to be doing this because we're the hands and feet of Jesus. He needs us. So that's a terrible understanding of who God is. If you understand who God is, you know that God could fix every single problem in this country, in this world, with a thought at this very moment. God does not need us. God does not need us for anything. Now, He does command us to do certain things. There's many things he commands us to do and asks us to do, but he doesn't need us to accomplish his will in any way. So then it makes you step back and say, okay, he doesn't need me. I wanna know what he tells me to do. I'm not gonna use my human logic and say, oh, well, I think this is what's the best thing I should be doing. I need to find from scripture what he tells us to do. So you think about it with, Martha and Mary. So Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet. She was learning from Jesus. She was growing in her knowledge and understanding. And Martha saw all the things that needed to be done, the serving, all the food, everything. She's running around and she doesn't understand what Mary's doing. She's just sitting there. And Jesus says, she has chosen the good thing. She is learning. And so I think we can do that same thing, like, oh, there's so many important things, but let's look to Scripture to figure out what is important for us, what we need to do. And then also this idea that God needs us. I think about the passage in Esther when Mordecai is talking with Esther and she needs to go before the king. But she's afraid to because if you go before the king unsummoned, it's a death sentence unless the king pardons you. And so she's afraid and Mordecai says to Esther, if you fail in this, if you're not faithful, if you don't do this, deliverance is going to come from another place. God's not beholden to your faithlessness. God's never beholden to our failures. He will accomplish His will. Salvation will come to the Jews, Mordecai said. It's just going to be from somebody else. But you need to do what you were meant to do. So there's that idea that God's going to do what He will accomplish. He's not beholden to our failures. So we ask ourselves, what does God want of me? So we look to scripture to know this, not to our own idea, our own humanistic thinking. So in order to exhibit genuine fruit, genuine, pure, good works that come from a place of sanctification, a sanctified heart, They're grounded in faith, they're grounded in knowledge, they're grounded in self-control, a place of righteousness. We need to look to Scripture. And you can't have good works, true, pure, holy, righteous, good works that imitate Christ without laying a groundwork. Now, when we're first saved, we can certainly exhibit good works, and we try, and we should, but there's much work to be done, and you should never, like the woman in the coffee shop, say, I don't care about all that. You know, your works are going to be weak, and they're going to be impure many times, but you know what? You want to grow, and so you should never just push away all these things that Scripture says are a necessity, and I'll get into what I mean by that more fully in these verses. So in other words, true good works come out of a pure heart, and they come out of our understanding of who God is. So let's read our passage here, 2 Peter 1, and I'm going to read verses 1 through 11, even though I'm focusing on 5, 6, and 7. So starting in verse 3, actually, starting in verse 3. 2 Peter 1 verse 3. 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. And in the verses I'm gonna focus on, 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. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, as we read these words, We look to You for our instructions. We don't look to our own understanding or our own intellect or what we think You desire of us, but we look to what You say in Your Word, what You command. Give us understanding of these words, give us understanding to be able to live a more righteous life, a more virtuous life, to gain knowledge and self-control and help us, enable us to put these things into practice so that we might be equipped for every good work. We pray these things in your name. Amen. So I just want to spend a short amount of time on verses 3 and 4, leading up to our passage, talking about the divine nature. I won't spend much time on these, but let's just read it one more time, verses 3 and 4. So 2 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. We have all that we need. Everything we need that pertains 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. We have become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped, it's past tense, you have escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires. So he's speaking to believers here who are a new creation. They have the divine nature. You have been saved, and that's why the list starts with supplement your faith. That's the groundwork. Without faith, then don't even pay attention to the rest of this. It doesn't apply to you. Faith alone is what saved you. That's it, that's the only thing that can bring you to a place where you can make every effort. So we have become partakers of the divine nature. Every single believer who's a true believer who is born again, saved by the merit of Christ alone, because of faith, every single believer has the ability now to fulfill what these commands say. Because we have been born again. But when we're born again, He doesn't sanctify us immediately. Not to get off too much on a tangent, but legally, we are fully sanctified. Legally, before God, any moment we die, we are fully sanctified. We are closed in Christ's righteousness. We are perfect in that sense. But we all know that we, in this life, we still have much sin to contend with. And we are, sanctification is a slow process. In my mind, of course, sometimes I wonder, why did God do it this way? Boy, wouldn't it be amazing if we were just sanctified like that? We're not struggling with these sins. We're not struggling with just this slow growth at times, this discouragement. It would be wonderful, but that's partly because I'm lazy, right? And it takes effort. It takes effort to grow. God doesn't just do everything for us to say, you sit back. He commands us to make every effort. It takes work, it takes dedication, self-control, discipline. So when we're saved, internally, we are a new creation. In 2 Corinthians 5, it says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. So we are a new creation, but there is much work to be done. The new creation, we have a new nature on the inside. But even though that's true, we have the divine nature as it says. So now we have the ability. but there's much work to be done. So in Ephesians 4.22, you can turn there if you want, Ephesians 4.22, and this is speaking to believers who are a new creation, who have the divine nature. He says, you, it's a command. You don't just sit back. He says, you put off your old self. You're new on the inside. Now all those sins that were yours, put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life. This is no longer who you truly are. Put those things off. Your former manner of life, and as corrupt through the deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds. So put off the old self. That's no longer who you truly are. Put off that old self externally. You are a different person now. Your heart is made new. So put off the old self which no longer represents who you are. And put on, verse 24, and put on the new self. your true, align yourself truly with who you are, put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So I believe that these verses hold the key to understanding verses five and seven, this list of seven things. They really hold the key to understanding those on a deeper level. There's this idea of putting off and putting on, and there is a sequential order to this. Now, all of these things in this list, Virtue, knowledge, all of those things. These things happen simultaneously. It's not like you become perfectly virtuous. Now I get to move on to knowledge. No, no. All these things happen together, and they all help buoy each one up. As you increase in all of these, they all simultaneously increase. And it's something that is a process for the rest of your life. But we're going to get to those in more detail So when we were born again, we are infants. I just want to think about this for a moment. We are infants. Because we're born again. You're reborn. I think about an earthly infant, like Cashel. You're pretty useless at first, right? You're not ready for every good work. All you are as an infant, you just receive. Your parents pour into you. You're fed. You're just taken care of constantly. And it's similar as a spiritual infant. You are not ready for many things that you will be ready for later. You are taking in. You are taking in. And think about as an infant, they grow. Well, first of all, they start to learn to walk and then speak. And then they learn, and all of that takes effort, all of that takes work on people surrounding them, but also for the infant, it takes work, it takes practice. You begin to read, you begin to write, to be able to communicate. I mean, think about, I remember what a big deal it was when your kids are able to get out of the car by themselves. all of a sudden that's a big deal. And then better yet, your kids get to an age where now all of a sudden they start to become useful. They can help babysit the younger kids. But that takes much time and much progression. It's the same with Christians. You know, when you're an infant as a Christian, You're receiving a lot from other people. You're being poured into. And as you grow, as you grow, you become useful now, useful to God, useful to bless others now. Now in Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews in chapter five, verse 13, he's chastising them. He says, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he's a child. Right? He's not useful to anyone. And he just said, you should be teachers by now, and you're still drinking milk. So he's saying, you're not, this is not right. You know, you need to get your life in order. You need to make every effort. You still need milk. You should be pouring into others, and you're still just receiving milk. That's not the way it should be. So he's essentially saying, grow up. In verse 14 he says, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have had their power of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. I mean, isn't that the case with young children? They don't know how to distinguish good and evil. That's why parents are to protect them, are to teach them. And then they, at a certain point, that's the point they are to grow and be able to stand on their own two feet. It's the same with spiritual infants as they grow, as new believers grow. And that takes people surrounding them. And that's the point of the local church. That's the way it should work. And their parents, certainly, their family, all of that. So, we as believers, young or old, we're all at different levels in our walk. We're all, some have been saved for a long time, some have been saved for a short time, some have had much knowledge in their background, much teaching, some haven't, and that's the way God set this up. And we all play different roles in the church, in the body. But we all share one thing, we all have a new nature. And it's by faith alone that we have this new nature. It's the divine nature. So now what? We all have this new nature. We all wanna eat solid food and not just stay on milk, right? So now what? We come to what I've marked in the heading as make every effort. Make every effort to grow. It takes work. So in 2 Peter, back to our verses, I'm just gonna start at the first part of verse five. 2 Peter 1 verse five, it says, for this very reason, what reason? You have the divine nature. For this very reason, you have the ability now. You've been changed on the inside. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith. So I'm gonna stop there, to supplement your faith. It doesn't say, in other words, make every effort to grow up. Make every effort to stop just being content as an infant. It doesn't say make an attempt or try pretty hard or make some effort. This is very strong language. It says make every effort. Leave nothing on the table. Make every effort to supplement your faith. Okay, and then it goes into this list of seven qualities. And I'm going to get to those. Today we're only going to get into the first one, virtue, because, you know, as usual I have this long lead-in. But what I want to do now, so there's this list of seven qualities, and before I get into that, I really want to remind us of their importance, of just the significance that Peter is placing on these qualities. So it's, just to illustrate what I'm doing, think about, let's say you're at a conference and there's these speakers, and many times, they're speakers, you don't know who they are, you've never heard of them, but they're gonna speak to you, and in order for whoever's running this conference to get you to pay attention to this speaker, what do they do? They introduce them and they give their credentials. Because they want you to pay attention. If you don't know anything about somebody, you have no reason to pay attention to them. So they give their credentials. This person wrote this book. This person was a missionary. This person runs this church. Whatever it is, that's all an attempt to get you to care about what they have to say. And so that's what I'm doing with these seven qualities. I'm going to jump down to verse 8 and I'm going to read the credentials, so to speak, of these qualities, the incredible importance that Peter puts on these qualities so that when we get to them, I want you to pay attention to those. So in 2 Peter 1 verse 8, it says, for if these qualities that we're going to get to are yours and are increasing, So it's an ongoing work. You're never complete with this, it's ongoing. If these are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And then in verse 12 he says, therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities. So these qualities, it's an ongoing work to increase in these always. We're never done practicing increasing in these qualities. So he says, I will always remind you of these. So this is not something that's just a one-time thing. This is something that we should revisit. And that's an amazing amount of significance that Peter puts on these qualities. If you follow these instructions, and every believer, every true believer, has the ability, because we have the divine nature, to follow these instructions. It says we will be, one, effective. Effective. Think about me as teaching right now, or you teaching your kids, or whatever. We want to be effective. We want our lives to affect others. We want, in a positive way, we want to be effective. in our good works, in our words. We want to be effective. It says you will be effective and fruitful in the knowledge of Him. We want to bear fruit. We want to have true works, true works that are pleasing to the Lord. It says you will not be nearsighted or blind if you practice these things, if these things are yours and increasing. It says, amazingly, we will never fall. We'll never fall away. We will never turn from God. Of course, we will stumble, but we will never fall. That's an amazing thing to say. And it says, confirm. You will confirm your calling and election. You'll have assurance. That brings so much peace and joy. And it says, you have abundant entrance into the kingdom of heaven. And I think there, what I would say is that's talking about our rewards. You know, there's not really any Christian who just barely squeaks by because we have the righteousness of Christ. So we're fully enter into the kingdom of heaven. But the picture here is maybe there's some lack of assurance. Maybe there's some less rewards. Again, I don't know exactly how all that works. I don't think we're meant to. But this says you have abundant entrance into the kingdom. I think there will be much reward if these qualities are yours and increasing. And so I wanted to give those credentials so that you understand the importance of these seven qualities. Don't take this lightly. But let me stop for just a moment and ask you this question. It's a heart question. These things I've just listed, to be effective, to be fruitful, to have assurance, and ultimately be pleasing to God. Do you desire those things? That's the question. Do you truly desire those things? Is that important to you? Do you want to bless others? Do you want to practice every good work and to be pleasing to God? I remember, and this was probably 20 years ago in my first job, there was a woman who was involved in her church and she, her life did not portray her being a believer, honestly. I mean, she, nothing about it said that she was a believer. She regularly got drunk. She, all those things, you know, and I remember she would say, and she was involved in her church, I remember she would say, I know my place. I know my place in heaven. I'm just gonna be, I'm gonna be, I think she said something like, I'll just be a janitor, or I'll just be cleaning the toilets or something like that. I know I don't have many rewards, but that's okay, you know, that's just me. And that's a heart issue. Because every new believer has the divine nature. So there's a starting point of you do desire these things. If you have the new nature, if you are born again, you do want to practice every good work. You do want to love. That's part of being made new. Right, so that's a very dangerous place to be if, you know, I'm just content being an infant and you might not even understand what that means. Think about the servant who just buried the money and didn't care about growth, didn't care about fruit, didn't care about that kind of thing. So, I just wanted to make that note. Our goal is to please God. And if we have a new nature, if we've been born of God, that should be our goal. And if it's not, then you need to take a step back and do some real introspective meditation. So in our desire, if we have the divine nature, in our desire to please God, and we will gain all these things, we will be effective, fruitful, all those things I listed, but we will also gain abundant joy and blessing for you and for others. We'll gain peace We'll gain rest in the confidence and the assurance of our salvation. This is not just something that we look at as like, oh, this is work. When he says make every effort, he's not saying this is going to be drudgery. No, you have the divine nature. These things are not burdensome. Believe me, you will be blessed so much with joy and peace. Before I get to the first one, virtue, I just want to make a note about the order that these are listed in. I've done a lot of study on this, partly because I was trying to find somebody that totally aligned with how I see the order of these laying out, and I was left disappointed. I listened to three sermons on this, and I was left a little disappointed. Now, I was listening to good teachers, and they said some really good things, but they did a long intro, just like I'm doing, but when they got to the seven qualities, it almost felt like, okay, now I'm just gonna tack these on and just boom, boom, boom, go through them and move on. They put very little emphasis on the order, almost like these are just kind of a random order, or they just, They just didn't put enough emphasis on the qualities themselves, and I was always left a little frustrated. Not saying they didn't say good things. I was listening to some very good pastors like Martin Luther Jones, but I was always left wanting more. So I strongly believe that these qualities are listed sequentially and there's a purpose for that. It's not just Peter throwing out these random list of qualities and it could be rearranged in every order. I think there is very much purpose to this. You've got virtue, you've got knowledge, You've got self-control, and you've got steadfastness, and then you move to godliness, brotherly affection, and finally love. So we start with faith as the ground, and we end with love. There's a reason for that. There's a sequential order there. Faith is, of course, the foundation. Without faith, there is no foundation. This is not for you. These don't apply to you. And we end with love. There's much work in between. In other words, to get to genuine love, and when we get to that, we'll talk a lot about this, where it speaks about genuine love in Romans, or pure, pure love. It speaks about brotherly affection. There's a lot in between that, because when you're first a believer, I mean, think about it this way. If you don't have virtue, if you don't have moral excellence, if you're just riddled with sins and struggling with that, or you don't have any knowledge yet, you don't know how to love. You don't even know what biblical love is. So you might have the desire to love, and that's good, you should. And you might be able to love in some ways, but for that love to become pure and genuine, it will take many things. for you to be ready for every good work, ready for genuine pure love from a heart of purity. And we work on all these things at the same time and there is much overlap. So we build, but they build upon one another. And just one note on the word where it says supplement. So think of it this way. So we're gonna start with virtue here in a moment. It says, supplement your faith with virtue. Okay, so now you're striving to be virtuous. And that striving never ends. You don't become virtuous, now I'm gonna move on to knowledge, and knowledge is the second thing. No, you're striving to be virtuous. And as you become more virtuous, I know there's moral excellence, and I'll explain this. Now, it says supplement that with, as you stand firm in this moral excellence, start adding to that knowledge, right? because you can only become so morally excellent without knowledge. So you need to supplement that with knowledge, which will make you more virtuous. And then the next knowledge, okay, as you grow in knowledge, now think about self-control. And then down the line, it's supplementing, it's adding to, you're standing each one of the things. growing each one of these categories, but then you're adding two and you're growing in all of them simultaneously. But at the end, it will result in true godliness, god-likeness in the image of God. That is our goal is to be like Christ and show Christ-like love in the end. And that's our ultimate goal. So there's this idea, I think this list starts with putting off the old, when it says supplement with virtue. You put off the old, and it ends with putting on the new, godliness, love. So let's read the list, and then I'll just get into virtue today. It says, so verses five through seven, it says, for this very reason, you have the divine nature, 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 we're gonna spend a little bit of time on each one of these things. And I think it's important to do that without ever losing sight of the big picture of the whole. So let's start with virtue. First of all, what is virtue? I could get into the Greek word and all that. Greg would do a better job of that, but what is virtue? Virtue is moral excellence. high moral standards. So it's synonymous with integrity, it's synonymous with purity, honesty, decency, those things. You get the idea of what virtue is. It's a holiness, it's a righteousness. So the antonyms would be like vice, vices or iniquity. In other words, sin is essentially the opposite of virtue. Think about the Ten Commandments, you know. Idolatry, blasphemy, adultery or lust, hatred of others or murder, none of those things are virtuous. So it says, first of all, we are to be virtuous. So essentially what Peter is saying is You have faith, now supplement your faith with virtue. In other words, stop sinning. And we've talked about this, especially people sometimes who were saved maybe later in life. I know Alex was talking about this. There's things that you might've been doing all the way up to the point of salvation, but the moment you were saved, you said, this has to stop right now, today. This has to stop because you know that sin and maybe we all, especially if we were saved later, know this thing of like, okay, that was clearly sin. This has to come to an end today because now we are believers and we need to be virtuous and these sins have to cease. And I think that's what Peter is saying. You need to be virtuous. Those sins, you need to stop the bleeding, in other words. You must not be immoral or dishonest or impure, but virtuous. So we want to be effective and useful. That's what we want to get to. ready for every good work. Think about this when you were first a believer, and everybody's got a different story of how they came to salvation and all of that. I think back when I was a young believer, I was struggling, especially in my teens, my late teens, struggling with certain sins. And when you're in that mode of just battling these sins, especially if they're repeated sins, It's hard to be effective in anything else. It's hard to bless anyone else. You're just essentially keeping your head above water with these sins. You just feel like, oh, I'm beat down. I'm failing. Because you're not really dealing with those sins the way they need to be dealt with. They need to be cut off. I think of it as a boat. Think of it as a boat. I'm thinking in my head, I'm picturing a small wooden boat. And you have holes, and your sins are holes in this boat, and it's taking on water. And you're spending all your time on yourself, essentially, this boat, just trying to get the water out, keep this from sinking. It feels like a losing battle. You're not much use to anyone else at that point. And what you don't wanna do, and what some people do, maybe like this, woman in the coffee shop who says, I don't care about those holes. I'm just going to ignore those. I just want to go do something. I just want to go be the hands and feet of Jesus. So in that sense, you're like putting a nice new coat of paint on this boat that looks good to others. You've got these good works that maybe you're boasting about to others while the boat takes on water. You're not doing what you need to be doing in the order that you need to be doing it. So Colossians 3, verses five through 10. If you want to turn there, you can. Colossians 3, verses five through 10. So like I said, Peter says, the first thing you need to supplement your faith with is virtue. And what that means is stop sinning. Put to death, as it says in verse five here, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. put to death what is earthly in you. I think Greg sent out from Owens, it says, kill, if we're not, how does it go? If we're not killing the sin, it will be killing you, yeah. Yeah, if you're not killing your sin, it will be killing you. If you're not plugging those holes in the boat, you will be sinking. So it says, put to death therefore what is earthly in you. So this is a putting off of the old, putting off of the old, and it lists some sins here. It says put off sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. So all of those things, those are the antithesis of virtue. Put those things off. It says, on account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these too, you too once walked. So you once walked in these things when you were living in them, but that's not who you are anymore. You are a believer now. You have the divine nature. You have a new nature that desires to be righteous. It says, put those things off. Align yourself with your new nature. Put the old man off. It says in verse eight, but now you must put them all away. And it lists more anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. And in verse nine, it says, do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator. So, that's when we're going to get to godliness. That's down the line, though. You're being renewed after the image of its Creator. God-likeness. That is what we are to be renewed to, is the holiness of God. So, externally, our actions should and will increase, increasingly align with our internal nature now. after the image of Christ. I just want to note again, legally, we are pure before God. We are pure at this very moment. If you're a believer, you are pure before God. We have Christ's robes of righteousness on us right now, if you're saved. And any one of us, if we were to die at this moment, we are good before God, legally, because it's Christ's righteousness. So I just want to put this one picture again for this putting off and putting on, because I think this is very important to understand. So imagine that you are a drug addict, and you are just completely ravaged by drugs. You're in the gutter. You haven't taken a shower in years. You are not even in your right mind. You can't think clearly. Your beard and your hair has grown. What I'm giving you is a picture of before salvation. But then your clothes are filthy, they smell. But then you are saved. So let's say, this is a picture I'm trying to paint here, you're saved. So you are now, you've broken this addiction, you no longer are beholden to your sin or the drugs in this illustration. Your mind is all of a sudden awakened and you're clear, you can see clearly, you can think clearly. But you still look the same. You still have the dirt and the mud, and you still have the filthy clothes that smell, and the hair, and the beard, that kind of thing. You still look the same. So imagine this. Imagine if you say, OK. I can think clearly now. I've broken this addiction. I want to clean up. Let me just put some white robes over top these clothes. What is that going to do? What is that going to do? That's not really going to fool anybody. Because even though you're a new person on the inside, what does it take? If you put those white robes, and I'm using those as a picture of good works. You say, I don't care about my filth. I don't care about all this. I just wanna put on a facade of righteousness. I just wanna put on these good works. So you put this white robe over these dirty clothes, what's gonna happen? Those clothes will bleed through and they will taint those white robes. They will bleed through and contaminate them. And those good works, they're not gonna be pure good works. Because you're not doing what needs to be done. And that is take off the old. Clean yourself. Wash the mud away. All of those things. You must do that before you can truly put on the robes of righteousness. Again, I'm not talking about legally, because we are pure before God. Legally. I'm talking about externally. So again, Not trying to just harp on this woman in the coffee shop, but that's what she was saying, essentially. I don't care about holiness. I just want to put on these good works. That's what she was saying. So you must take off the old, you must become virtuous. Put to death the sin in your life. You can't skip these steps. So don't use, like I said at the beginning, don't use human logic and say, okay, I know I'm riddled with sin, I've got all these problems, but who cares about that? I just wanna do something for God because He needs me. No, God needs you. He tells you to be holy. He tells you to be righteous first and foremost. That's why it's the first thing on the list. Supplement your faith with virtue. Don't be like the Pharisees. Matthew 23, it says, woe to the scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence, right? So don't try to do that. Many people try to do that, to look good on the outside, but deal with the sin, deal with the sin in your life. Some people, Some people aren't even aware of some of their sins. Well, that's where knowledge comes in, too, and we'll get to knowledge. So you cannot put on godliness until you, in practice, put off the old self and prepare to put on the new self. So let me just read a couple more verses. We're almost done here. In 2 Timothy 2 verses 21, it says, therefore, If anyone cleanses himself, and that's what we're talking about, be virtuous, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, clean your, take off the old, cleanses himself what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work. So when it says, you're now ready for every good work, that means there was a time you weren't ready for every good work. You want to be useful to the master. We want to be effective and we want to be fruitful. So it says, cleanse yourself from what is dishonorable and make yourself a vessel That's useful to God, useful to the Master, and then He will use you. Some people will complain that, I just don't have any ministry, I don't have any this or that, I wish God would use me. Well, first of all, get yourself in order, cleanse yourself, and make yourself useful to the Master, because otherwise you're just dealing with your own sin day in and day out, and you're not useful to the Master. You need to become ready for every good work. So if we don't focus on personal holiness, then we are not useful the way we should be to the Master. And don't get me wrong, our goal is not just to be focusing on ourself. Our goal is the good works. That's ultimately the goal. It's just you have to do it in the right order. You have to understand the order. And isn't that so much of what the church, what the local church is about? It's all about us getting each other. We're to stir one another up. We're to exhort one another. The leadership should be teaching and preparing everyone for discipleship, to be ready for every good work. It says in 2 Timothy 3 verses 16 and 17. Again, this is Paul writing to Timothy, who was a young church leader. He says, all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. And that's the goal. That the man of God may be complete, equipped for what? for every good work. It takes teaching, it takes reproof, it takes correction, training that you may be complete and ready for every good work. And that's so much of what the church is about. It's not about us just coming here and learning more and more and more, but it's getting ready and it's growing so that we can become more fruitful, more effective. Like I said earlier, you do need to ask yourself, do I desire to be effective and fruitful? Because everyone who has the new nature, the divine nature, we should desire this. We should desire love. But in the moment, don't get me wrong, the moment we're saved, we practice some form of all of these qualities. But it's very weak and it's very impure many times. But we wanna learn, we wanna grow, and this lays a roadmap for that. That's why I think these qualities are so important. And you gotta ask yourself, what does God command of me? What is he asking me? I don't wanna use my own logic to think, oh, what does God need me to do? You think, what does God lay out for me in scripture? How do I grow? How do I become godly? So, as we stand in virtue, As we become more virtuous, as we put off the old self, and we're standing and we're increasing that, next we're gonna talk about supplement that with knowledge. And what will that knowledge do? Well, when you're a new believer and you put off those old sins that you know about, there's about a thousand you don't know about, right? So that's where knowledge comes in. You start to grow in knowledge, and then you can understand, oh, I didn't realize that was sin, and then you can grow more virtuous. And so you're supplementing your virtue with knowledge. And then, and we'll get into self-control, which is a big one. This was pretty convicting for me as I studied about self-control. So we're going to teach on those other six qualities in part two, but that's where I'm going to stop for today. And let's pray. Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you that you have given us a roadmap to know your will, your revealed will. Help us to follow it. Never disregard it and go our own way. Never leave the path, but to see what you have laid out. and to have hearts that desire to ultimately love the way Christ loved, and we see the way we do that, and help us to have discipline and self-control, help us to grow in knowledge and virtue and all of these things. Lord, give us wisdom in them. Don't let these words just go in one ear and out the other, but that they will take root in our heart and will help us truly grow more into Your image. I pray these things in Your name. Amen.