Last night I cooked dinner as my wife took our son for a vaccination. When you follow a recipe, you add ingredients in the correct proportions, 2 cups diced chicken, 2 Tbs oil, fry in the wok. When chicken is cooked, add 1 cup celery and red peppers (diced) and sauté adding some water. Next add one bunch of scallions diced and pea pods… etc.
As I read verse 1, I heard the basic recipe for Christian living… 1 measure of God’s Grace and 1 measure of human effort leads to a life of improving holiness. Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Since we have these promises… the promises of God. That’s what God has already done for us in Christ, by giving the Holy Spirit and grace and mercy and… God’s part always comes first. It might be described in different ways, highlighting different aspects of God’s incredible gifts to us in Christ. But the recipe is always the same and it always begins with God!
Let us purify ourselves from everything… to what God has done for us, we add our effort. Our effort to resist the devil, to resist sin which still lives in us, to avoid those things which drag us from God and to do those things that honor and draw us to God.
This recipe is repeated many times in the NT… check out Ephesians 2:1-10 and Romans 12:1-2, for starters.
Thinking about this ‘recipe,’ I can affect the second half of the equation. How much effort am I am going to put into growing in my faith?
My musing on the text stopped abruptly at this point, as the Spirit led me to examine my life and my effort to grow in Jesus. Am I all in? What areas of my life should I concentrate on during this season of life? And questions like this.
Lord…
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