EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/23/2025 10:05 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The Options Presented”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Peter 1:8-9
Message of the verses: “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities in blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.”
I have mentioned that having a difficult time in totally understanding this first part of Peter’s second letter, and I really believe that this is something that I need to understand in a much better way. The last few SD’s on 2 Peter came from quotations from Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe’s commentary and I have to say that he, who is now with the Lord, has been like a mentor to me for many years as I have been writing my Spiritual Diaries. Dr. Wiersbe has a series of what he called “Be Books” and these books that he wrote were his commentary on the entire Bible. I remember many years ago that my daughter and her husband bought me his entire collection of these “Be Books” for a Christmas present. I am very thankful for this thoughtful gift as some of them are pretty worn out from using them. This evening I am going back to John MacArthur’s commentary on 2nd Peter and I will have to decide if I want to continue looking at Dr. Wiersbe’s commentaries on this section once I get done with MacArthur’s commentary on these verses.
MacArthur begins by writing “God certainly does not want His children miserable and doubting His gift of salvation; instead He desires and delights in their joy and confidence (cf. Pss. 5:11; 33:1; 90:14; 105:43; John 15:11; Acts 13:52; Rom. 5:13). If Christians are to fully enjoy their assurance as God desires for them, they must consider the two options Peter presents in this passage and choose the positive one rather than the negative.”
I will now begin looking at the Positive part that Peter writes about as he calls for pursuing these qualities (the preceding list of virtues that we have just gone over during the last several SD’s which spoke of virtues), and sets forth the result of doing so. “The phrase rendered are yours and are increasing is a strong expression drawn from two present participles (huparchonia and pleonazonia)” writes MacArthur. He goes on to write “The first denotes owning property in an abiding sense, and the second refers to possessing more than enough, even too much, of something. If the virtues are abundantly present in a believer’s life and actually on the increase, that reality will render (‘make,’ ‘set in order’) him as neither spiritually useless nor unfruitful.
“Useless (argos), meaning ‘inactive,’ or ‘idle’ when employed in the New Testament, always describes something inoperative or unserviceable (cf. Matt. 12:36; 20:3, 6; 1 Tim. 5:13; Titus 1:12; James 2:20). Unfruitful (akarpos) or ‘barren’ is sometimes used in connection with unbelief or apostasy. For example, Paul warned against the ‘unfruitful deeds of darkness’ (Eph. 5:11). Jude described apostates as ‘autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted’ (Jude 12). Matthew 13:22 and Mark 4:19 use it as they record Jesus’ description of superficial believers in the parable of the soils. It can refer even to true believers who are for a time unproductive (Titus 3:14; cf. 1 Cor. 14:14). If Christians pursue the virtues Peter outlined, their lives will be increasingly productive spiritually. But if those qualities are not present, believers are likely to be indistinguishable from the superficial professors Jesus described in His parable.”
10/23/2025 10:39 PM
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