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Make Your Calling and Election Sure, March 9
For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye
shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 1:8
.
The only safety for the Christian is to be unwearied in his efforts
to live on the plan of addition. The apostle shows the advantages to be
gained in thus doing. For those who add grace to grace, God will work
on the plan of multiplication, so that the graces will be in and abound
in the religious life and he will not “be barren nor unfruitful....” Those
abounding in the Christian graces will be zealous, lively, vigorous in all
practical Christianity, and will practice righteousness—just as the branch
abiding in the vine will produce the same fruit that the vine bears....
He who does not climb the ladder of progress and add grace to grace “is
blind, and cannot see afar off.” He fails to discern that without taking these
successive steps in ascending the ladder round after round, in growing
in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is not placing
himself in a position where the light of God above the ladder is reflected
upon him. As he does not add grace to grace, he has forgotten the claims
of God upon him, and that he was to receive the forgiveness of sins through
obedience to the requirements of God....
“Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling
and election sure.”
2 Peter 1:10
. We need not have a supposed hope,
but an assurance. To make our calling and election sure is to follow the
Bible plan to closely examine ourselves, to make strict inquiry whether
we are indeed converted, whether our minds are drawn out after God and
heavenly things, our wills renewed, our whole souls changed. To make
our calling and election sure requires far greater diligence than many are
giving to this important matter. “For if ye do these things”—live on the
plan of addition, growing in grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ—ye shall mount up, step by step, the ladder Jacob saw, and “ye
shall never fall.”
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