2 Peter 1:7Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Behold the qualities that have been indicated: virtue, discernment, self-control, patience, piety, brotherly love, and love. They must not only be in us, but be present in abundance. If their existence is useful, their abundance is even more so. What benefit comes from them? This: that we may have boldness on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. I speak of His second coming, when He will come to judge the living and the dead. It is truly a great and extraordinary good to have boldness at the divine and dread judgment.

Brotherly love will be joined to piety, and to all this, love, which the Apostle Paul calls the bond of perfection (Col 3:14). For love showed its power both over the Son of God and over His Father. It disposed the Father to give His Beloved One (1 Jn 3:16), and the Son to shed His Blood for us (Jn 3:16).

The Apostle exhorts Christians, having received great and precious promises and all the powers needful for a pious life, to withdraw from the corrupting lusts that rule in the world. They must use every diligence to manifest and increase within themselves the various forms of virtue.

The table of virtues drawn by the Apostle is an eight-rung ladder of Christian perfection. It raises the Christian from faith to love, which, according to the Apostle Paul, is the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14; 1 Cor. 3:13).

Faith serves as the foundation and beginning. Good works must be joined to it (Jas. 2:17). To avoid the dangers that threaten the fulfillment of good works, discernment is needed, γνώσις, that is, knowledge of the mysteries of God and of the Christian's duties.

Brotherly love, love: on brotherly love, see the note to 1 Pet. 1:22. Compare Rom. 12:10; 1 Thess. 4:9; Heb. 13:1; Gal. 6:10.

Love means universal love for all men without distinction, as a property common to mankind. Yet it is, without doubt, Christian love, not pagan love: pure, and sanctified by Christianity.

Such is this lofty ladder of virtues indicated by the Apostle. Each of these steps makes the ascent along the previous one easier, and each previous step makes the ascent to the next easier.

The meaning of this spiritual ladder can be understood still better if its steps are viewed in reverse order. Blessed Theophylact further explains these virtues according to the degrees of their meaning and perfection.

Having shown Christians the highest ground for withdrawing from the vice then widespread in the world, the Apostle awakens a striving for constant moral perfection. He then indicates the successive steps by which one may ascend to moral perfection, as a necessary means to fuller knowledge of God.

The first step of this ladder is faith, which serves as the first foundation in the knowledge of God. Christian life begins with it. Good works, and virtue in general, depend on its growth.

Virtue is nothing other than the living manifestation of faith, and therefore the Apostle indicates virtue as the second step.