***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: Let’s pray together. Lord Jesus Christ, we are thankful that you came into the world, and that you brought your kingdom with it, and that you left it here with us, and that you are in our midst. We know that where a kingdom is, there is power, and there is direction and order, and we’re thankful to know that that is available to us, each in our lives where we may be. We ask this evening that you would use the moments we have together for the prosperity of that kingdom in our hearts, that your name might be hallowed, that your kingdom might come, that your will might be done in us as it is in heaven. Guide every thought and every word, and may we be surprised with your goodness in breaking the bread of life to us this evening and receptive and open and ready to hear and to change and to follow. For we ask it in your precious name, Amen.
This evening I’m going to speak to you on the topic of the progress of the disciple, and if you would like, you can simply subtitle it, How to Get There from Here. One of the great problems of the Christian is to look at the great attainments of Jesus or the apostles or perhaps of some person they know, and to answer the question, how do I get to be like that? I can’t begin to deal with all of that this evening, but I do want to concentrate on a passage, especially in the first chapter of 2 Peter, which gives us some idea of how you get there from here. And I want to take my text from the very last verse of 2 Peter, where Peter tells us or admonishes those to whom he was writing as he closed his letter, but grow in grace. This is 2 Peter 3.18, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever, Amen.
To grow in grace. The short answer to how you get there from here is you grow. Of course, that only begins to answer it because then we need to know how to grow and what growth involves.
Now, if you look at any attainment in human matters, you will see that there is a process of growth and adaptation which anyone has to go through before they amount to much of anything. That’s even true of the things which we suppose perhaps ought to happen automatically, like becoming a good parent, or learning how to be a good neighbor, or any of a number of other things. They just don’t happen automatically, and that is found in the nature of the human being. You see, the nature of the human being has two parts. One is the conscious, and the other is the unconscious, and I hope you won’t think of anything spooky when I say unconscious because I don’t necessarily mean anything like what a psychologist might talk about, although I include that. I’m talking about something as simple as this. Suppose you want to play this piano. Will that just happen automatically? You didn’t get where you could play like that automatically, did you? Not automatically. Or those of you who sing, it doesn’t just happen automatically. Now how does it work? Well something like this, you have fingers and hands, or you have vocal cords, or whatever it is you’re going to do, whatever it is you’re going to do with. These elemental things we must understand. Human beings are such that whenever they do something, they do it with something, if it’s only their mind. Now there are two parts then in doing it. One is the conscious effort that goes into it. If you’re going to play the piano, you have to get up and walk, and you have to do certain things consciously. But now, if I want to play it, even though I consciously did everything you did, it wouldn’t come out that way. Because my problem is, I do not, at the unconscious level of myself, I have not worked in the structures of meaning which will make my fingers go to the right place at the right time. We heard Randy sing a moment ago, and I enjoyed that as I do so many of you, all of you, I’ve never seen a group that’s got so much music in it. But as you hear Randy sing, and you sense the qualities in the tone, you know that that was something that came there through years of use. It didn’t just happen. You see, in all of the attainments of human life, it’s that way. And it’s that way in the spiritual realm also. And if we are going to get there from here through a process of spiritual growth, in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we have to be able to wed those two processes, the conscious and the unconscious.
Now one of our great difficulties in spiritual matters is that we tend to believe everything is done in the spiritual realm simply by conscious effort. And we tend to overlook the fact that it is only by conscious effort which plows into the self over years of practicing the unconscious meanings that have the right direction. It is only as we do so that we come through a process of growth to where we want to be spiritually.
Let me turn that around. You see, your body and your mind, my body and my mind, is in fact a repository of habits, feelings, thoughts that have been ingrained in me willy-nilly as a little bitty child and growing up and going through the experiences of life. And that’s in a large measure how I got where I am. Now if there is no redemptive effect at work in me, the effect will be simply that I will be caught in the corruption of the world and I will have no escape. Malice and anger and unforgiveness and lust and covetousness and idolatry and superstition and all of these things that drive the world will simply form my actions and mind in such a way that I cannot escape it.
And that’s exactly what Paul meant when he said you are dead in trespasses and sins. You were dead. You were so caught in that web of meanings that had been corrupted by the process of history and your own contributions to it as you got going, for we all do contribute to it. We make our choices. We take our stances and we harden and we develop then, we make our own contribution to the cesspool of sin which is in the world. And so we come to the stage to where you have someone like Paul or Saul of Tarsus going about killing people in the name of God and thinking he was doing God a favor.
Recently heard a sermon talking about how Saul was going down to Damascus and I’ve never noticed before how it does say there, breathing out threatenings and slaughter. Didn’t you just see Saul just breathing out threatening and slaughter. He’s just thinking about these people and he’s mumbling under his breath as he rides along how he’s going to kill these people. He’s just so full of it. But he was doing God a favor. That’s the way he thought about it. And see the capstone of the evil of the world is when it gets sanctified by religion. Religion puts its mark on it and blesses it and says that’s God. Then you’ve really got trouble. You’ve really got trouble now. But that’s what you see.
What I’m concerned to illustrate to you is that that is what we are as human beings. We have two levels, a conscious level and an unconscious level. And many times the unconscious level is not anything like the psychologists talk about, as I mentioned, but simply the habit that is in our members.
There’s a beautiful phrase in the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs in which it’s speaking about the model woman. And there’s this line in there, it says, the law of kindness is in her tongue. Now that’s right where it needs to be, is in the tongue. My problem is if I were to try to play that piano, I know a good deal about music and about notes, but the law of the keys is not in my fingers, it’s in my head. Now this lady that the proverb is talking about, she is one who the law of kindness is not in her head. It’s not in her Bible. It’s not in her heart. It’s in her tongue. That’s right where it needs to be. And that means that that kind of person, you see, her tongue is directed automatically by the law of kindness. So that as we were talking this morning about not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing and so on, she didn’t have to think about whether or not her tongue was going to be kind. It was just kind. She had a kind tongue. That’s a marvelous thing, isn’t it?
And you see, the righteousness of the law of God had settled down into her tongue. It was unconscious. That’s why if you were to ask her later, oh, did you speak kindly to so and so, she might not know. It didn’t even arise as an issue. Would she speak kindly? Well, I don’t know. Did I? I don’t. What did I say? See, her right hand did not know what her left hand was doing.
Now that’s the unconscious level, you see. And this is the fulfillment of the thought in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel also where it’s spoken of the law being written on the fleshly tables of the heart. That is to say, it comes down to the unconscious level to where it is not an issue. Will I believe God in this circumstance? It doesn’t occur to me to do otherwise at that point, you see. Will I do the loving thing, the kind thing? Well, it isn’t even an issue.
There’s a terrible passage in the gospels in which Jesus is in the synagogue and he is about to heal a man with a withered hand. And he says to them, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath? And they can’t answer that question. Now you have to think about it, you see. The scripture says Jesus being grieved at the hardness of their heart. The problem was that they had to stop and think. What you have to stop and think about, you see, indicates where your unconscious is. If you have to stop and think about whether or not to do good on the Sabbath, you’ve got a problem with your view of God, friends. And Jesus was running into that all the time, you see, and he had that problem around him. People who didn’t know whether or not you should really help someone on the Sabbath. And Jesus said the Sabbath is not made for man, the other way around. Man wasn’t made for the Sabbath, see, but the Sabbath was made for man. See, Jesus had it straight. The law, an expression of the goodness of God, was such that of course you did something good on the Sabbath. You didn’t have to stop and think about that, but these people had to stop and think. You see, it’s what we have to stop and think about, like, again, to go back to playing the piano, I would have to stop and think about every note. I would have to send a long message to my middle finger to hit middle C. And it would have to deliberate at length about what to do after it got the message. And so on.
Now all of that, to emphasize this fundamental point, and let me just now make the general point. If you’re going to understand the gospel of the kingdom of God and how it works in reality, you must understand that it deals with human nature, and you have to be a psychologist in the proper sense of the term in order to understand how this works, because this is talking about your psyche and mind. It’s not talking about stones or apples or chickens, it’s talking about human beings. And we need to revive the idea of a psychology. You know, the word has been given to the devil, sort of. And I often suggest that we ought to speak of soul-ology. We have to know how the soul works, otherwise we can’t understand. Such a simple thing is the progress of the disciple.
Now ideally, you see, every church is a group of people who are empowered to do the work of God in this world. Every congregation should understand that that’s their work. And in that congregation there will be people at many stages in the growth of the disciple. There will be beginners, there will be those who have just come in, there will be those who have been in a while longer and they have more experience, they’re beginning to find their place and exercise their powers in the kingdom of God. And then there are going to be some men and some women in the group that are just the sort of shakers and movers in the kingdom of God, that whenever the devil needs to be beat up, you call on them, and they come in and give him a thumping, all right? And as you look at that balance and that order in the congregation, you will see that the younger ones are learning from the older ones, and of course the older ones, they keep learning too. But there is a progression in the community and there is a reciprocal ministering back and forth of the old and the young and those who do one thing and those who do another, all in the unity of the fruit of the Spirit with the bond of perfection which is love.
Now that’s the congregation of the disciples, and in that we see an ordered progress.
Now if we don’t understand this, we can hurt ourselves pretty badly. We will try some spiritual hijinks of one sort or another and we will get the spiritual tummy ache. And it might bitter us, embitter us, it may stunt us, throw us back if we don’t understand that until we are equipped for the job, we don’t try it. Because if you’re not equipped for the job and you try it, you fail, it’s that simple. And while the gracious Lord makes many exceptions, in general that principle holds. If you’re not equipped for the job and you try to do it, you fail.
Like we read in James, for example, the last verse of James, last chapter of James, a shocking statement. Elias, this is James 5, 17, Elijah was a man of subject-alike passions as we are. What do you mean that really? Elijah got depressed just because it was Monday. Elijah couldn’t stand the noise of the kids. Elijah had all these problems. Well, not in all their details, but what the Scripture is saying is that Elijah was flesh and blood. He went through it like we do. Now that’s apt to set us up for a problem unless we understand that Elijah had learned some lessons and had gone through some processes. He didn’t have everything whipped out right, but he had it down basically. When we go on and read, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
Now, I don’t know if you feel up to that this evening, but that’s a pretty big assignment. You see, and if you think, well, I’m going to go do that today, you have to hurt yourself. You will strain a spiritual muscle unless you’re a very special person, in which case things will go well. But you see, Elijah was a person who had been through his training. He had his muscles all in shape and when he went over the spiritual high hurdle, he didn’t throw anything out of joint. He had been through the process.
We have to understand that that is our basic duty as disciples is to enter the process and to go through and learn our lessons in all humility from one another and from God and from experience and from the next dog that comes by if that’s going to be our teacher. It doesn’t matter who it is to put ourselves in humility before the world in trust in God to learn our spiritual lessons.
Now you’ll find many passages in the New Testament, and in the Old for that matter, which give us some ideas of what this process might be. But I want to look at my favorite this evening and give you a practical exposition of some sorts on it, and that’s in the first chapter of 2 Peter. If you’ll turn to that with me, we’ll just read the first 11 verses and then go back to some particular things which it mentions.
Second Peter, the first chapter, and we’ll just begin with the first verse. Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. No question where it came from. There’s no problem here at all with whether or not they worked it up. It was a gift to the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
Once we’ve got that settled, Peter then begins to build on it and say, Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue and to your virtue knowledge and to knowledge temperance and to temperance patience and to patience godliness and to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness agape or charity as it is translated in the old version. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see far off and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather brethren give diligence to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, ye shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
A marvelous passage which though considerably involuted and difficult to analyze in the details gives us a picture of a progression of starting at a certain place, going through and adding along as we go different types of things. And we want to just look at some of these things this evening.
We won’t spend too long on the prologue because I think we just have to assume that in such a meeting as this evening where we have a limited time. But we see that it is according to the divine power that has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. Now how much does that leave out? It doesn’t leave out anything, does it? All things that pertain unto life and to godliness. And we stand in that great basis of faith and confidence in that total gift of everything that pertains unto life and godliness.
Now it is the duty and responsibility of the ministers in the church to speak the word in such a way that it creates faith that this provision is really there. And in the fellowship of the church there is to be a gradual building up of total confidence and total provisions for life and for godliness. Through the knowledge, that’s how it comes, Jesus Christ, his person, his life, his relationship to God and his relationship to us, it is through the knowledge of him that this happens. He is the abundance of Christ manifested to us. It is in coming to understand what he actually did upon the earth, how he related to other people and in seeing how that same principle which was in his life extends to you and me as we live here and now, that we come to a full faith in that total provision.
Notice we are called to glory and to virtue. I don’t know how that starts with you. But I want to say that that’s what you’re called to right here and now. That’s not talking about something that’s supposed to happen after you die. You are to enter into a glory. You’re to be a glorious person filled with erite, moral virtue and force, moral character here and now. That is the gift that is given. That’s what he’s called us to.
Continuing now the development of this impossible sentence, whereby we are given or whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? That means you’re to be like God. Whatever is true of God, you are to partake in that in some measure. That’s how you’re to be members of the family. Members of the family have the family resemblance. We are to be partakers of the divine nature, we’re to be like him.
Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. I have to say a little word about that and I’ve already referred to it. In the world there is corruption. What is corruption? Anyone? I mean, we have a lot of uses of that term. Corruption refers, for example, to a piece of flesh that is rotting, doesn’t it? Corruption means that there is a kind of sickness that is breaking things up. Associate corruption with eruption, like a volcano erupts, right? Interruption, we break into something and the basic word rupture is present in all of these. It’s breaking up of an order which is appointed and lust comes in and breaks up. That order which preserves and makes strong and sound the particular thing in question, human life, the mind, the body, and society, lust comes in and breaks that up. And as it is broken up, the parts begin to decay. And there is a general downhill from there. Everything’s going downhill. The wicked are like a troubled sea, Isaiah says, that just by its natural motion casts up filth and mire. It isn’t, you don’t see, have to go to find special occasions to find the evil that is in the world. It’s just the normal motions of the world as it is formed that produces all of the horrible things that we find in the world. We read the newspaper and you look at the news and see the awful things. Those aren’t exceptional. Those are the natural outcomes of a mind and a body which is alienated and broken away from God through lust.
Now what is lust? Well lust isn’t anything very colorful, I’m afraid. It’s just stubborn desire. It’s just wanting one’s own way. It’s just being obsessed with getting something you want. That’s all it’s required. All we like sheep have gone astray. We’ve entered everyone into our own way. It’s that drive to just get our way, to get what we want and you have all of these people and let that be the dominating factor in their lives and all of a sudden you’ve got a grand mass and you’ve got a world that’s broken up and you have broken minds and broken bodies and broken families and broken social organizations and suffering and all of the grief that simply comes from that one thing. The elevation of the individual into the position of God in their own life to follow their desires.
That’s how lust corrupts the world. You see, about the worst thing that God does with lust is to give people up to it. And in Romans, the first chapter, we see that one of the things, one of the stages in the progression by which man removed himself from God in verse 24, wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. Really this has connotations of sexual misbehavior and so on. But the sexual degradation that you see in mankind is simply one expression of this general tendency of lust to destroy.
If you look back in 1 Peter again on this topic of lust, you see in the 11th verse of the second chapter of 1 Peter, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lust, which war against the soul. Now he is saying here that we should have a check on these desires of ours. We should not let them govern our lives because they will destroy our souls. They war against the soul.
Back to one of the topics of this morning, we’re talking about fasting. That’s the whole point of fasting. The whole point of fasting is to enable us to say to our normal, natural good desires, I can live without you. You don’t govern me. There is something over you. It doesn’t say that these are bad in themselves. It’s just that if they come to govern us, they ruin us. They war against our soul.
James said, you ask and have not because you ask them is to consume it upon your own lust. Again, we mustn’t see the word lust in English has come to mean something, you know, very bawdy and I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It just means desire. That’s all it means. A kind of desire which fixes itself on something and says, I’ve got to have that. And it spoils our prayer. It comes in and we find ourselves praying simply we want something. Why do we want it? Well, we just want it. That’s all. And James says, you ask and have not because you ask to consume it upon your lust. You see, it’s this governing of the self by desire. Talking about here that brings corruption into the world.
But now he says, since we are partakers of the divine nature, since we’re partakers of the divine nature, we’ve escaped that. We have gotten a different place to stand. All of a sudden, I now have a place over here to stand where I can sort of look at my desires going around and around and say, hmm, wonder what I ought to do about those. Instead of just being standing over here in the midst of being caught up in this cyclone of desires that’s just driving me this way and that from depression to elation to hurting other people to destroying myself, just caught up in that cyclone, you see. Now I have this place to stand. Now I am a son of God. Now a new power has entered into my life. You will see the beautiful words here in 1 Peter again, the first chapter in the 23rd verse, being born again. You see, the new birth puts us into a new realm, gives us a new place to stand, gives us a new perspective, gives us new powers. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God. What is it that brings us to birth? It’s the word of God. The will of God through his word creates in us, gives us a new life. We have a new nature, and this word of God liveth and abideth forever. That is the same word of God which created the worlds. In 2 Peter 3, 5, for this they are willingly are ignorant of that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. The creative word of God continues in redemption. It comes to me through the spoken word, and all of a sudden I find myself with a new nature, a new place to stand.
Now then, the progression begins. Bean can grow that isn’t already alive. You can’t take a ball bearing out of a skate wheel and plant it and grow beans. That’s right, isn’t it? You bet. You can’t do that. If you want to grow a bean, you’ve got to go get a bean and plant it. In fact, if you plant a ball bearing, it won’t even grow ball bearings, will it? But you have to have a life to start with, and now we’ve got the life, and then we enter the profession. Now besides this, verse 5 of 2 Peter 1 says, besides this now, giving all diligence, now you see we had a gift, but now it comes to us and says give all diligence. You may have a musical gift, but if you don’t give diligence, you will not amount to much musically. There is nothing more common in this world than talented people who can’t tie their shoes, than gifted people who have no attainments.
Peter here says, once you enter into life, give all diligence.
Now you see, this is why it’s so important for us to understand how we come into discipleship. We come into discipleship on the basis of a total commitment. Jesus said, if a man isn’t ready to give up everything, he can’t be my disciple. No man that putting his hand to the plow looking back is fit for the kingdom of God. He wasn’t just saying, you know, if you’ve got a double mind about this and you’re putting your hand to the plow and looking back, I’m not going to let you in. That’s not the point. The point is that if you’ve got that double mind, you’re unstable in your mind, and consequently you are not fitted. You’re not fitted for it. What comes up you will not be able to accept. That’s why there must be an entry into the heart of the kind of renunciation which the person has who takes up his cross and follows Christ. See that’s the doorway to discipleship.
Now the doorway is so important and we cannot miss it because if we miss that, everything else will be quite wrong afterwards. Our trouble is that very often nowadays we’re not taught discipleship. We’re taught something about getting saved and so on, but no one really tells us about discipleship and things do not go well thereafter. There is not the ordered pattern of growth. There is not possibly a group of disciples who can support and exhort and train and give to help us grow and things don’t go well.
So many people become disappointed and in a little while they’re by the wayside. They have given up. They’re embittered. They’re hanging around waiting to go to heaven and a lot of them are going to go, dear friends. You know, a lot of people are going to be in heaven who just really couldn’t hack it here spiritually. Why are they going to be in heaven? Well because someone, thank God, told them to trust Jesus Christ. And they said yes and I’m glad that’s settled, but you know when they get there they’re going to be facing some things which are apt to leave them disappointed. They’re going to be tears in heaven. They’re going to be tears there and God’s going to wipe them away and all of that. They’re going to be some tears there and some are going to be because of failures here. They were not taught or they’re unwilling to enter into the way of progression and in 1 Corinthians 3 we find verse 11, for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Christ Jesus. For if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble, every man shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every man’s work of the sort that it is. And if any man’s works abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, verse 15 of 1 Corinthians 3, if any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by the fire. He’s going to come through and the only thing he’ll have to say when he gets there is thank God for the merits of Christ in replacing my sin with his righteousness. That’s a wonderful thing, but he’s going to have a smell of smoke all over him because everything else was burned off. Now you see there’s a story about the three little pigs and one of them built his house out of straw and you know what happened to it. And then there’s the one that built his house out of sticks and you know what happened to it. But then there’s the one that built his house out of bricks and as far as we know he’s still there living happily ever afterwards. Now that story you see is spiritually profound and we have to understand that we are building a house out of straw or sticks or bricks as we live here. And as we do it, we are being a blessing to others or we’re not as the case may be.
Now you see the way of discipleship in the kingdom of God to be lived here now is a way where we enter into a process and we give all diligence to add unto the foundation of faith and repentance and trust in Christ. We give all diligence to add unto that the things now that Peter lists in the passage which I’ve read to you.
Let’s look at this list now briefly as we come to the close of our discussion this evening just to see how it develops. And there is a development. I think what you see here is a progression, not just a list, I use the word list, but I think that’s ill-advised. I think there is a progression where the later ones presuppose the former ones.
Add to your faith moral character. The Greek word is erite and it’s a familiar philosophical term which simply refers to personal excellence, personal excellence. If you read Aristotle or Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the discussion all through is a discussion about, well, sometimes it’s dikaiosune or righteousness, but it soon becomes a discussion of virtue or moral excellence because that’s what righteousness is defined in terms of in those writers. And Peter here is saying add to your faith moral character. Well, what you say, I thought we were saved by grace. Sure, you’re saved by grace, but we’re talking about something here, not just about how you’re going to get in heaven, what’s your life going to be like here? That’s what we’re talking about now. And we’re being told here the next step from faith is moral character. We all know what that means, I think. That means truthfulness. That means honesty. That means caring for others. We all know what that means. And Peter just says almost offhandedly, add to your faith moral character. Now he’s not presupposing, of course, that we’re just going to find the moral character spigot somewhere and turn it on and get a cup full and that’s it. It doesn’t come that way. It comes again by that twofold process of conscious intention and the learning at the unconscious level. Let me try to apply this as closely as possible.
For example, I’ve had many, many people, honest, good Christians who would say to me, you know, I would like not to tell lies, but social relationships just force me to. Because if I tell the truth in some circumstances, it’s just going to hurt people so badly. Well, you see, there’s a lot to be said now about how this works. But the first thing is, if you’re going to tell the truth, you have to learn how to do it. For example, a lot of times when people tell a lie, what they should have done is say nothing. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world to do. Lady comes up and says, you know, she has a fruit basket turned upside down on her head and she says, do you like my hat? Right? Well perhaps you want to say, well, it would be nice to eat or something of that sort. What do you do? Well, there are many things that you can do in kindness other than say, I think it’s the most beautiful hat I’ve ever seen in my life. There are many things you can do.
Now what we have to do is to make the experiment and try and really believe, if I make a mistake, there is forgiveness with the Lord. Try something. Be honest with the Lord and say, Lord, you know I want to be truthful. I know it’s not going to help this lady to lie to her. And many times we just don’t want the blow up that’s going to happen if we tell her the truth. And so often our attempts to be kind to others are really, we want to be kind to ourselves. And now I’m joking about it, but it’s a serious problem, it really is. And like in work, I mean in many of your jobs, in my work, I am often called, made great promises almost if I would just lie a little bit, just a little bit. Now let me tell you that this is your great opportunity. We talk a lot about witnessing. If you will simply add to your faith moral character, you will have so many opportunities to witness just to explain why you’re doing what you do. And you say to the person, no, I could do that, but I’m not going to lie and the reason is because I’m a follower of Christ. And just leave that with them.
Do the right thing and you will go through a process of learning as to how to do it and you will find that your faith has to constantly lie there to support you because the great temptation you see is if we do the right thing, the world is going to come off its hinges one way or another. So there has to be this constant and abiding faith that if we do the right thing, God’s going to keep the world on its hinges and He’s going to keep us in our place. We are in His hands. The Lord is my Helper. I shall not fear what men shall do unto me. See that’s the underpinning part as we add moral character.
Now as we add moral character, we will find that we add knowledge also. Now knowledge is a matter of knowing how things work. It is only when we enter into moral character and become stable so that we can stand still and observe that we begin to learn how things work in life. We also, as we step out in faith in the path of moral character, we get knowledge of how God enters to support us and we learn how He works in the details of life and the places where I was tempted to take matters into my own hands and do something wrong in order that things should turn out right, I learn, I get knowledge of the fact that when I do what is right and trust God, He steps in.
One of the worst things we do, I’m afraid, in doing wrong is we keep goofing up the world for other people. We should, we do what is right and we let them handle their end of the law, see. But very often we do what is wrong in order to sort of protect them.
I remember just a case of a lady who her husband took Playboy magazine and whenever their mother-in-law would come, she would always try to hide the Playboy. Now I’m not endorsing Playboy or any of that, but you see in this situation, she was robbing that mother-in-law of her opportunity to face the facts and deal with reality as it was and then deal with God accordingly. It is not our business to manipulate reality. Reality is what it is and the best thing we can do for anyone is to let them know how it is. And this includes such things as if someone’s driving you nuts. Don’t put on a big Christian act to show that they’re not. That’s what’s called lying, right, misleading. Let them know. You don’t have to breathe fire at them to let them know. You can let them know in other ways. But again, you see, that’s what comes when we, through moral character, begin, we learn, we get knowledge of how to do these things so that we can let other people know. We can tell, we can share how we are and we can let them be responsible for their part of the world.
So we add knowledge and to this knowledge, self-control or it’s called temperance in the old version. Now you see, self-control is based upon knowledge and moral character. You can’t have self-control without knowledge and you can’t get knowledge unless you have enough moral character to stand still in the fissures of life till you can learn how it works. Right? But as you get knowledge and moral character, you find self-control. See, again, we have to understand that when Jesus says these marvelous things that he does and we find the teachings of the apostles about the love and strength of the Christian, that is the result of an inner transformation. If we continue to think of self-control as merely a matter of handling your external actions, we’ll never understand it. Self-control is a fruit and a fruit grows from what is inside, see. And the person with self-control is not the person who is just able to clinch tighter on the bad stuff that is in them. It is the person who has been transformed so that there is not so much bad stuff there. It grows out of the moral character and the faith and the knowledge, the self-control.
And what’s the next one? Endurance. Endurance. The old version says patience. You see, a person who is self-controlled and who has an order in their life simply endures much longer because they are not at war with themselves, they’re not fighting all of the needless battles that you can think of, they’re not fretting and fussing, and consequently they endure. Endurance comes out of these other things. It is a kind of gift at this level, I think, because we are finally, we lose a sense of effort. The trained artist or the trained athlete, if you talk to them, very often they will speak of the better moments in their art or their athletic activity as one in which they don’t experience effort. They will often tell you that it is almost as if they were observing and someone else is doing it, see. Because something is taking over, that’s why they endure. And they can just run or they can play or they can do whatever it is. And it is largely effortless because of that inner mechanism of self-control that has grown out of knowledge, that has grown out of moral character, that is founded on faith. And you see, that’s what we want to be open to as we grow. We have to understand that these are stages, real stages in the life of the soul that depend upon one another.
Self-control and endurance, and finally, not finally, sorry, next, godliness. Some of the virgins say piety. But I think what is being said here is that there is a kind of conscious presence which we often recognize as holiness. I don’t hesitate to say that this is something of what we often call sanctification. At this point the person has been claimed by God in a certain obvious way and they add the strength of piety or holiness onto the level of endurance. It’s natural to explain it in those terms because the person who is enduring now at this level and carrying on his life in this way obviously is in touch with something that is not just human, see. And when we talk about the soul in the way I’m doing tonight, we must always remember that we’re not just talking about a natural process. There are natural processes in the soul, but here we’re talking about those who are partakers of the divine nature, right? So God is at work in this and the presence of God in the life emerges. We find these people who are simply able to endure cheerfully and they don’t seem to be dying of what is killing all the rest of us. What’s going on here? Well this person has godliness, he’s got godliness, see? That verse in 1 Peter 3, 15, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. That’s exactly what’s happened, you see. The Lord God has been set apart as something very special in our relationship to him and as a result be ready to give an answer to every man that asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear, see. Because the Lord is set apart in our lives in this way, the effect of that is hope. See, Peter is saying, sanctify the Lord God in your heart and then you’re going to have to explain to those around you why you’ve got hope. Just like you have to explain to them why you don’t lie or why you don’t steal or something that says, what’s the matter with you? What’s the matter? You’ve got hope, right? You’re not supposed to be hopeful in these circumstances. You’ve got to be ready to give an answer. When godliness sets in, in this obvious way that Peter is talking about, we’re going to have to give an answer because it will be that kind of obvious piety or holiness which is just there present without effort as a result of the interaction and growth of our soul before God.
Finally two things I added on, brotherly kindness. Here’s our good old word, Philadelphia, Philadelphia and Agape, they are the top of the list. And brotherly love is a kind of, I think of it as, oh, it’s very difficult to describe I guess, it’s a matter of a kind of an affinity for others. It’s approachableness, for example. It’s where they’re easy, easy to come together. There’s no big deal here that you have to sort of wade through five layers of offaciousness and pride to get to them. We might say, well, he or she is just a common person and they have a way of just being with other people.
That’s Philadelphia. Philadelphia is a gracious manner of just being with others, see. So that again, the question of do they love me or not doesn’t even arise because it’s just such an easy kind of thing, Philadelphia. That is added on to this kind of holiness.
I like that addition because holiness has such a way of getting so sticky and being even divisive, you know. Holiness sometimes, it never was that way with Jesus. The remarkable thing about the holiness of Jesus, and of course he’s the model in all of this, is simply that it never stood off. It was never, as we say, stand offish. It was approachable. Little children wanted to be near to him. The people who were the outcasts found it quite comfortable to sit down with him. That’s Philadelphia. Jesus had that.
And then beyond that, he had agape. That tops off the list. That is, as Paul says in one of his letters, the bond of perfection. You take that and you tie it around the whole bundle and that’s what holds it together.
We don’t just start exercising agape right off. When we look at agape in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, we can use that to inspire in ourselves a great deal of guilt again. This is like the Elijah case. Let’s go out and pray it won’t rain, right? If you do that, you better be ready for some strain. And if you take 1 Corinthians 13 and you just decide now on Tuesday I’m going to do this, you’re going to be in trouble. You’re going to be in real trouble because, you see, this doesn’t come just like this. And indeed, it isn’t something you do anyway. When you get at that level, again, I like the comparison with the arts and with the sports and so on. Because, you see, there’s at the level of perfection, when you hear Maria Callas or someone like that singing a lovely Mozart aria, in a very real sense, they just aren’t up and doing it. What they have done, they have sort of gotten themselves in a position in relationship to the music that the music just sort of takes them, you know, and just weaves, it just uses their voice sort of as the material. That’s when you get at the top level, you see, of spiritual development, as you see it in Christ, and as all of us should envisage it for ourselves. It is more a matter of being possessed by something than it is a matter of us doing something. Oh, there’s much doing back there. We had to give all diligence, and we had to practice, and we had to learn our lessons, and we had to go through the mill. But when we come to this level, it’s just so much of a gift, and that’s where the word grace, as we often speak of a person being graceful, where their behavior is such that it is unstrained and beautiful, but without effort, see. And that’s agape. And you look here at 1 Corinthians 13, and my, you say, well, this has got the whole package in it, hasn’t it? Agape suffers long and is kind. It envies not, it doesn’t want itself up, doesn’t, isn’t puffed up, doesn’t behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, well, how are you going, we’d better stop there, if that’s something you’re going to do on Tuesday. You may not even get that far, see. Worth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, charity never faileth. I’m glad it didn’t say Dallas never faileth. See, it’s love that does this. Now we are possessed by something. We have opened the cockles of our heart, and out of it flows something which we have to say is, did I do that? No. But we’ve gone through the progress, the progression of the disciple has brought us to this place.
Now dear friends, that is the progress of the disciple. That’s what you should expect for yourself. That’s what we should expect for one another, and that is what we should pray for. That’s what we should fast for, we should study for, we should talk with one another for, sing for, do everything for, is that this progression of the disciple should come to pass in our souls.
We should understand how it is progressing. We should be quite conscious that this is something that we’re supposed to have an eye to. That’s why the Scripture talks about it. See, the Scripture deals with this a great length.
And if we’re at the point to where we want to get a start on it, there’s no better place, I should say, than again in the first epistle of Peter, the second chapter. I’ll just read these verses in closing to suggest how we might go about getting a start on it. We go back to the beginning.
Now we have received the divine nature, and we’re going to give all diligence, how do we do it? Well, here’s an agenda for you to start working on in the morning, or maybe even this evening, if you are concerned with it. Wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile, and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is the way we do it. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to whom coming as indeed as unto a living stone disallowed in deed of men, but chosen of God and precious, ye also as lively stones. So here’s the community. Ye also as lively stones. You have your place in this group and in other groups, and you accept that as the gift of God to you to fill, and you accept the admonition, occupy until I come. Now in that place, a living stone in your family, in your community, in your work, in this church, you are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
See there are two sides. You lay aside all of these things. That will take some doing and it will take some praying. You fall and you get up again because that’s the way you learn how to walk spiritually, just like a baby learns how to walk. But you have to know that that’s for you to do and that’s for me to do. We lay these aside on the one hand. On the other hand, we look to God in our place as lively stones to minister to us and build us up in the things which we’ve read about this evening, adding to faith, all of that list, that progression of things. We claim it for ourselves.
Now you see, here’s the important part. You must believe that it is for you. That’s the rule in the realm of the Spirit, as is your faith, so be it unto you. And if you believe that the only thing that God has to give to you is substitutionary righteousness so when you die you can go to heaven, that’s what God will give to you. As is your faith, so be it unto you. If you believe that God wants to bring you through this progression that we’ve described tonight from Peter and discussed on the basis of various scriptures, if you believe that, see, and in that faith you are willing to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness in all of your life, God will bring you through that. And you will know the reality of it.
Let’s pray. Lord, we’re thankful for these scriptures this evening. We’re so glad to be reminded and even in the passage which we read from that comes after where we read, we find Peter saying that it is necessary to remind us of these things even though we know them and to stir up our pure minds. Lord, stir us up and help us to believe that as sons and daughters of God we have a destiny so grand and magnificent we can’t begin to understand it. But lead us into it and help us to set aside all of those old feelings of worthlessness and unworthiness and accept our place in your world as your child. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
You are dismissed.