Make Your Call and Election Sure: Virtue and Knowledge — March 12, 2025
12. March 2025
Lent 1 Midweek
2 Peter 1:2-11 - Virtue and Knowledge
Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pe 1:10–11)
This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.
We again visit the little sermon from 2 Peter introduced last week. Peter takes pains to speak first of the sufficiency of Christ’s saving gifts for His people. “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Then, built on that foundation, Peter continues with the virtues that necessarily flow from the gifts of Christ. “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue…” Faith in Christ's power to save and sanctify is the foundation, and the virtues of the Christian’s life follow. Those who lack these virtues show a sorry kind of blindness and barrenness.
Peter describes this given-to life in a series of virtues beginning with faith and ending with love. Faith in Christ is the foundation from which all the Christian virtues flow and love is the culmination and “greatest” result of faith (1 Cor 13:13). All this lays the groundwork for Peter to speak of the sanctified life, established and founded upon God’s grace in Christ.
Virtues are ideal qualities and attributes considered beneficial for every individual within society. They hold a universal value of what’s morally good or desirable for everyone, in contrast to values, which are personal standards of behavior. Many of our collective values are not universal, and thus virtues, e.g., image, wealth, material possessions, success or achievement, comfort, competitiveness, self-esteem, or assertiveness. They may be valued personally or in specific contexts but can be inappropriate in others. Thus, the virtues are often the antithesis of cultural values.
Every culture has virtues established by its religious tradition. Confucius outlined five: benevolence, honesty, knowledge, faithfulness, and politeness; Plato had four: prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance; Aristotle had twelve; Buddha four; and many more. The earliest Christians tended to reclaim the four cardinal virtues from the Greeks and add three theological ones: prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, faith, hope, and charity. Sometimes they included chastity, good works, concord, sobriety, patience, humility, diligence, and kindness.
In the Apocryphal books you can already see the repurposing of the terms and categories of Greek philosophy. For example, “She [Wisdom] teaches temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life” (Wisdom of Solomon 8:7). And “Now the kinds of wisdom are right judgment, justice, courage, and self-control. Right judgment is supreme over all of these since by means of it reason rules over the emotions” (4 Maccabees 1:18-19).
While each tradition seeks to live a better life, only the Christian learns virtue from God Himself. What sets you apart from every pagan philosopher and theologian is that the only true God has spoken to you by Moses, prophet, and now by His Son. You’re not given to look to experience to test and evaluate values before elevating them to the highest good. Virtue is not determined by common consensus or cultural values. Christian virtue is given not with observation but through hearing.
I’m sure you recognize these from the New Testament, especially the Apostles, who follow this tradition. Peter leans on a common literary device called “sorites” for his list of virtues. Popular in Greek moral instruction, a sorites “heaps up” a chain or ladder of virtues, each statement repeating the last key word. The last in the chain is usually the chief virtue. In the case of St. Peter’s exposition, he begins with faith and ends with the greatest virtue of love, much as St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. But unlike the Greeks, he is not ranking these virtues or putting them in a sequence, but rather the Christian continually needs to grow in all the virtues.
We are called to supply to faith, given by the Holy Spirit as a free gift, the virtues that stem from faith, also given by God’s grace. First of all comes faith, the fountain and source of all good works. From faith we grow into full maturity. As the Old Adam continues to die through Baptism into Christ’s death, so by the power of Christ’s resurrection the new person arises to live by faith in the various virtuous ways Peter gives (Romans 6:1-4; Col 2:11-13).
The first virtue or moral excellence given by Peter is knowledge, a repeated virtue ascribed to Christ and to the Christian. This “knowing” includes the saving work of Christ, as Peter articulated at the beginning of the sermon. “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue” (2 Pe 1:2–3). Christ’s suffering and death and shedding His blood for your forgiveness is God’s glory and virtue, the highest good. Through Christ Jesus our Lord you have everything need for life and godliness.
This “knowing” also includes the practical knowledge that informs you in wise daily living. This is why we pray the Psalms and meditate on the Proverbs. We embrace the natural knowledge of God that is evident in creation and written on our conscience. But more so, our knowledge comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We receive prudent wisdom for our life and how God establishes order in both realms and all three estates. Following Christ’s Word in what we think, say, and do is good for us, indeed, wise.
Set this in contrast with the false teachers Peter wants you to mark and avoid. The apostle’s judgment is severe but faithful. In chapter two he says of the false teachers: “But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption, and will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. They have forsaken the right way and gone astray…” (2 Pe 2:12–15).
But because knowledge of all that is needed for life and godliness is yours in Holy Baptism, they are not temporary but your ongoing possession. False teachers, moral degenerates, and even your old fleshy Adam can’t tear you away from Christ and the gifts He freely gives. Not only do you possess these virtues but Jesus promises they will abound, much life the multiplication of the wealth in the Parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14-30). Christ Jesus anticipates and expects the gifts He gives to grow and be used. For emphasis Peter uses the double negative, “they do not make you unprofitable nor unfruitful.”
And for what purpose? The existence and superabundance of all the godly qualities make you abundantly profitable and fruitful “with respect to the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:8). As I said before, I say again. The godly virtues, the highest goods, are not a means unto themselves. Nor is their objective to live longer or be more respected, although they may give that. Knowledge, really knowing, that Christ died for you and has redeemed you from sin, death, and hell is the root and basis for the baptismal virtues. First comes the justifying as the Spirit gives you saving knowledge, the gift of true faith in Christ. And then comes the sanctifying as the Spirit works Christian virtue both as a confession of your justification and for the highest goods that your neighbor needs.
Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Pe 1:10–11)
This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin
