Designed to Share in God-Likeness

10/7/2021

By means of these He has bestowed on us His precious and exceedingly great promises, so that through them you may escape [by flight] from the moral decay (rottenness and corruption) that is in the world because of covetousness (lust and greed), and become sharers (partakers) of the divine nature.

For this very reason, adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence)

And in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety), And in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love.

For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). (2Peter 1:4-8)

…1) knowledge with 2) self-control, and self-control with 3) perseverance, and perseverance with 4) Godliness…

To 1) KNOW God and His PLAN will drive us inexorably towards an internal deep knowledge of the essential Nature of 2) self-control rather than flighty ideas and emotions and wispy religion. Our ongoing war (warring with Joy) for self-control will make OBVIOUS the need for 3) perseverance (rather than being a quitter or pursuing selfish “revenge” when we fail). But only then do we get that first Glimpse of what it means and the extreme life-giving Power of sharing 4) Godliness, God-likeness that we are Designed to share with Him and one another.