What Does 2 Peter 1:6 Mean?

(6) **And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness.**—*And in your knowledge* [*supply*]* self control, and in your self-control, patience, and in your patience, godliness.* In other words, your discerning between good and evil must lead to avoiding the evil and choosing the good—*i.e., *to the control of your own lawless propensities; and in restraining these you must endure difficulties patiently; and your patience must not be the stolid defiance of the savage, or the self-reliant and self-satisfied endurance of the Stoic, but a humble and loving trust in God. Virtue and knowledge are energetic and progressive; they are exercised in developing the powers implanted in us. Self-control and patience are restrictive and disciplinary; they are exercised in checking and regulating the conflicting claims of many co-existing powers, so as to reduce all to harmony. There is special point in “self-control” being placed as the consequence of “knowledge.” The false teachers would insist that knowledge led to liberty, which with them meant emancipation from all control whatever. Self-mastery is to the world at large the opposite of liberty; to the Christian it is another name for it—that service which is perfect freedom. Patience to the world is to accept loss and suffering; to the Christian it is to win the best of prizes—“in your patience ye shall win your souls.”