Add to Your Faith: Temperance, Patience, and Godliness

The truly Christian life grows more and more to be a godly, Christ-like life.

By Simon Padbury • 4 September 2019 • 10 minutes read

(3.) Temperance

The third of the apostle Peter’s seven marks of grace (2 Peter 1:5-7), that we should add to our faith, is temperance.1

The fruit of the Spirit that is temperance is none other than the exertion of the regenerated will of your new man over the lusts of the old man in order to restrain yourself from sin and to keep the moral law of God (compare 1 Corinthians 9:24-27). If you do not add temperance, then you have not added virtue to your faith. In other words, if you have no self-control, then you will not manifest moral excellence in your life. It will be always pushed out by the exertion of your old nature.

As with all these marks of grace on Peter’s list, this temperance must come from God. So, your prayer should be that of the Psalmist: “Quicken me after thy lovingkindness; so shall I keep the testimony of thy mouth” (Psalm 119:88). If you are quickened by God “after his lovingkindness,” then your desire will be to promise God (that is, to covenant with God) that you will keep his moral law, the “testimony of [his] mouth.” Keeping such a promise requires such a God-given temperance.

Add temperance to your faith, virtue and knowledge. Exercise temperance—show your faith by manifesting self-control. And God, after his lovingkindness, i.e. because of his love for you, will even further quicken you in this.

God enables those whom he has quickened to live this way.

(4.) Patience

Fourthly, Peter commands us to add patience2 to our living the faith-filled, virtuous life of temperance. In other words—bearing up, carrying on, remaining strong, being steadfast, persevering, enduring to the end.

By patience, our virtue and temperance (and all the other marks of grace in Peter’s list) should become an ongoing, growing, and strenthening characteristic of our manner of life. Not merely a tiny speck that flashes on rare occasions.

However, it is true that our progress in the Christian life is often sadly minimal, slumbering, and far less than whole-hearted. And we are sometimes thrown into a “dungeon”3 of doubting our salvation (see Matthew 14:41; Luke 22:32; 1 Timothy 2:8). Or we may suffer a deserved affliction in order to chastise4 us (see 2 Corinthians 4:17; Hebrews 12:1-13; Revelation 3:19).

Too often—and even once is too often!—we fail to delight in God, to honour God, to serve God, to pray to God, or to please God as we should. But true Christians are always brought to their senses by the ongoing sanctifying, grace-giving presence of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30; Psalm 51:10-12; 1 Corithians 10:1-13 (see especially v.13)). Christians are those people who are always brought to their knees (in their souls at least, even if not physically capable of this action)—to pray for forgiveness and deliverance.

So, we must repent and lay aside those sins which so easily beset us, and again and again we must patiently put on virtue, knowledge, and temperance. And we must pursue the God of holiness, because we love him now that we are enabled to love him by our regenerated souls (Song of Songs 1:7; 3:1-4; 1 Peter 3:10-13; 1 John 4:19).

Bring Forth Fruit With Patience

The Lord Jesus Christ identifies Christians as people who are like good ground on which the seed falls—and when it grows up it yields fruit (Matthew 13:8,23). “The seed is the word of God,” says Jesus (Luke 8:11). In the parable, the fruit only grows on the good ground; the good ground is the person whose heart has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit—for not one fallen human being has an honest and good heart (Romans 3:9 ff.). Jesus says these “good ground” people are those who “heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” And there are no “good ground” people who do not bear fruit.

This spiritual fruit-bearing is another clear mark of grace, the evidence of the true Christian. Unconverted people may appear to be Christians for a while. They may even “with joy receive” the word of God at first (Matthew 13:20)—but they have no true faith to stand as a Christian through the “tribulation” and “persecution” (v.21) that specifically targets Christians; or else they allow themselves to be seduced to abandon their pretence of Christianity by “the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches” (v.22). And so they never bear the marks of the real Christian. They never were made into “good ground.”

As the apostle James says, theirs was a dead faith, not a living Christian faith, because no good works (“fruit”) have come from it (James 2:17,26).

In our Lord’s parable, this (grain crop) fruit bearing symbolises the life of God pleasing, law keeping, patiently persevering virtuousness. And notice again that this receiving the word of God (that involves learning the contents of the Bible by reading, hearing, preaching, personal study, etc. and fully acknowledging that it is indeed the word of God), and then growth in faith and the virtuous life, all requires sustained effort, or patience. “But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15).

Fruit-bearing comes from a persevering, diligent application of the soul to Bible study, prayer, service, witness, worship, communion with God and edifying Christian fellowship, and being convicted to stop a sinful habit or to start a virtuous habit—and then actually getting on and doing it.

Consider these words of James: “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:21-25).

(5.) Godliness

Fifthly, the apostle Peter also commands us to add godliness5 to our patience, knowledge, temperance, virtue and faith. Peter is here commanding us to worship God well and to serve God well, i.e. in a whole-heartedly devout and reverential manner.

To be godly involves the fear of God (in the sense of revere). To worship and serve God well involves our all—striving to keep the “great commandment in the law,” which is to love the Lord your God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (Matthew 22:36-38; see Deuteronomy 6:5; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27).

Godliness grows with accumulating experience and expertise. To put it differently, increasing godliness increases the life of faith, virtue, knowledge and patience, as we strive to please God in a reverent and devoted life.

In the word godliness is implied both obedience to the God-given (i.e. Biblically regulated) principles of worship and obedience to the God-given lifestyle principles of the moral law. An entire devotion to God. While virtue means to put on a God-glorifying manner of life, godliness means to put on this manner of life so well as to expel (put off) all that is sinful and dishonouring to God.

The most godly man who ever lived is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And according to the apostle Paul, we are to “put…on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14).

“Sin no more,” commands the Lord Jesus Christ (John 5:14; 8:11). And as Peter says elsewhere, “For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries” (1 Peter 4:3). “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee,” says the Psalmist (Psalm 119:11).

Will you not do the same?

The truly Christian life grows more and more to be a godly, Christ-like life.

Appendix

Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, Chapter 2. In Discourses on Important and Interesting Subjects, Volume 1.

Godliness is the sacred impression and workmanship of God in a man, where by of carnal, he is made spiritual. When godliness is wrought in a person, he doth not receive a new soul, but he hath another spirit, (Numbers 14:24). The faculties are not new, but the qualities; the strings are the same, but the tone is mended. Concerning godliness I shall lay down these seven maxims or positions.

  1. Godliness is a real thing. It is not shadow, but substance. Godliness is not the feverish conceit of a sick brain; a Christian is no enthusiast, one whose religion is all made up of fancy. Godliness has truth for its foundation; it is called “the way of truth” (Psalm 119:30). Godliness is a ray and beam that shines from God: if God is true, then godliness is true.
  2. Godliness is an intrinsical thing: it lies chiefly in the heart…The moralist’s religion is all in the leaf; it consists only in externals, but godliness is a holy sap which is rooted in the soul (Psalm 51:6).
  3. Godliness is a supernatural thing…God must light up the lamp of grace in the heart; weeds grow of themselves, flowers are planted. Godliness is a celestial plant that comes from the New Jerusalem; therefore it is called a “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22)…
  4. Godliness is an extensive thing; it is a sacred leaven which spreads itself into the whole soul: “The God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)…He who is godly is good all over; though he is regenerate only in part, yet it is in every part.
  5. Godliness is an intense thing; it doth not lie in a dead formality and indifferency, but is vigorous and flaming: “fervent in spirit” (Romans 12:11)…He is godly whose devotion is enflamed, and his heart boils over in holy affections.
  6. Godliness is a glorious thing; as the jewel to the ring, so is piety to the soul, bespangling it in God’s eyes. Reason makes us men; godliness makes us earthly angels; by it we “partake of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Godliness is near a kin to glory: “glory and virtue” (2 Peter 1:3). Godliness is glory in the seed, and glory is godliness in the flower.
  7. Godliness is a permanent thing…Godliness being engraved in the heart by the Holy Spirit, as with the point of a diamond, can never be erased.

  1. The word translated temperance is εγκρατεια (enkrateia), meaning self-control (W.E. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words). ↩︎

  2. The word translated patience is ΄υπομονη (hupomone), meaning abiding under, i.e. enduring (Vine’s Expository Dictionary). ↩︎

  3. You may be familiar with John Bunyan’s book The Pilgrim’s Progress, in the allegory, where Christian is trapped in the dungeon of Doubting Castle, under the control of Giant Despair. ↩︎

  4. See If Ye Endure Chastening. ↩︎

  5. The word here translated godliness is ευσεβεια (eusebeia), from the combination of ευ- meaning well (good, or fine), and σεβομαι meaning devout, reverential (Vine’s Expository Dictionary). ↩︎