Growing in Godliness
Today was supposed to conclude The Elements of Healthy Relationships series; however the events of the last week have led me to focus elsewhere. Listen to 2 Peter 1:3-11,
“His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of strong desire, and may become participants in the divine nature. For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For anyone who lacks these things is nearsighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins. Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.”
June 21, 2015
2 Peter 1.3-11, Growing in Godliness
Pastor Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
Audio only[powerpress]
Today’s scripture from 2 Peter asserts that the basis for Christian growth and a godly life is our personal knowledge of and faith in Jesus. Experiencing spiritual growth, however, requires human effort in cooperation with the Spirit of God. 2 Peter 1:5 states, “You must make every effort to support your faith…” We grow in our spiritual life and in fulfilling our life’s mission by well-directed effort. Grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning!
Intentionally developing and growing our faith is what this passage from 2 Peter is about. The fact that we can have a relationship with God is based on God’s goodness. Faith is a gift. In the New Testament, faith originates in the impact of God’s word upon our soul and then exercises a transforming influence upon all aspects of our life. One of the clear ways the validity of our faith is displayed is through the growth and development of our character as we grow in Christian virtue – as we grow in goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, and love.
Given what happened in Charleston, SC on Wednesday night, when Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was both a pastor and a South Carolina state senator, and eight members of the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were shot and killed in cold blood by a white supremacist after he sat with them for an hour in Bible study; given what continues to happen in our nation and around the globe every week where acts of hatred, ignorance, and violence occur with numbing regularity, it’s painfully clear how badly growth in true Christian virtue is needed. If there is to be any hope for the future of our nation, it lies in the ability of all of us to grow and change. If we don’t, if we perpetuate the sins of racism, ignorance, and violence of the generations that have preceded us, aided by easy access to the weapons technology has created, the situation in our country will continue to deteriorate.
After hearing about the murder of nine of our sisters and brothers in Christ at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on Wednesday night, I reflected back to an earlier time in our nation’s history. The inspiring words of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech rang out from the Lincoln Memorial during the historic March on Washington on August 28 of 1963, yet racial relations in the segregated South that year were marked by continued violence and inequality. Barely two weeks after that famous speech, on September 15, 1963 a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama–a church with a predominantly black congregation that served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Thirty-eight years later in January of 2001, twenty-three of us went on a BBC mission work trip to Anniston, Alabama and on the Martin Luther King Jr holiday we went to the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham which is directly across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church. We watched a film about what happened and when it concluded the screen went up and through the windows behind it we were looking right at the same Baptist Church. I shook my head unable to comprehend how someone could bomb a church and kill four young black girls.
I thought a racially motivated attack on a black church was part of our history, sadly Wednesday night illustrated, it’s not just a part of our history, it’s part of our present. Did you know there have been 13 mass murders at a house of worship since the Birmingham, Ala., bombing in 1963? This week’s attack ties for the largest mass murder at a house of worship in the U.S. The last mass killing at a house of worship was at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2012. Do you remember that? On Wednesday, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest AME church in the South the pastor and eight other people were killed while sharing in a Bible study – more than twice the lives lost at 16th Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963 and at the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath. All these incidents were attempts to use violence to kill, harm, and induce fear. We need to pray for the Christian community at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and for the man who committed this act of ignorant hatred and violence. Randie Spaulding, of BBC, wrote this week from personal experience, “It’s easy to pray for Charleston and other victims of tragedy. The challenge is to pray for the killers.”
Delivering a eulogy at the service for the victims of the 1963 bombing in Birmingham, Martin Luther King Jr. said, the victims “say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life and philosophy that produced the murderers.” It is to our shame as a nation that those words are still just as applicable today as they were more than fifty years ago.
I feel it’s important for us to hear even briefly today from some people who don’t look like me. The following was written by Austin Channing an African-American woman who works at Calvin College, a fine Christian school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She also writes for Today’s Christian Woman. She wrote after the attack, “There is no such thing as neutrality. You are either nurturing love or hate. There is no middle ground, no third way, no alternative. There is this pervasive belief that Christians can simply choose to be tolerant, or polite, or even kind. There is this sense that as long as certain lines aren’t crossed, that you’re okay. As long as you don’t tell the racist joke, as long as you had a really good reason for moving into an all-white community, as long as you never say nigger, as long as you do charity work, as long as you go on the mission trip, as long as you never do anything mean- then you’re alright. Not so. Jesus has two commandments. “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind and with all your soul. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt 22:37-39). The second is like it. So loving your neighbor as yourself is like loving God with all your heart and all your mind and all our soul. Love. 1 John 4:20 says this, “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” Cannot.
I need you to know that these two verses fly in the face of the sin of white supremacy and racism. To not uproot white supremacy from the mind, heart and soul is to miss the mark on loving your neighbor as yourself and is hatred toward God. I repeat. The sin of racism is hatred toward God. Racism is hatred toward and denial of blackness as an equal and authentic image of God.”
As I said a few moments ago, the previous mass killing in a place of worship happened August 5, 2012 in Wisconsin. The son of the founder of the Sikh temple that was attacked who died trying to save others is Amardeep Kaleka, he wrote the following excerpt this week in a piece called American Dream Disturbed: “We are at a fragile make or break point, determined by how we handle our age-old problems of racism, guns and violence. Scientifically, there is only one race: the human race. We must confront our most dangerous foe: ourselves. We must reject our own prejudices. We must value people over ideology. This fellowship and empathy is the truest form of patriotism we can gift each other. When I remember my father’s smile and jolly laugh, my eyes well up. Our hearts are aching for the families in South Carolina. It’s so hard to maintain a positive spirit as these atrocities take place in our cherished nation. The universe only continues to stand as creation trumps destruction. Even though the counter forces of ignorance can be strong, it is this hopeful perspective which propels us forward.
I know my father died a hero. Even after being shot multiple times, he courageously fought off the gunman, saving many, including my mother, at the expense of his own life. He defended the temple he founded, and this house of worship is the gift he left to us and his grandchildren. Just like Felicia Sanders. She sacrificed her body to cover and shield her young granddaughter, as her son, Tywanza, tried to talk down the gunman and distract him. Through his heroism, Felicia survived but Tywanza did not.
Self-Sacrifice is one of the greatest expressions of our humanity and divinity. We must all follow this example to engage in discourse and enact policy change.
We must all unite and share the suffering of the nine families of Charleston. In honor of our loved ones who were taken in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, South Carolina, I humbly send this prayer to the families of the fallen: On this Father’s Day, we answer my father’s dying prayer. With tears in our eyes and heavy hearts, together in unity, we kneel and bow our heads. In this silent moment, we must envision a courageous new future. One where we rise to our feet and lift our heads to realize a simple truth: We inhabit the same home, under the same sky, with very little difference in our DNA.
As we stand together, figuratively, united against hate and injustice, we embrace our differences rather than fear them. Only then will we fulfill our duty and pass to our children a nation the delivers on the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
BBC member David Quinones wrote me this week, “The events in Charleston have placed a tremendous weight on my heart. I’ve read reports of how the parishioners welcomed this white young man with open arms on Wednesday. During Friday’s bond hearing, family members of the victims spoke directly to the young man and brightly shined God’s light. “We are a family that love built,” said Bethane Middleton-Brown, the sister of Rev. Depayne Middleton, 49 years old, one of the nine people killed. “We have no room for hate, so we have to forgive,” she said. “I just want everyone to know I forgive you,” said Nadine Colier, the daughter of victim Ethel Lance, 70. “You hurt me, you hurt a lot of people, but I forgive you.” “Hate won’t win,” said Alana Simmons, the granddaughter of the Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74. The grandson of Myra Thompson, 59, Anthony Thompson said that he and his family forgave the accused murder and urged him to repent and turn his life over to Jesus Christ. Felicia Sanders, mother of Tywanza Sanders, 26 said “you have killed some of the most beautiful people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts, and I will never be the same. May God have mercy on your soul”.
They responded how Christ told us to respond, “but I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For He gives His sunlight to both the evil and the good, and He sends rain on the just and the unjust alike”. There is much for us to learn from how God is working through the people in Charleston. I also believe that this should stir in our collective hearts to act with love and compassion to fight the injustice in this world.”
2 Peter warns us that it’s possible to know the Jesus and yet be unfruitful and ineffective as a follower of Christ. God has given us everything needed for life and godliness, and then it’s up to us to make every effort to grow in Christ-likeness; to grow in goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. How are you doing with that? Can people tell your growing in these virtues? Speaking plainly about the eternal kingdom of God, 2 Peter basically says, “If you aren’t growing, you aren’t going.” Demonstrated growth confirms that we followers of Jesus Christ. It’s imperative that each of us look deep within our own heart when it comes to racism. It’s crucial for us to understand that God has made the world with people of every different hue and color presumably because that’s the way God wanted it. I get frustrated by people and institutions focusing on what makes us different rather than what we as human beings have in common. There is one human race and we’re all a part of it and we’re all of great value in the eyes of God. We need to believe that and live that and advocate for that in our lives and circles of influence. If attack at Emanuel AME demonstrates yet again that fear destroys, faith inspires; ignorance separates, hope unites; hate divides, love builds. How then shall we live? What are you prepared to do?
It’s like the old saying by Charles Reade about developing character,
“Sow a thought, reap an act; sow an act, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character.”
This is true both of the killer and those who were attending Bible study. Their thoughts led to their acts, habit, and character. “No one is born either naturally or supernaturally with character, it must be developed. Nor are we born with habits – we have to form godly habits on the basis of the new life God has placed within us. If the majesty, grace, and power of God are not being exhibited in us, God holds us responsible.”[1] That leads us back to 2 Peter 1:11, “For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.” This is Peter’s way of saying, be sure to confirm your reservation in the eternal kingdom. Because of the faith the nine martyrs at Emanuel AME church intentionally developed and practiced, some of them for many decades; I believe that entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was richly provided for them. We need to decide if we’ll accept Jesus’ invitation to repent, to be saved, to serve God, and to enter into the kingdom and to share in its sufferings as well as its blessings.
From what I’ve read and heard these individuals truly exemplified about faith what Mother Teresa wrote in her book, Heart of Joy, “Let us be like a genuine and fruitful branch of the vine, which is Christ, accepting him in our lives the way he gives himself to us: as Truth which must be Spoken; as Life which must be Lived;
as Light, which must Shine out; as Love which must be Loved;
as a Way, which must be Trodden;
as Joy; which must be Communicated;
as Peace, which must be Radiated;
as Sacrifice, which must be Offered
in our families, to our closest neighbors, and to those who live far away.”[2]
Blessing: 2 Peter 3:18, “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and on the day of eternity.”
Questions for Discussion or Reflection
- What was your first response when you heard about the atrocity at Emanuel AME Church?
- If this happened in a church in our community, what would you think BBC and its members should do to respond?
- Racism is deeply rooted in the history of the United States. What steps would you recommend to help overcome the racial divide in our country? What part can we as Christians play to improve relations between different types of people?
- 2 Peter 1:3-11 is specific in stating “For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.” How would you evaluate the effort you’re making to support your faith with all those other virtues? Are you making “every effort,” “some effort,” or “a little effort?”
- When it comes to goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection, and love – which of these do you think you’re strongest in? How about weakest? What can you do to make all of them more a part of your life?