Ch 8 Godliness
“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness”
When you have added the previous five principles to your life godliness naturally follows. I thought Peter already mentioned godliness when he said “add to your faith goodness”? While goodness and godliness might appear to be similar; if not the same on the surface, when we dig down we come to the realization that they do have significantly different meanings.
I have already briefly described goodness so I won’t insult your intelligence and waste your time rehashing those points. Godliness on the other hand we will discuss further.
Godliness is taking goodness to another level. Adding Godliness means adding the character of God himself to our lives. It means becoming holy, becoming set apart.
“You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.” – Leviticus 20:26
God himself has set us apart. This doesn’t mean we don’t interact with the culture and world around us. It simply means when we do interact with them, people see a difference in us. People see the light of God shining in our lives but can’t explain it. People will be drawn to us because it is human instinct to be drawn to holy things, to be drawn to things set apart.
That means we must rely that much more on God’s grace, Jesus’ love, and the Holy Spirit’s power to continue growing in all aspects of our faith and life. Then we may be called “good and faithful servant” at the end of our time here on earth.