Supplement Your Faith: A Pathway to Integrity

By Tom Kingery

“Salvation is important. But once we experience saving grace, we have only just begun. There is more. There is sanctifying grace. It is the grace that moves us beyond accepting Jesus as Lord into a deeper discipleship, into fruit-bearing followers. Spiritual growth is important for believers. ‘God has given us everything we need for a godly life.’ (2 Peter 1: 3) We can supplement our faith with seven character traits: goodness (or virtue), knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. As we strive for perfection (Philippians 3:12-14), our witness will be enhanced, our spiritual life will deepen, our lights will shine brighter, longer, more consistently and more purely, and the grace of God will enrich us in our journeys. There is a path laid out for us here, and I want to take it, examine it more closely, and share it. I am not perfect, and I know it very well, but I want to do better, I want to increase! I want to grow! I want to go forward!” Supplement Your Faith: A Pathway to Integrity takes us on a course that encourages us to pursue seven particular qualities, or, character traits that enable us to be effective and productive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:8) These qualities, according to Peter, are important for our journeys. Believers need these character traits. Rediscover them in these pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973675761

Tom Kingery

Tom Kingery retired from the United Methodist Church in 2017 and lives in Durand, Illinois. After serving 7 appointments in the Northern Illinois Confrence, he is blessed to continue in ministry as the preacher at The Church By The Side of The Road in Rockton, a non-denominational congregation with a close family spirit. He has published several other books concerned with faith and spiritual growth, all grounded in Scripture and relevant with respect to the journey of a believer. Tom grew up in a suburb of Chicago and went to the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. A daughter, Emily, lives in Davenport and teaches at St. Ambrose University. Tim, his son, lives with Jen and their son and daughter in Deerfield, Illinois.

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Copyright © 2019 Tom Kingery.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-7575-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-7576-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915317

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/01/2019

Contents

INTRODUCTION

1 START WITH FAITH

2 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: VIRTUE

3 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: KNOWLEDGE

4 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: SELF-CONTROL

5 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: ENDURANCE

6 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: GODLINESS

7 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: MUTUAL AFFECTION

8 SUPPLEMENT YOUR FAITH: WITH LOVE

CONCLUSION

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For my wife, Carol,

January 3, 1956–May 13, 2019

You were and are still my greatest inspiration.

A Song for Carol

The first poem I wrote for Carol, March 8, 1977

I wish I could just take a day

To raise my sails and ride away

Across the ocean of your eyes.

And if I found a friendly bay,

I’d come ashore and I would play

A thousand little lullabies.

O how I wish I could be free

To sail across that clear blue sea.

I wish that I could reach the sky,

Where I could spread my wings and fly

Away into a gentle wind.

And if that breeze could take me high,

Where only pretty dreams pass by,

I’d hear your tender voice again.

`O how I wish I could be free

To fly above that clear blue sea.

And how I wish I could be free

To see the things your eyes can see.

INTRODUCTION

God’s divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life

through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises,

so that through them you may participate in the divine nature,

having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason,

make every effort

to supplement your faith with goodness;

and goodness with knowledge;

and knowledge with self-control;

and self-control with perseverance;

and perseverance with godliness;

and godliness with mutual affection;

and mutual affection with love.

For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure,

they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive

in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind,

forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters,

make every effort to confirm your calling and election.

For if you do these things, you will never stumble,

and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom

of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2 PETER 1:3–11 (ESV)

God is perfect. God made us in His likeness. But we live in a fallen world. It is imperfect. We are imperfect. So God gave us a way to become perfect again, to be able to approach Him. Grace is the way, and faith in Jesus is the path. Faith seems like a simple thing, like a spark. The first step forward toward God is faith. Having the faith of a child can be enough to save us. Salvation is important. But once we experience saving grace, we have only just begun. There is more. There is sanctifying grace. It is the grace that moves us beyond accepting Jesus as Lord into a deeper discipleship, into fruit-bearing followers. Spiritual growth is important for believers. God has given us everything we need for a godly life (2 Peter 1:3).

We can supplement our faith with seven character traits: goodness (or virtue), knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. As we strive for perfection (Philippians 3:12–14), our witness will be enhanced, our spiritual life will deepen, our lights will shine brighter, longer, more consistently, and more purely, and the grace of God will enrich us on our journey.

There is a path laid out for us here, and I want to take it, examine it more closely, and share it. I am not perfect, and I know it very well, but I want to do better. I want to increase! I want to grow! I want to go forward!

The second letter of Peter begins with Peter’s claiming his status as a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:1a), and he addresses the epistle to those who have received a faith as precious as ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ (1b). The preciousness of our faith is worth emphasizing now and then because in our culture today, faith is more often taken for granted than cherished as something precious. When we think of something as precious, we think of it as having a value so dear that it is priceless. This should be our posture toward our relationship with Jesus Christ. It is through Him that we have received our faith. And our faith is precious! It is a challenge to us all to see faith as something precious, not as just another character trait we add to our résumés.

But we have received our faith; we have not acquired it by our own efforts. Our faith is given to us by the Holy Spirit, and our hearts receive it the way the soil receives the seed. In the salutation of this letter, Peter says, "May grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord" (1:2, emphasis added).

Abundance! Another challenge of our culture today is this issue of abundance. There is an abundance of material things in our culture, but we are particularly challenged by the lack of abundant grace and peace in our lives, as well as a lack of the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Where grace is absent and faith seems to be taken for granted, anger seems to have a very serious foothold; and where peace is missing, often pride and arrogance just seem prevalent. We need God’s grace, and it is abundant.

In the midst of this condition, Peter tells us that God’s divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who calls 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 lust, and may become participants of the divine nature (1:3–4).

Do we consider the divine nature to be beyond our reach? It’s not! Peter tells us that we are given everything needed for life and godliness, for escaping the corruption of our human shortcomings, and for participating in the divine nature. Or, if all this seems beyond our reach through a life of faith, then is Peter lying? Is he delusional? Is he some kind of fanatic or a false prophet?

No! A life of faith is a path that goes so much farther than we tend to imagine with our imperfect minds. Paul calls us to walk by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7). In Galatians 5:16, he tells us to live by the Spirit. In Romans 8:4–6, we are to walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace!

Peter calls us as believers to become participants of the divine nature. He calls us to the abundance of the knowledge of God, and he calls us to understand the preciousness of our faith. He doesn’t just call us, though. He gives us a path to walk down. He says, For this very reason, you must make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue 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 (2 Peter 1:5–7 NRSV-CE).

And then Peter tells us that "if these things are yours, and are increasing among you, they will keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:8 NRSV-CE). We should all want to be effective and fruitful in our lives of faith. At least we should hope to be. Our belief in Christ should lead us all to a glorious fruitfulness. This is God’s purpose for us. And these supplements are supposed to be increasing in our lives.

But there is a reason we are sometimes less than fruitful. John Wesley describes it by saying that we fall short not because we do not have grace, but because we do not use the grace we have. The grace we have is abundant, but sometimes we don’t want to experience too much grace because we tend to think that others will see us as fanatics. That’s for the preacher!

No! What I think happens is like an inoculation. We get an injection of a little bit, watered down, just enough to cure us of the real thing. Many people are perfectly content to have experienced a little bit of saving grace or justifying grace (same thing), and they think that’s all they need. They are converted to Christianity, but actually only to the idea of salvation. Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect." Many people are converted to Christianity, but they never use the abundant grace within their grasp to be completely transformed, and they end up merely lukewarm. Their minds are never truly renewed. They still think most of the time only from the perspective of the flesh, with their earthly minds.

But Peter wants us to supplement our faith. He wants us to add to it. I knew a man who dealt in computers. He got into the business back in the 1970s. He did very well. Having become a troubleshooter in his company, he went out and helped people in other companies learn about computer use and programming. But things were changing very rapidly, and he needed to constantly expand his own training just to keep up. Finally he changed over to sales and supply because he simply couldn’t keep up. Likewise, scholars rarely sit back and rely on their degrees. They often need to continue on in their studies—supplement their knowledge—in order to stay fresh in their fields. Faith is no different. I’ve known many who attended church regularly but who never really grew beyond the faith of their confirmation age because they didn’t think they needed to grow. Sad to say, it seems that for too many, confirmation is equivalent to graduating from church, or at least from learning and growing spiritually. In the letter to the Hebrews, after calling the reader to account for the dullness of their understanding, the writer says, In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food (5:12). By now, we should be teachers.

Now, I need to say that we will not become more saved by these supplements. We are saved by grace. Once truly converted, we are saved—or better, we begin to be saved, but God isn’t finished with us yet. But we don’t become more saved. What can happen, though, is that we can grow and be more effective and fruitful in our spiritual journeys. We have to think beyond our own salvation. Once we are converted/justified, we can then go on to perfection. That’s the path that John Wesley called sanctifying grace. Growth. Straining forward to what lies ahead (Philippians 3:13). So, once we are saved, what are we supposed to do? Many people just don’t want to do anything spiritual anymore. It’s like they’ve gotten their ticket to heaven, and that’s all they want.

Conversion, however, being saved, happens by way of justifying grace. What follows, the abundant grace often not used or pursued, is sanctifying grace, the grace that makes us holy. John Wesley magnifies Paul’s encouraging words in Philippians 3:13–14, which says: "One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in