I can do nothing more--nor is it necessary that I should--than put
before your mind, in a sentence or two, the various applications of it
which our letter gives.
First, note that in our text, 'giving all diligence, add to your faith.'
That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and
therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not
evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. If, on the
other hand, we set ourselves to our tasks, then out of faith will come,
as the blossoms mysteriously and miraculously do out of an apparently
dead stump, virtue, manliness, and knowledge, and temperance, and
patience, and godliness, and brotherly mindedness, and charity. All that
galaxy of light and beauty will shine forth on the one condition of
diligence, and it will not appear without that. Without it, the faith,
though it may be genuine, which lies in a man who is idle in cultivating
Christian character, will bear but few and shrivelled fruits. The
Apostle uses a very remarkable expression here, which is rendered in our
Bible imperfectly 'giving all diligence.' He has just been saying that
God has 'given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and
exceeding great and precious promises.' The Divine gift, then, is
everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says
Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for
such a life already given you, see that you 'bring besides into' the
heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring,
namely, 'all diligence.' The phrase implies that diligence is our
contribution. And the very reason for exercising it is the completeness
of God's gift. 'On this very account'--because He has given so much--we
are to lay 'all diligence' by the side of His gifts, which are useless
to the sluggard.
On the one hand there are all great gifts and boundless possibilities as
to life and godliness, and on the other diligence as the condition on
which all these shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives,
will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to
enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to
understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum
virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God
has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will
pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves
according to the life that is in them; even the life that is in Jesus
Christ Himself, in all forms of beauty and sweetness and power and
blessedness. 'Diligence' makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God's
gifts ours.
Then, again, the Apostle gives an even more remarkable view of the
possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers
exercise it in order to 'make their calling and election sure.' Peter's
first letter shows that he believed that Christians were 'chosen
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.' But for all that he
is not a bit afraid of putting the other side of the truth, and saying
to us in effect. 'We cannot read the eternal decrees of God nor know the
names written in the Book of Life. These are mysteries above us. But if
you want to be sure that you are one of the called and chosen, work and
you will get the assurance.' The confirmation of the 'call,' of the
'election,' both in fact and in my consciousness depends upon my action.
The 'diligence,' of which the Apostle thinks such great things, reaches,
as it were, a hand up into heaven and binds a man to that great
unrevealed, electing purpose of God. If we desire that upon our
Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an
unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and
that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the
beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil
in the Christian life.
Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us
another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain 'the
full assurance of hope.' If we desire that our path should be brightened
by the clear vision of our blessed future beyond the grave, and above
the stars, and within the bosom of God, the road to that happy assurance
and sunny, cloudless confidence in a future of rest and fellowship with
God lies simply here--work! as Christian men should, whilst it is called
to-day.
The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed
by our letter, when Peter says, 'Seeing that we look for such things,
let us _be diligent_, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot,
and blameless.' If we are to be 'found in peace,' we must be 'found
spotless,' and if we are to be 'found spotless' we must be 'diligent.'
'If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of
that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other
hand, 'who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over
his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh
shall find so doing?' Doing so, and diligently doing it, 'he shall be
found in peace.'
What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together
all these items. A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a
peaceful welcome at last! The Old Testament says, 'The hand of the
diligent maketh rich'; the New Testament promises unchangeable riches to
the same hand. The Old Testament says, 'Seest thou a man diligent in his
business, he shall stand before kings.' The New Testament assures us
that the noblest form of that promise shall be fulfilled in the
Christian man's communion with his Lord here, and perfected when the
diligent disciple shall 'be found of Him in peace,' and stand before the
King in that day, accepted and himself a king.