EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/12/2025 9:00 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The Effort Prescribed”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 Peter 1:5a
Message of the verses: “5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply”
I will try and get a bit further looking at this verse in this evening’s Spiritual Diary, as on Saturday evening and Sunday morning are usually shorter Spiritual Diaries.
Now as we look at the following verses we can see that saving faith is the ground in which the fruit of Christian sanctification grows (Rom. 15:13; Eph. 2:10; 5:9; Gal. 5:22-23; 2 Thess. 2:13-15; Heb. 6:11-12, 19-20; 1 John 5:13). However that faith battles the flesh and will not produce a firm sense of assurance unless saints pursue sanctification (cf. Phil. 3:12-16). “12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; 16 however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.” Now as we go back to our verse and look at the word supply, which in the Greek is (epichorego) we find it derives from the term meaning “choirmaster.” Now in ancient choral groups, the choirmaster was responsible for supplying everything needed for is group, and thus the term for choirmaster came to refer to a supplier. Now in John MacArthur’s commentary he refers to “William Barclay who provides this additional background:
“[That Greek verb] comes from the noun choregos which literally means the leader of a chorus. Perhaps the greatest gift that Greece, and especially Athens, gave to the world was the great works of men like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, which are still among its most cheeriest possessions. All these plays needed large choruses and were, therefore, very expensive to produce.
“In the great days of Athens there were public spirited citizens who voluntarily took on the duty, at their own expense, of collecting, maintaining, training and equipping such choruses. It was at the great religious festivals that these plays were produced. For comedies and all….The men who undertook these duties out of their own pocket and out of love for their city were called choregoi…
“The word has a certain lavishness in it. It never means to equip in any cheeseparing and miserly way; it means lavishly to pour out everything that is necessary for a noble performance. Epichoregein went out into a larger world and it grew to mean not only to equip a chorus but to be responsible for any kind of equipment. It can mean to equip an army with all the necessary provisions; it can mean to equip the soul with all the necessary virtues for life. (The Letters of James and Peter, rev. ed. [Philadelphia: West minster, 1976], 298-299)
“Believers must supply (‘give lavishly or generously’)—alongside all that Christ has provided—all virtues required to maintain the assurance of salvation (cf. Luke 10:20; Rom. 5:11; 14:17).
10/12/2025 9:29 PM
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