Our Perfect Example
“So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert dicipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.” 2 Peter 1:5-9
One summer when I was a Group Leader, Rubik’s cubes were all the rage - many of the counselors were learning the skill of solving the Rubik’s cube. If you know anything about Rubik’s cubes, or any type of puzzle, you know that each move or each piece must fit to solve the puzzle. Now the solution to the Rubik’s cube is a series of moves that really fall into a certain pattern - if you really want to learn, I bet there’s someone who can teach you!
Similar to the piece of a puzzle or that one move to solve the Rubik’s cube, there are certain qualities that we as Christians are called to grow in, as this verse says, “complementing your basic faith.” While in the context of everyday life these qualities may seem simple, but in the context of who Jesus Christ is, these can totally change the way we live our lives.
Think about the generous love and reverent wonder Jesus shows when he washes the feet of the diciples. There are things we love in life, like puppies and chocolate and camp, but this type of love that Jesus shows is much deeper than that. His love goes so deep that He was willing to go to the cross and die for us.
Each of these qualities was a distinct quality that Jesus possessed and provided for us as an example to follow. Though we live in a broken world, as broken people, we have been given the most perfect example to follow to direct our lives after - Jesus.
I am not saying that you have to go around washing people’s feet, but there are opportunities all around you to serve others. If you read this passage in another version, you may read verse 8 as “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being inneffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
As we continue to look at Jesus as the perfect example of how we are to live our lives, and these qualities continue to mature, we will become more effective in sharing the gospel, being that light in the world for Christ. Be encouraged by the fact that it is the Holy Spirit working in us that increases these qualities, using every experience and situation to make us more like Christ.