V - Virtue

Norah Summers July 24, 2023 0 0

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Listen to this daily worship

2 Peter 1: 5-8 (GNT)

5 For this very reason do your best to add goodness to your faith; to your goodness add knowledge; 6 to your knowledge add self-control; to your self-control add endurance; to your endurance add godliness; 7 to your godliness add Christian affection; and to your Christian affection add love. 8 These are the qualities you need, and if you have them in abundance, they will make you active and effective in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Is virtue just goodness?

Virtues are certainly good qualities, here enumerated — goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, love.

Faith is obviously a given, the foundation to which all the other attributes are added.

It is interesting to compare the list in Galatians 5: 22 of what the Spirit produces - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, self-control.

With all those one would indeed be a Paragon of Virtue! Perhaps we might think of them as aspirations, because, gifts as they may be, they still require us to make the effort to practise them.

An extra reading for today might be the passage sometimes read at funerals, Proverbs 31: 10-31 – a description of what the KJV calls ‘a virtuous woman’ – or as a modern version (GNT) puts it, ‘the capable wife’. She cares assiduously for her husband and family, and domestic matters, but is obviously also a very successful businesswoman. A perfect Paragon indeed, and far removed from the stereotype we often associate with times long ago.

PRAYER:

Loving God,

we have been given a pattern for virtue –

gifts poured out on us by your Holy Spirit,

to be treasured and used

in our relationships with other people.

May we aspire to live up to these ideals,

to practise the elements of virtue,

and to show others the virtues of the Christian way.