Steadfast Day 3: 2 Peter 1:5-9

Read 2 Peter 1:5-9.

Ponder

Years ago, one of my best friends and I decided we were going to run the annual half marathon in our city. While some of the runners may have just gotten up the day of the race and covered 13.1 miles, we started training about four months in advance, following a calendar that slowly increased the distances of our runs each week leading up to the race. 

Generally, each week included a couple of shorter runs and one long run. We painstakingly covered the distance each week, checking off the distance after each run. We covered the distance (notice I didn’t say “ran” because there was a lot of walking) each week. We ran when the sun was shining and when it wasn’t. We ran on days when it felt great—and a whole lot of days when it didn’t. We ran when we felt like it and when we didn’t. Our goal was to finish the race, and it was going to take discipline to get there—so we did the work. 

In verses 3-4, Peter had rightly encouraged his readers that the power to live godly lives didn’t come from their own efforts; it came solely from God. It is through God’s power and through Christ that we have “everything required for life and godliness.” But that doesn’t mean that growing in godliness happens without work and effort. You have the power and the resources, but you have to use them. 

That’s the message Peter stressed in verses 5-9. Faith is more than belief, and godliness is more than words. Godliness, goodness, perseverance, obedience to God, love for others—these qualities don’t magically appear in our lives and hearts overnight after we place our faith in Christ. He gives us the desire for these things, along with the power and the resources to live godly lives, but we have to choose again and again to invest in our spiritual growth, like a runner training for a race or a musician practicing scales. 

We are absolutely fully saved in the moment we place our faith in Jesus, but becoming more like him (the process of sanctification, as theologians term it) is the work of a lifetime. It takes work and discipline, choosing to invest in the things that draw us closer to Christ and leave behind the things that don’t. 

And if your walk with Christ looks anything like mine, that trajectory isn’t a straight line. There have been seasons of vibrant spiritual growth and long stretches when you chased after the things the world says are most important, like someone who is blind or shortsighted, forgetting what Christ has done to set you free from sin, as verse 9 puts it. 

The godly life is choosing again and again—when it’s easy and when it’s not, when we feel like it and when we don’t, when we lose sight of the glory God has promised us and chase after the treasures of the world—to place our hope, our trust and our very lives in Christ and invest in the things that will ultimately shape us more and more into his image. 

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Journal

• What are you investing in right now—things that help you become more like Christ or things that don’t? Be honest. 

• If you are nurturing attitudes or actions that don’t lead you to godliness or pursuing things that take you further away from Christ rather than closer, what steps will you take this week to invest in your spiritual growth? 

• What are some practical choices you could make this week to focus on and invest in your spiritual growth? 

• In what areas of your faith, do you lack discipline? What are some habits or spiritual disciplines you could invest in to grow in the image of Christ?