Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Peter 1-3.

Peter starts off this, his second letter, by writing that God has given us everything we need to live a godly life.  If we make use of what God has given us we will escape the corruption created by evil desires.  Then at the end of his letter, he writes that the day of the Lord will come like a thief and everything will be destroyed by fire.  Therefore we should live holy and godly lives.  In between Peter warns us not to be deceived by false teachers who despise authority and follow the corrupt desires of the flesh.  All of this becomes possible by building ourselves up with the things which God gave us.  God gave us faith.  As we exercise that faith, and it does need exercise, we begin to practice goodness.  As we practice goodness, as we do good to those around us, we must seek and study to gain knowledge.  As we gain more knowledge, we must begin to exercise self-control.  As all of the above come together we need to care for those around us.  As we begin to care about those around us, we will start to treat them with love.  And as we move on to each stage, the ones that came before will increase, which should lead us to increase the stages which follow.

As I was writing about the building up which Peter described, I was reminded of the process of becoming a better fencer.  If you are going to be a fencer, you need to start out with a few basic drills that allow you to understand how to place your feet and hold the sword.  However, there is only so far that drills can take you.  At some point you need to start facing opponents on the list field, you need to start fencing others.  As you spend time fencing others, you will realize that you need other drills, more drills.  But eventually, you will need to learn why one thing works better than another, you to need to acquire knowledge.  From there you need to develop the self-discipline to practice regularly and the self-control to hit the target you have chosen with the precise force you need.  Then you need to find more and different opponents to fence against.  You need to start to care about the community of fencers, because if you do not, those other fencers whom you need to polish your skills against will not see any reason to work with you.  This will lead you to recruit others, because you will discover that you need to teach to truly develop your skills beyond a certain point.  This illustration is less than a perfect fit.  However, I hope that it helps you see how each level of what Peter describes is not a once and done thing.  When you reach a certain point, you need to add what comes next, but as you improve upon what comes next, you also build up and improve/increase that which came before.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.