2 Peter 1-3: Faith By Itself . . .

If you've been in church for a while, you're probably familiar with the saying "Faith without works is dead."

It's from the book of James. Basically, James is saying that genuine faith DOES something.

Peter's saying the same thing in 2 Peter 1:5-7.

He says, because you are given everything you need for life and godliness because you know Jesus, you need to make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.

Because faith by itself is basically useless.

Okay, he didn't say that exactly.

He said if you have all these other things, in increasing measure, they will keep you from being
ineffective.

And he said, ". . . if you don't add all those things, if you only have faith without those things, you are like a nearsighted person who can't see anything."

You can't see what's coming. You can't interpret anything correctly. Trees look like people.
Deer look like bears.

You're driving around, running into other cars and killing people.

Okay. But you get the idea.

Faith by itself is worthless and ineffective. We need goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love.

We need love.