2 Peter 1:8Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

What are “these things”? Faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, piety, brotherly love, and love, which must not only exist but also increase. For if acquiring them is useful, their increase is far more useful. What benefit comes from them? The one who has them is secure at the second coming of the Lord. For whoever does not have them will be overtaken by blindness when the Judge comes in glory and shines like the sun. Even if his sight somehow remains, it will not be able to look unharmed upon the immeasurable radiance. For excessive brightness of light usually darkens a weak eye that looks at it.

I say that those who choose the glorious and desirable way of life in Christ must first grow in simple and undefiled faith. Second, they must add virtue to it, so that they may then attempt to become rich in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ and greatly advance in perfect understanding of Him.

Through the virtues, when they are present, God becomes visible. When they are absent, He is invisible.

What, then, are these things? Faith, virtue, knowledge, humility, piety, brotherly love, and love. These qualities must not only fill, but overflow.

If these, that is, such spiritual qualities and virtues, are in you as a gift of God which has become the possession of your spiritual life, and if they increase through constant spiritual exercise in these qualities and virtues, cf. Rom 5:20; Rom 6:1; 2 Thess 1:3, then you will not remain without progress. More precisely, you will not remain without action, without active participation in progress and fruit. You will bring forth many kinds of good works, like fruits on a fruitful tree, and you will attain an ever deeper, firmer, and broader knowledge of the Lord (2 Pet 1:2).

Directing his speech against the erroneous moral teaching of the heretics, the Apostle places Christian knowledge in the closest connection with the wholeness of Christian life, and in dependence upon it.

Finally, he teaches that one who is not perfected in the moral life cannot be perfected in Christian knowledge. Such a person lacks those moral foundations of life in which the Apostle counsels Christians to grow.

Only in the light of faith, love, and the other Christian virtues can the great mysteries of Christian teaching be grasped more fully and perfectly.

Whoever does not use them is like one who has shut his eyes. Such a man cannot be trusted at all, for he is the most unreliable guide, and he himself does not know where to go.