II Peter 1-3: The day of the Lord.

November 29, 2015. Daily Reading: II Peter 1-3. Background: This letter is attributed to Peter as the second letter that he writes to the churches spread throughout Asia Minor (see background to I Peter), though many scholars contest Petrine authorship and would rather place it in the pseudepigrapha. The date, along with the authorship, has been…

The Christian Virtues, Part 8: Love.

October 12, 2014. We have come to the end of our journey through the Christian virtues as we discuss the fins virtue mentioned by Peter which is one of extreme importance in the Christian ideology. It is perhaps the foremost virtue, the foremost teaching and the core of Christianity itself. No pressure, right? I hope…

The Christian Virtues, Part 7: Brotherly Kindness.

October 11, 2014. The last two virtues are somewhat similar in nature, and I admit that I have had to do some studying to tell the difference. Honestly, I haven’t really grasped the full difference between the two besides that which is intuitive. Brotherly affection and love. I think I have gotten somewhat of an idea…

The Christian Virtues, Part 6: Godliness.

October 10, 2014. “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus…

The Christian Virtues, Part 5: Steadfastness.

October 9, 2014. We are about halfway through our walk through the Christian virtues, and today we are hitting another hard one. It is very related to self control, which is probably part of the reason that it is difficult to obtain and easy to lose. I must admit that this is one of the…

The Christian Virtues, Part 4: Self Control.

October 8, 2014. As we continue our journey through the Christian virtues, today we land at what I think is perhaps the hardest one to take and apply it to our lives. To recap, we have discussed how we much have a base of faith and a diligent commitment to begin with if we are…

The Christian Virtues, Part 3: Knowledge.

October 7, 2014. “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus…

The Christian Virtues, Part 2: Moral Excellence.

October 6, 2014. As we continue on our journey though the Christian virtues, if you haven’t started at the beginning, I encourage you to read the first post here. We started out our discussion of the virtues by talking about faith and diligence, two characteristics that aren’t traditionally included in the virtues found in II…

The Christian Virtues, Part 1: Faith and Diligence.

October 5, 2014. Over the past few months something has been on my mind that has troubled me. We are called to live a holy life, consecrated for the Lord, yet this calling seems to be virtually impossible. We can beg and plead with God to lead us out of temptation, but then we turn…