I can do nothing more--nor is it necessary that I should --than put before your mind, in a sentence or two, the various applications of it which our letter gives.
First, note that in our text, giving all diligence, add to your faith.' That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. If, on the other hand, we set ourselves to our tasks, then out of faith will come, as the blossoms mysteriously and miraculously do out of an apparently dead stump, virtue, manliness, and knowledge, and temperance, and patience, and godliness, and brotherly mindedness, and charity. All that galaxy of light and beauty will shine forth on the one condition of diligence, and it will not appear without that. Without it, the faith, though it may be genuine, which lies in a man who is idle in cultivating Christian character, will bear but few and shrivelled fruits. The Apostle uses a very remarkable expression here, which is rendered in our Bible imperfectly giving all diligence.' He has just been saying that God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and exceeding great and precious promises.' The Divine gift, then, is everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for such a life already given you, see that you bring besides into' the heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring, namely, all diligence.' The phrase implies that diligence is our contribution. And the very reason for exercising it is the completeness of God's gift. On this very account'--because He has given so much--we are to lay all diligence' by the side of His gifts, which are useless to the sluggard.
On the one hand there are all great gifts and boundless possibilities as to life and godliness, and on the other diligence as the condition on which all these shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives, will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves according to the life that is in them; even the life that is in Jesus Christ Himself, in all forms of beauty and sweetness and power and blessedness. Diligence' makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God's gifts ours.
Then, again, the Apostle gives an even more remarkable view of the possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers exercise it in order to make their calling and election sure.' Peter's first letter shows that he believed that Christians were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.' But for all that he is not a bit afraid of putting the other side of the truth, and saying to us in effect. We cannot read the eternal decrees of God nor know the names written in the Book of Life. These are mysteries above us. But if you want to be sure that you are one of the called and chosen, work and you will get the assurance.' The confirmation of the call,' of the election,' both in fact and in my consciousness depends upon my action. The diligence,' of which the Apostle thinks such great things, reaches, as it were, a hand up into heaven and binds a man to that great unrevealed, electing purpose of God. If we desire that upon our Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only acceptance in the beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil in the Christian life.
Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain the full assurance of hope.' If we desire that our path should be brightened by the clear vision of our blessed future beyond the grave, and above the stars, and within the bosom of God, the road to that happy assurance and sunny, cloudless confidence in a future of rest and fellowship with God lies simply here--work! as Christian men should, whilst it is called to-day.
The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed by our letter, when Peter says, Seeing that we look for such things, let us be diligent, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot, and blameless.' If we are to be found in peace,' we must be found spotless,' and if we are to be found spotless' we must be diligent.' If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.' On the other hand, who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing?' Doing so, and diligently doing it, he shall be found in peace.
What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together all these items. A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a peaceful welcome at last! The Old Testament says, The hand of the diligent maketh rich'; the New Testament promises unchangeable riches to the same hand. The Old Testament says, Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand "before kings.' The New Testament assures us that the noblest form of that promise shall be fulfilled in the Christian man's communion with his Lord here, and perfected when the diligent disciple shall be found of Him in peace,' and stand before the King in that day, accepted and himself a king.
