“ — add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness; brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity.”

(II Peter 1:5-7)

 

“It’s as easy as two plus two,” we say to illustrate the logical simplicity of something. And we shrug our shoulders in exasperated helplessness, don’t we, before the invincible dullness of anyone who can’t put two and two together?

For the simple formula of addition with which we began our earliest arithmetic lessons is basic to the whole process of learning. Not only mathematics, but every other course of study is an exercise in addition. One prolific writer and speaker who had spent his life in innumerable humanitarian causes said that the greatest single accomplishment of his life was learning the letters of the alphabet for it was with just these 26 letters, no more, that he wrote all his fifty-odd books and spoke his thousands of addresses. What is the scientific method but to get hold of the facts, one by one, add one fact to another, and then come up with a new discovery.

Addition, the implementation of man’s natively acquisitive and inquisitive nature to the whole of life — that is the law for growth, in knowledge, in family, in substance.

Now, why do we hesitate or refuse to apply this universal principle to our spiritual life and act as though in that department strange, mysterious, and uncontrollable forces were operative. But even here in the holy of holies of human personality, spiritual growth, power, development and achievement is always by simple addition.

A most striking illustration of what can and does happen in this simple spiritual addition occurred in my presence last week. I was traveling across South Texas on the Presbyterian Cavalcade. My clerical companions were William Benfield of Shreveport’s First Presbyterian Church, and Albert Kissling, pastor of Jacksonville’s Riverside Church. They are delightful dedicated personalities. We were moving into one city after another – Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Harlingen, Beaumont. Five important meetings were scheduled in every city to which Presbyterians from the whole surrounding territory were summonsed. The purpose? To gather together our church constituency and begin to get ready to celebrate our church’s centennial year — 1961 — in a fitting manner — not by looking back and being proud, but by looking forward and heeding Christ’s great commission to His church now. Our slogan: “A new commitment, in a new century.”

Did we have good meetings? Were they well attended? Was the church in Texas concerned? Yes. There were overflow attendances. Interest ran high? Why? Not because of the clergymen who spoke, but because the lay leadership of the church had worked hard in every locality to plan the meetings, to handle the publicity, to pass out the word and the invitation, to share their enthusiasm with others. Sometimes the response was better than others, but always the result was in proportion to the simple sum of adding devotion to interest to hope to hard work.

Someone said of the Mass Meeting in Dallas where 6,000 Presbyterians gathered in the Southern Methodist University auditorium to hear a challenging address on the church’s first responsibility to evangelize the world: “The Presbyterians held a Baptist meeting in a Methodist hall.”

St. Peter advises his Christian friends to work out the simple formula of spiritual addition in their religious living: “Add to your faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The shame and the impotence of the church is the barrenness, the unfruitfulness of the lives of the multitudes of church people. We will not use the simple formula of addition in our religious life. “Faith,” we say, “is all that is needed.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved. Salvation is by faith alone. Just believe, have faith, that’s all there is to religion.” And so not addition, but subtraction is the current formula for christianizing lost sinners and a lost world.

And see where it has brought us: A recently published report on contemporary church life in Great Britain presents a careful study of a typical British city — Greater Derby, with a population of about two hundred thousand. The facts found are these: (a) almost everybody claims to belong to some church, (b) few attend, (c) most families make their children go to Sunday school, (d) for half or even two-thirds of the people, church-going is so occasional an occurrence as to play an insignificant part in their daily life, (e) more than half the families in Derby own a Bible, but more than half the owners report that they never read it.”

Christianity, what is it? Why, a public profession of faith — join a church and that’s it.

We just witnessed the impressive procedure for awarding highest honors of the Boy Scout Organization to a young man. But Scout Billy Young did not simply join the Boy Scouts of America and Troop 707. He took hold of all his advancement opportunities. He added second class achievements to his tenderfoot rank, first class to second class; he added merit badge to merit badge across the months and years until the necessary 21 had been added — and so he reached the topmost pinnacle of scouting achievement, the rank of Eagle Scout.

St. Peter tells us in no uncertain terms that the nature of the Christian life must be a process in simple addition. It can never remain static. “Take your faith,” says the aging apostle, “that which is given you by God in His great mercy and add to your faith, virtue.”

That’s the first sum in addition the Christian makes: “add to your faith, virtue.” John Bunyan said: “The soul of religion is the practick part,” that is the practical part. St. James remarked that “faith without works is dead.” The first addition to genuine Christian faith is a moral and ethical excellence of outward life compatible with and characteristic of the Christian faith one professes. Phillips puts it this way: “You must set your minds on endorsing by your conduct the fact that God has called and chosen you.”

The second sum follows naturally, as two plus two equals four: “add to your virtue, knowledge.” St. Paul deplored the condition of those Jews who had “a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” From genuine faith good works should follow, but sometimes these are without benefit of the best judgment. Have not we all stood humbled and proud before noble works of faith and at the same moment been appalled at the poor judgment of one who had not added to faith and virtue — knowledge? Like the poor monk who reading our Lord’s command to the Rich Young Ruler, “If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell all that thou hast, give to the poor, and come, take up your cross and follow me,” went out, sold his only possession, a manuscript of the gospels, and gave the sale price to a beggar. “We must all study to show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Third, “add to your knowledge, temperance.” A better translation is “self-control”. The next step in the Christian life is the addition of a self-control that bridles not only the lower passions from gluttony, excess in drink, lavish expenditures, but also holds in check those more spiritual and hence more devastating passions of pride, personal ambition, and lust for power. These must be brought to law for Jesus’ sake and His Kingdom.

The fourth addition is: “Add to your temperance, patience,” the ability to endure, the steadfast virtue of the martyrs, which is the capacity to keep on keeping faithful in Christian faith and practice never giving up, no matter how dismal the defeats or dark the disappointments. Baron Von Hugel said that in the Roman Catholic Church no saint was ever canonized unless it could be shown, with all the other qualifications satisfactory, the person had maintained through good reports and evil report, in his triumphs and frustrations, a radiant spirit.

But there is more to be added: “Add to your patience, godliness,” or piety. Self-control is a negative virtue, a reigning in of the brash and destructive desires of the human heart; patience is a holding, staying quality the Christian soul must possess, but godliness or piety is a positive, aggressive, reaching forth for God to goodness which must be added to Christ’s man or he is a poor representative, indeed, of the Savior.

Once when Rufus Jones, as a small boy, was sick in his South China, Maine home, two itinerant Quaker visitors from North Carolina were staying at his house. James E. Rhoads, one of the visitors, who later became President of Bryn Mawr College, came over to the ten-year-old Rufus, put his hand on the boy’s head and said: “In the midst of a perverse and crooked generation he will shine as a light in the world.” In his later years, Rufus Jones said: “Nothing seemed more unlikely. And yet I could never get over the feeling of that prophetic hand on my head. I determined to be a heroic Quaker.”

Add to patience, godliness — a positive, aggressive, heroic pushing out into an evil and darkened world to do good.

Then, add to godliness, brotherly kindness. Righteousness must be tempered with sympathy, cold goodness with person to person kindness. The old aunt who tells the story in Alan Paton’s, Too Late the Phalarope, is shown to a seat in the courtroom by her handsome nephew whom she loves and admires extravagantly. “I was proud,” she says, “to be led by a tall, strong man, who was blood of my blood and of the same name as myself, and held in respect in this place. And I felt as I did on the day that Louis Botha left great people that he was speaking to, and came over to me and took my hand in both his hands and said to me, “Your letter lifted me up when I was down, which words I have never forgotten because they are written in my heart.” Yes, brotherly kindness — what an addition. It was just a telephone call to a lonely person but a card of appreciation came promptly with these revealing words: “in my now empty apartment the voice of affection beats the radio all to pieces.”

But the supreme addition in the Christian arithmetic is Christian love. “Add to your brotherly kindness, charity.” For us the word “charity” does not convey the idea St. Peter and St. Paul and all the other New Testament writers have in mind when they wrote in the Greek agape, or divine love. Filia is brotherly love, but agape is the kind of love that God is, the quality of love we see revealed in Christ, the marvelous type of love God has for lost sinners when He loves them not for what they are in their loveless state, but for what by God’s grace they may become. It is affection with a divine dimension. This Christian love added to and expanded from brotherly love is the supreme sum in addition the Christian must make so that he loves his fellowmen not for any worth or loveliness which he can see in them, but for what God sees in them. This, of course, is no simple sum in spiritual arithmetic. Man cannot of himself love as God loves.

But how are these sums in spiritual addition done? Add to your faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge, temperance — but how?

There are two factors which must operate in spiritual addition — not just one: God and man. To man’s effort, consecration, God adds His, inspiration, and the results are marvelous to see, so that the progress is not just arithmetical, but geometrical.

George Washington Carver, when asked how he had accomplished such wonders in unlocking the secrets of the world of nature and blessing human life with new discoveries in science, replied: “I just let my bucket down, and God filled it.” Carver’s bucket of dedicated talent and hard work toward accomplishing the divine ideal, let down in faith and lo, the miraculous addition!

That’s how the addition can be done in your life and mine. Too often our trouble is that we wait for God to do it all — we long for the inspiration but we won’t enter on the ledger of life, our consecration, and that stops the divine adding machine.

“Add to your faith, virtue; and to your virtue, knowledge; and to your knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brother kindness; and to brotherly kindness, Christian love.” “Is this the sum in addition we are really making in our lives? Or is it, add to your house, lands; and to lands, furniture; and to furniture, luxurious living; and to luxurious living, stocks and bonds; and to stocks and bonds, social position?” The latter are of the earth, earthy, which perish with the age, while the former are of eternity, eternal, and will outlast the ages of the ages.

• Scripture Reference: 2 Peter 1:1-16 • Secondary Scripture References: n/a • Subject : Spiritual Virtues, The; 666 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: n/a • First Preached: 7/11/1954 • Last Preached: 10/16/1960 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: , John Bunyan; Too Late the Phalarope, Alan Paton; , Rufus Jones