In Peter’s second epistle he lists the character traits that mark a believer’s life: faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love. Then he makes an interesting statement. He writes that “whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (2 Pet. 1:9).
Peter writes that one reason we don’t grow in ordinary, grateful obedience as we should is that we’ve got amnesia; we’ve forgotten that we were cleansed from our sins. In other words, he is saying that ongoing failure in sanctification (the slow process of change into Christlikeness) is the direct result of failing to remember God’s love for us in the gospel…If we fail to remember our justification, redemption, and reconciliation, we’ll struggle in our sanctification.
If you look at your life and it seems as though your growth has been at a standstill, if you don’t see that your faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love have grown in measurable ways, Peter says it’s because you’ve forgotten the gospel: Christ died to cleanse you from sin. He says that you’ve become nearsighted; you can only see what’s right in front of your face. A spiritual blindness has overtaken you so that you don’t see your Savior standing right there before you eyes. For instance, how can our faith grow if all we see before us is our own record of failure? If we don’t apprehend God’s love for us in the gospel, then the faith we need to fight against sin’s allurements will be absent, and although we’ll know that we should try to do better, we won’t believe that we can truly change. We’ll also doubt his love for us and wonder why he doesn’t give us what we think we need. We’ll feel deserted in this battle; we won’t see our Captain leading us on.
- Elyse Fitzpatrick, Because He Loves Me
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