Growth in spiritual character brings assurance of salvation — Stephen Grant

Reading 2 Peter 1:4–11

I'm going to ask you to turn to the book of 2 Peter, please, in chapter 1. 2 Peter, and chapter 1, please, and we're going to read from verse 4 down to verse number 11. 2 Peter, chapter 1, and verse 4, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

And beside this, giving all diligence, 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. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

Wherefore, the rather brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Now that's our reading. Trust the Lord to bless it. Tours. So I have a little summary of this message and then a question. The summary is just this, that growth in spiritual character brings the assurance of salvation.

Spiritual Growth and Assurance of Salvation

That's the big idea. So the question is, are you growing? Now, you folks here in Iowa talk about growing all the time. Stuff that grows in the field, it's what you do. And from year upon year, your focus is on growth.

But the focus of my little message from 2 Peter is also on growth, but on spiritual growth. And that's the big point. The big point here is the assurance of salvation. Not the security of salvation. We'll see that's a different thing.

But the assurance of salvation. And we want to see that Peter takes this subject up as he's teaching down through this epistle in this second little subsection of it. Really from verse 5 down to verse 11 is what I'm going to concentrate on.

God’s Gifts as the Foundation for Growth

But just by way of context, you'll see that the first four verses are the first subsection of this chapter. And in that subsection, Peter is explaining to the Christians the things that they have been given, what they have received.

And on the basis of what they have received, in verse number 5, he says this, and beside this, beside this. And he's going to build upon verse 1 down to verse number 4, and he's going to really have this idea.

Verse 3 tells us that we have been given all things that pertain unto life and godliness. So everything that we need for a life here upon earth for God, and a godly life, everything we need, we have received.

And so he's going to say on that basis of what you have received, you need to work really hard. You need to be diligent. You need to make it your purpose that you grow in these things, the things that you have received.

You need to have a desire. You need to have a passion to not stand still in spiritual things, but to grow. Now that is a common sequence. Whenever Paul or Peter, or whenever the Lord was teaching, that's a common sequence.

And it is not so much that you have to work really hard in order to gain these things, but rather because you have received these things, you should work really hard. So this is not working to obtain.

This is working because we have obtained. We know the gospel is really predicated upon that, and the life following salvation is predicated upon that idea, that you're not working to get, rather because you receive, then it causes you to work and to change your life.

Adding Christlike Character to Faith

So he says add to your faith. And he's going to list characteristics of godliness, therefore Christ-like characteristics, that we are called to pursue in our faith. The responsibility is ours. Yes, we'll need the help of the indwelling Spirit of God, because many of these things are described elsewhere as the fruit of the Spirit.

And so the work of the Holy Spirit in us produces his fruit, which bears this character. But here, in this instance, Peter wants to see this is not a passive thing. This is not that you simply say, reverently speaking, okay, to the Spirit of God, over to you.

And I'll just passively let the Spirit of God produce in my character Christ-likeness. That's not going to work. We need to have the work of the Spirit, obviously. He needs to be active, but so do we.

This is a partnership. And so he will empower us, and we will need to open ourselves. We'll need to clean out the rubbish. We'll need to cultivate the environment for the Spirit of God to work. You know all this stuff in farming terms.

You know, I have so little interest and knowledge in farming terms. Even in my garden back home, I have cleared out of every living thing. There's not a single thing that lives in my garden. It's all gone.

And it requires no cultivation, no clearing out, no weeding, no nothing. It's a perfect Christian garden. And so the idea is just this. If you do like gardens, and I know a lot of you are very passionate.

You're wondering now whether I'm saved or not, because I've just said that. But you like to grow stuff. But you know this, that you need to clear stuff out before you can put stuff in. And you need to create the environment for growth.

And so that's taught elsewhere. Peter will teach Timothy that, stirring up the gift that's in you. But first you need to get the rubbish that's there already out. And then you can let it breathe. And you can allow God to work.

That's elsewhere. But you get the idea that you cannot be passive in this process. You need to be active. Peter wants you to be active. So he says, add. Add. Pursue. It's the idea of cultivating. It's the idea of going after these things.

Making it a priority. Let's just list them. We won't spend the whole time in the list, because we want to see what follows after it. But let's just list them and see what it is that Peter is saying. He says, number one, he says, you need to give all diligence.

Which means, give it your best. Really go at this with everything you've got. Make it a priority. And add to your faith, virtue. Moral excellence. The best stuff. This word is used in verse number three.

And it is the last word in verse three, if you catch your eye on it. And it describes the Lord Jesus, who has both glory and virtue. Whenever you read the word glory in your Bible, very often it means just this.

It means the display of essential attributes. So when you think about the disciples, they said, we beheld his glory. The glory as of the only begotten, full of grace and truth. And so they saw the external evidence of these essential attributes.

The glory of God is God's essential character on display. And the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ was virtuous. But you see glory and you see virtual moral excellence in the person of Christ. He says, add that to your faith.

You know, we heard a little earlier about the kind of passport attitude to salvation, which is, you know, you qualify for heaven, you get your passport stamped, you stick it in your bag, and that's it.

Of course, Peter's teaching the opposite of that. That once we get saved, we're on a journey. Once we get saved, you know, it's spoken of as journeys, it's spoken of as maturity. However, the metaphor is, but here he's saying, look, make it a priority to have moral excellence in your character.

But not just that. That you would think that would take up all our time. That would be enough. If we could manage that, we'd be doing well. You know, even for just a short time, it'd be quite good to have that in our character.

Moral excellence just means the very best. You know, not seediness, not immorality, none of that. Just nothing that falls short of the very best that God would have us be. Moral excellence. Then he says, knowledge.

Knowledge. Now, Paul isn't calling us all to be biblical scholars. Very few of us are, myself included. Lots of us read what biblical scholars write, and then we kind of regurgitate it, and we teach what we learn.

But there's very few of us who are scholars. Not that I've met, anyway. So he's not calling us all to be biblical scholars. If you are, that's fantastic. That's great. But the most, 99 of us are not going to be that.

So he's actually not calling us to be scholarly necessarily, but the emphasis is on growth. And to put it in plain language, you need to know more now than you knew last time this year. More about what?

More about God. Not just in the head, but in the heart. Not just in theory, but in practice. We need to take what we know, live it out with God, for God, that we might become more godly in character. Knowledge.

So he says pursue knowledge. Learn, and then live it. Learn, then live it. Because if you don't live it, you won't learn it. God will stop teaching you. His spirit won't do it. So you need to live what you learn.

You need to learn in order to live. He says knowledge, but he doesn't stop there. He then says the third word, which is temperance. I love that word. Way back in my village called Bridge of Weir, back in the 1800s, there was a movement, not just in my village, but in our area of the country.

And it was a temperance movement. And temperance was, you know, against alcohol and all the rest of it. It was by Christians, but it wasn't essentially a Christian organization or a movement. But that's what it was, temperance movement.

And I love that because part of that temperance movement was called the Band of Hope. The Band of Hope. And it sounds very old fashioned now. But the Band of Hope had a meeting place in my village. And they built a little shack, whole thing.

And things developed over lots and lots of years. And their hall was called Hope Hall. And that, by the way, is the name of our assembly hall. Because the Band of Hope became what we called a mission historically.

And then they kind of grew in their understanding of scripture and began to function as an assembly. And they kept the name of their building, Hope Hall. And it goes way back into the 1800s. We are known as that in our village.

Temperance, it's not really speaking about that. Although that's involved in it. Temperance means self-control. It means literally holding yourself in. I don't know, sometimes, you know, when you, someone comes out and wants to take a photo of you, you find yourself holding yourself in.

As in like, you know, you either hide behind someone or you stand at the side or you hold yourself in. But the idea is holding in something that's desperate to get out. And that's the flesh for us. The picture is of a strong man inside you wanting to get out and escape your body and cause you to sin.

And you hold that in, you control that. Self-control, temperance. I was speaking a couple of weekends ago back home in Scotland, a place called Peterhead. And I was speaking about marriage and family things and speaking about raising children.

And I'm a grandfather now, so I can talk a bit about this now. But raising children. And I was speaking about the theology of the word no. N-O, not K-N-O-W, no. And about the spiritual significance of teaching your children what that feels like to hear the word no and actually to have that impressed upon you by whatever means.

No. If you never learn what it is like to accept that, the frustration of it, if you never learn what it's like to have consequences when you don't accept it, then you will grow up with a real spiritual problem.

Because you will never ever accept no to the flesh. You will never know what it feels like. You will never know in your youth grappling with that. And so no will be something you're very uncomfortable with even in your relationships.

Perseverance Through Trials

Self-control is so important for us as believers. Let us pursue it. Let us see it in our character. Moral excellence, virtue, knowledge, temperance. But again, he's not finished. He says go further. And so he speaks about patience.

Perseverance. Very often the Lord has to teach us this through trials. When you go to the beginning of James epistle, James is speaking about the trial of your faith. And as you read through James, you discover this, that the structure of James is an excellent structure.

You've got at the beginning of the book of James, his definitions. He wants to define what temptation is and what trials are and show there's a difference. That's chapter one. And then on he will go and he will give various things which are the trial of your faith.

The trial of your faith. But at the beginning, he will speak about one of the reasons for God allowing us to go into trials, which is that he might produce in us spiritual maturity and spiritual maturity is produced by endurance.

Which means just this, when you're going through hard times, you're not always looking to punch out. That's usually what we feel like. But if we just punch out the trial and we don't go through the trial, we won't know what God would have for us in the trial.

Endurance. I often, sometimes I give this back home, this illustration and it's kind of fanciful, but it works for me. And it's this idea, you imagine the disciples coming down the mountain and the Lord says to them, I want you to get in that boat and I want you to go to the other side.

And so they come down the mountain and they're going to be obedient to the Lord and they're going to get in the boat and they're going to go to the other side, apart from one. Now this didn't happen, but just imagine it did.

One says, you know what? I think I can see a storm. So I've got a better idea. Instead of going into the boat with the potential for a storm, I think I'll just go around the side of the lake. So off he goes.

I'm just making this up, obviously. Off he goes. And he's walking around the side of the lake and right enough, he sees the boat with the disciples go out into the lake and then he sees the storm hit and the boat disappears.

And he's feeling quite, he's feeling great. He's walking in dry land there in the storm. He's going around, he knew they should have followed him. They would have missed the storm. But he gets around the other side and the boat's there already and he gets around the other side and says to them, you should have come with me.

You know, I've had such a pleasant time. I've been wandering across and chatting to folk and it's been great. Not a hint of danger, nothing. And you've been in that storm. Well, I wonder what they would have said to him.

You have no idea what you missed. Yeah, we were in a storm. But the Lord came to us in the storm. And we saw the Lord in a way that you've never seen and you will never see. He came walking to us in the water.

He revealed himself as sovereign over the storm and you missed it because you punched out. You see, trials are like that. The Lord takes us into the storm not to harm us, but to bless us. It doesn't feel good.

The Bible says in a different context in the book of Hebrews that chastening for the present doesn't seem joyous but grievous. It's tough. It wouldn't be a trial if it wasn't. Sometimes you can't see the end or the beginning.

You get lost in the storm itself and it's just darkness and you don't know where to turn to. All of that stuff. But the idea is just this, that we're brought into the storm to go through the storm with God, with Christ.

That he might reveal himself to us in a way that we would never get if it was just plain sailing all through life. And that's often how endurance is developed according to James chapter one. So he says, Peter here, he says, make it your business.

Be diligent. Add these things into your faith, into your character and virtue and knowledge and temperance and patience. But he's not finished. Godliness. Godliness. You know, sometimes we define godliness in a kind of do this or don't do this.

So it becomes behavior modification. And sometimes behavior modification is necessary. But godliness is not that. Godliness is a disposition of the heart that pursues God and as a consequence of pursuing God in the heart, achieves a measure of godliness in character.

And that then will produce a change in behavior and so on. Godliness is not imposed from outside. It is that which is produced from the inside by God himself. Peter says, pursue godliness. Now you can divide all these up in all sorts of way, but just one or two more and then we'll be done with the list.

Brotherly Kindness and Love

He says, not just godliness, but brotherly kindness. You know, sometimes we would quite like if the list stopped at godliness. You remember the man who was listening to the Lord Jesus teach one day and he had a question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? The man was a lawyer and he knew the law of God. Well, the Lord Jesus asked him, what does it say in the law? He says, well, you've to love the Lord your God with basically everything you've got and you to love your neighbor as yourself.

Well, I don't think the man had any problems with the first part. He was quite happy with that. He would spend his time, he probably was quite self-satisfied and thought he was doing well there, you know, loving God.

He thought, that's me, that's me. But see the second bit, loving your neighbor as yourself. He wasn't so sure about that bit. So he asked the question, who is my neighbor? You see, whenever we are faced with the righteous standards of God, we do one of two things.

We either lower the standard so that we're closer to it or we raise ourselves artificially so we're closer to it. So we either diminish God or we inflate ourself. Rarely do we accept that there's a huge chasm between the two.

That's what folks in the world do. Let's reduce the standard so we feel good about ourselves or let's elevate ourselves so we feel good about ourselves. And very often the problem is, we're not too bad at the godliness thing.

We love God. We love his son, the Lord Jesus. We love his word. We love praying to him. We love reading about him. And if that's what Christianity was all about, you know, most of us would be quite pleased with it.

But you see this, this is where it starts to get a bit messy. We have to love one another. I don't mind loving God, but loving you, that's a different thing. We've heard a bit about this earlier. You know, God, God is perfect and you and I are far from perfect.

You know, God is, God is the beauty and the glory and the magnificence and the grace and the, of God is so attractive. But you and I, yeah, in character are pretty ugly sometimes. But he says brotherly kindness, Philadelphia.

And this is the kind of love that welcomes the pilgrim, sorry, the prodigal home. That's the kind of love. The older brother should have welcomed the younger brother home. He didn't. Brotherly kindness we've heard of already today gets on your knees and washes the disciples feet.

The Lord said, I did it. You should do it. A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you. How did he love us? You see it in the washing of the disciples feet. Self-sacrificial service.

Brotherly kindness is loyalty to one another. All these things. And actually one writer said this, it calls for creative thought towards other people to think how we might show kindness to them in some way.

That's brotherly kindness. Lastly, he uses the word love. Add love. This is the other main word for love. This is the agape love that we hear so much about in preaching because this is the character, the real essential character of God.

God is love. And this is the tremendous self-sacrificial love that's given exposition of in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. And it's interesting that the description of love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is a series of verbs.

Now you don't need to go to school for very long before you are taught the difference between a noun, an adjective, and a verb. Let's just remind you about the verb. The noun, the adjective might be a push at this stage in the conference, but we'll go for the verb.

The verb's the doing word, which just means this, love is active. Love does stuff, not just says stuff. And you've got a 13-fold description of love in 1 Corinthians 13. It's all verbs. And so the point is just this, love is active.

Love doesn't do stuff. Love does stuff. And you get this full exposition, excuse me, in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. And Peter is saying this, well, of course, the greatest model of all these things is the Lord Jesus, but the greatest model of love the world has ever seen is the Lord Jesus Christ.

If ever there was self-sacrificial love, you see it at the cross. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. I mean, it's outstanding. It's astounding. And Peter says, listen, add to your faith these things, virtue, knowledge, knowledge, temperance, temperance, patience, patience, godliness, godliness, brotherly kindness, brotherly kindness, charity, or love.

The Simultaneous Development of Christian Character

Now, how do they relate to each other? Now, you may have looked at this and some of you may have a fancy way of putting this all together. And you may alliterate stuff and double alliterate stuff. I was preaching with Sandy Higgins last weekend and I was bamboozled by his double alliterations.

And then with John Meakin, and John Meakin was going hard at the alliteration thing as well. And I had to get up and say, I'm sorry, you're not even gonna get one alliteration from me. I just don't do that.

But you may have a whole way of putting this together, but I think it's this. I kind of find it hard to figure out a progression in this. I came to the conclusion that these things are sequential. Sorry, they're simultaneous, not sequential.

So it's not that you say, well, I'm gonna work on the virtue thing. And once I get that solved, I'll move on to the next one. You're never gonna get past the first one, if that's the case. And the rest of them are gonna be neglected.

It's not that it's one, then the other, then the other, then the other. It's not adding in that sense of sequence. One example is this. You think about someone that plays the piano. I don't play the piano.

My wife plays the piano. My son plays the piano. I murder the piano. I don't play it. But if you are, I used to have to listen to my youngest son practicing. Which was stressful for all concerned, especially the piano teacher.

We were almost given a valium to go in for an hour and go through the experience with my youngest son. It was torture for all concerned. So he doesn't play the piano, thankfully. But if you do play the piano, you know this, that it requires practice, but it requires practicing more than one thing.

So you hear the scales being practiced and you hear the whole techniques, the chords and all the rest of it. And it's a multi-skilled discipline. There's no point just sticking at one thing. You know, being an absolute world expert in scales, but you can't do any chords.

You need the whole thing in order to play properly. That's the same with our character here. It's interesting when you think about the fruit of the spirit. It's fruit singular. We often use a plural word there.

Fruits of the spirit. It's not. It's a singular fruit that's multifaceted. You can't divide and chop it up. It comes as a package. So the fruit of the spirit, singular. And here I think it's the same idea.

You think, you boys know about this from the UK, and maybe some of you play soccer here, but probably badly. But the idea is just this. If you were thinking about sports and, you know, I used to play this stuff.

You know, in your sports as well, if you're going to get good at a certain sport, then there's a lot of aspects of that sport you need to learn. I used to get the guy at school who could only header the ball, and as soon as the ball went to his feet, there was a disaster, you know.

And so you need to have a range of skills. It's the same idea. So he's saying add, not one at a time, but as a whole thing, let us see this in our character. It's a simple question. Are we any good at addition?

I liked words at school, not numbers, but I could add. I knew about adding. Are we any good at addition? Or is it subtraction that we prefer? Add, he says. Are we growing? Are we maturing? Are we learning?

Or are we flatlined? You know, I get saved at seven, baptised at 14, in fellowship at 14, started to have spiritual interest at 17. That's the truth. Had a burst of, I thought it was going to be Jim Elliot and Spurgeon and everybody, all wrapped into one person, through my late teens and into my 20s.

And then I begin to look back and wonder, have I flatlined? In terms of character. Well, we all do different things and we all get better and worse at different things. I'm not talking about doing, I'm talking about being.

We heard about this earlier. Sometimes we accept other people who've flatlined and they have to accept us. He says, grow, grow, develop. Be intentional about these things. Focus on them. Take it seriously.

Is there spiritual growth in my character? But there's always the need for it. Come on, there's always the need for it. Well, he says in verse number eight, for, so now he's going to give explanation.

For, he says, if these things be in you and abound, not just in you, but abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. Now I like this useful and fruitful.

That's easy to remember. Useful and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. What does this look like? What does it look like? This is something I noted down here and it may be helpful to you.

Practical Cultivation of Spiritual Virtues

I can cultivate moral excellence in my life. Here's some suggestions. By being a thankful person, by being a joyful person, by being a helpful person. There's three to start with. They are moral excellences.

To help, to be joyful, to be thankful. Moral excellences. Could I take something of that and decide, do you know what? I'm going to work in that. I'm going to work in that. I can cultivate the knowledge of my God and of my saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit who indwells me.

I can actively cultivate that knowledge we've heard it by being a Bible person, which means I read it and I practice it. And by being a praying person, that will actually cultivate my knowledge of my God.

I can cultivate self-control in my life. Here's a suggestion. By consciously living in the presence of my God. In other words, I don't do stuff in the moment because I'm aware of the presence of God.

I don't take that step. I don't click that link. I don't flip that on my phone. All the stuff that's there, you know what it all is. And sometimes you need the awareness of the conscious presence of God in your life.

You know, when I was young, in a different context before social media and computers and all that kind of stuff and were so obvious in our lives, it was put differently, but it was the same thing. And, you know, we used to have it preached to us.

You imagine the Lord come and you're sitting there. You know, imagine the Lord come and you're watching that. You know, and these were other ways of just bringing the same challenge to us in a different generation.

It's the same challenge. A consciousness of the presence of God will actually help my self-control. I can cultivate perseverance in my life by accountability measures put into place. That will help me go through things.

By staying true to my commitments and my integrity and my understanding of my God, even when life is difficult. That will cultivate perseverance. I'll keep on going. I'll just keep on going. Not because it's easy, but because it's the right way to go.

I can cultivate godliness in my life by pursuing God, by worshipping God, and by cultivating a heart of compassion for others. Now, there's many more in the... That's just a few things that came to my mind.

You see, what I'm trying to say is just this. There are practical steps, bullet points, things to do that can actually practically help in this. Take one. Maybe it's overambitious for three in each category.

Maybe one in a category is probably all we can cope with, to be honest. But at least get to work. You know, let's start the process. Let's get going in this. So are we growing or not? And there is sufficient residual sin within each of us to know this, that it's not going to be easy.

Lack of Growth and Loss of Assurance

For in verse number nine, he says this, but he that lacketh these things. So he's speaking about someone who is a believer who is not growing. So there's no development in these areas. What does that bring?

That brings doubts about your salvation. That brings a lack of assurance to you about salvation. Look at what he says. That person who lacks these things is two things, is the idea of myopic, is blind and cannot see afar off.

They're really synonyms, and he's literally saying he is blind being short-sighted. Now, I'm both long-sighted and short-sighted. I've got lenses and I don't know how they work because they sort the long vision and the short vision.

I'm very glad of them. But if I took my lenses out, I'd be done here. I wouldn't even be able to read my Bible. I wouldn't see you. I'd need to sit down because I would be blind. I would be unaware of what's in front of me.

And I certainly wouldn't be able to access the resources that's going to help me in this moment. He says the people who are not developing these areas in their life are spiritually blind. It's self-imposed blindness.

They cannot discern spiritual things. Why? And hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. There's no spiritual growth. There's no growing appreciation. There's actually a lessening of appreciation of their salvation.

You'll know people like this. You may be like this. Someone who's professed salvation and lived well for God or whatever and then faded off. And as time has gone on, you know, they're not a way out into the world and they're not, but they've just drifted and drifted down and down.

And now there's virtually, they're just kind of ground to a halt. And there's doubts about salvation creeping in. They forget. They forget about their salvation. They forget what attracted them to Christ and repelled them from their sin.

You see, you are either growing in the things of God or you're going back, but you certainly aren't standing still. No one stands still spiritually. It's either that way or that way. And if it's going back this way, usually it's marked by a lack of assurance of salvation.

Making Calling and Election Sure

And so he's going to say in verse number 10, wherefore, brethren, he's talking to Christians. And he says this, and I'm not going to get into the word calling and election, certainly not in five minutes anyway.

But he's speaking, and Peter often speaks about calling five times over in first Peter, you speak about their calling and you speak as well often about election. In fact, he speaks about it at the beginning of chapter one, speaking about those who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, the father.

But the point is just this. Both of these words describe the active hand of God in the salvation of a soul. And he says this, listen, you need to be active in the development of spiritual virtues so that you have an appreciation and a certainty of the active hand of God in your life and salvation.

And so make diligence, be diligent to make absolutely certain and to have that certainty, to have that assurance that God has called you and chosen you and you've responded and you've been saved and it's real.

And the certainty will come when you see in your own life the development of these spiritual attributes and increasing Christ-likeness is the greatest assurance of an individual salvation. You say to me, but I'm saved.

I remember when, and I remember the place and I remember the prayer I prayed. So that's absolutely fantastic. I can remember a seven-year-old on one side of my mum and my brother on the other side of my mum after a children's meeting up in our bedroom.

I've got a vivid image of it in my mind. It was only seven and my mum kneeling in between us and she led us both to the Lord in salvation through her prayers and our prayers in that moment. I'll never forget it.

It was only seven. But if there had been no spiritual growth from that experience until now in my fifties, if there had been nothing, I would have, I'm not saying I wouldn't be saved, but I'm saying this, I would have no assurance of salvation because there would have been not any spiritual growth or evidence of life.

Peter wants us to have that assurance and to have that assurance, he says it. He says, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Now that's not the idea of you need to work really hard in order to be completely saved.

That's not it. This is not the security of our salvation. This is the assurance of our salvation and he's asking us to do these things so that we are certain of our salvation. He says, if you do these things, you shall never fall.