The Finishing Touch

What if the final ingredient for a life that isn’t wasted isn’t more knowledge or stronger willpower, but a kind of love most of the world has forgotten? We explore the seventh “supplement” in 2 Peter 1—agape—and show why it’s the crown of Christian development, the glue that holds every other virtue together, and the guardrail that keeps growth on the right road. Without agape, perseverance turns into self-preservation, knowledge swells into pride, and even the boldest truth-telling becomes noise.

We unpack the ancient landscape of love—storge, philia, and eros—and why the New Testament centers a different word entirely. Then we turn to 1 Corinthians 13, not as wedding decor, but as a practical field guide for everyday discipleship. Paul’s measure of maturity is startling: eloquence, insight, and doctrinal precision are zero without love. Through fifteen action-words, we walk through how agape actually behaves: patient and kind rather than performatively patient; free from envy, boasting, and puffed-up pride; not rude, not controlling, not erupting in anger; refusing to keep a ledger of wrongs; rejoicing when truth advances. We illustrate the grit of love with a classroom story that’s funny, painfully familiar, and quietly profound.

This is not a call to try harder so much as an invitation to surrender deeper. The Spirit grows all seven supplements together, sometimes spotlighting where we’re weak, always aiming at a life that bears, believes, hopes, and endures. We finish by grounding the practice of love in its source: God’s agape, proven by giving his Son. If you’re hungry for a faith that’s more than noise—one that’s recognizably different, resilient under pressure, and fruitful—this conversation is your map and your motivation. Listen, share with a friend who needs courage for patient kindness, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Seven Supplements

SPEAKER_00 0:44

For the past few months, we've been on a shopping spree. We have been filling our cart, so to speak, with seven supplements that guarantee the best spiritual health possible. Now, the Apostle Peter has been our trainer, and here in 2 Peter chapter 1, where I return your attention, he's given us a list of seven supplements, and he tagged at the bottom of that list this incredible guarantee that life, if you pursue these, will not be wasted, will not be ineffective or unfruitful. Now, today we arrive at the seventh supplement, the final one. This is, I guess you could call it the cherry on top, the final ingredient. This is the finishing touch for life and godliness. If you're new, we'll get a running start back here at verse 5, where Peter begins this section. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith, that is, add to the fact that you've been saved by faith in Christ. That's the context. Now add to that virtue. Add to your walk with Christ virtue and then add knowledge. And to knowledge, self-control. And self-control with steadfastness. And steadfastness with godliness. And godliness with brotherly affection. And now for today, and brotherly affection and love. This is the original word agape. One Greek scholar calls it the crown of Christian development. In his wonderful commentary on this list, in 2 Peter, Douglas Mu calls agape the glue that holds all these supplements together. That's a good thought. I also like to think that it keeps all these supplements heading in the right direction. Think about it. Without love, steadfastness would become self-preservation. Without love, knowledge would become pride. Without love, virtue would become legalism and so forth. So love is sort of the guardrail that keeps you on the road, on the highway of Christian Christ-honoring life and growth. Now, keep in mind, again, that all seven of these supplements are to be pursued at the same time for the growing Christian. You don't master the first one, then move to the second one. You don't, you know, master virtue and then move to mastering self-control and then start, or knowledge, and then start working on self-control. This is the work of the Spirit of God in the life of a committed, surrendered believer. Now he might point out certain areas in your life at different times, and you can tell he's focusing on that one. But he's after all of them because they all guarantee spiritual growth and maturity, a life worth living. And so Peter says, as we've learned, give it all you've got. Go after it. Don't hold back. Don't give yourself a free pass. Don't shrug any of them off. When you fail at one of them, and we will daily, well, confess it quickly to Christ and then get back up and on the trail. Now, if you think that this agape love would be easier to pursue in the first century than it is in this confused 21st century, well, you need to think again. This supplement of agape was overlooked entirely in the world of Peter, in the generation of the Greeks and the Romans. They ignored this. Philosophers would call agape, quote, colorless, end quote, uninteresting. It would be unusual to find agape even used or mentioned as a noun in secular Greek literature. Gerhard Kittle, in his comprehensive, massive tome that every seminary student tries to afford to get, where he surveys all the language of the New Testament, he actually made the point that you will not find one illustration of agape outside of Scripture. Nowhere in Greek writing will you find an illustration of agape. And I say that, not to prove I purchased that set, but I say that to let you know that when Peter writes to his readers that what you need to do is add to your life agape, you need to know, they would be scratching their heads and wondering, what in the world is that? What is agape? Now, for them, they would be very familiar with other words that would be used besides agape. One of them would be storge. That was a popular word. This was family love. This is, you could call it natural love, a legitimate form of love, by the way. This is the love, though. This would be the word you'd use when you said that you loved Uncle Henry and Grandma Mabel and your cousins. This was that natural love. You saw them once a year. That was probably enough, perhaps, but you you loved each other. You use that word, store-gay. You could leap over every obstacle. You'd never tell a stranger you love them, but you could with the first time you met your cousin. It's natural. What author wrote in the New Testament? This is sort of like the law of gravitational love. It's deeper, though, this is a word used for the affection of a mother for her child, to endure the sacrifice of providing for the life of her child. This is the word used where a man will sacrifice his body, his energy to provide for his family. Peter's audience would immediately understand storge. Another common word would be philia. We looked at that word in our last study. It's translated brotherly love, again, a biblical term. It can be deep and warm and affectionate. It can also be shallow and self-serving. In his book on New Testament Love, Leon Morris called phalia a love based on common insight or common interests or common tastes. You love somebody because they have the same tastes, the same interests. You love something, and you might use the word phallia for that, like uh I love apple pie. Or I love that outfit, or I love that song. I was driving down Tryon Road a few days ago and it was bitterly cold, freezing. I was wearing gloves in the van. And I passed that public golf course on Tryon, and there were guys getting out of their cars and taking her bags out of their trunks. And I looked down at my little temperature thing, it was just over 39 degrees. And I thought, man, if you ask them why, they'd say, well, because we love frostbite. I mean, we love golf. Go for it, man. Go for it. The friendships of Philea love are developed along those same interests. It's possible to say to somebody when you say I love you, to really be saying nothing more than I love you because you love the same things I love. Or I I love you because, well, you're you're a lot like me. That can be good for mutual attraction in regards to friendship, but dangerous if it forms the foundation of a marriage. Now you might not be happy with me using this illustration, and I just live to make you happy. You you know that. But I think of all of the dating apps, and I've had a lot of people in the church tell me, that's how we met, and that's great. In fact, they've come a long way. Christian sites now demand a testimony. I think that's super helpful. Very important. Back in the old days, it was just a survey, you kind of filled it out. And to find your match, it was all based on Philea. Love based on common interests. Well, look at that, look at that match. He likes, he likes coffee and long conversations too. As if that guy's gonna fill out what he really means. What he really means is he's a grouch until he's had his coffee. And he loves long conversations if you're gonna talk to him about fantasy football. That's what he really means. He's not gonna fill that out in a survey. He's gonna say, I love you know long walks in the snow. I love holding hands in the rain. I love I love newborn kittens. He's either lying or he's weird. Run from that guy. Run. I've had several couples tell me over the years, yeah, that's how we met, but boy, are we ever different than we thought we were, and I would smile and say, that's right. God calls that balance. A more popular Greek word for love was the word eros. This gives us the word erotic. This is sexual love. Nothing wrong. This is a legitimate word, so long as it's guarded by marital commitment. This was the most common word in the apostles' generation. It's the most common word today. Without the commitment of agape, self-giving, self-sacrificing, eros becomes an egotistical, pleasure-hunting, self-seeking pursuit. It will conquer and then discard for a new model. It'll run out of gas. That's what we're seeing today, of course. In one interview, an actress I read said that her relationships were good for about six months. Why? She didn't know. Here it is. It was based on Philiah or Eros. What's interesting is that the Holy Spirit never uses the word Eros in any New Testament passage describing love. It will use a word the world ignores. Agape. Agape will show up over 300 times in the New Testament, which is a way of saying God is going to teach us that He loves us in a way we can't imagine. We don't know much about it. He's going to teach us how to love Him in a way we have to learn. To love one another in marriage, in the relationship of a church, in family. Again, the average Christian in Peter's day would say, We're going to need more help here to explain this supplement. Perhaps that's why there's more commentary in the New Testament on agape than any other supplement in Peter's list. Let's look at one of those commentaries. Go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. There's an entire chapter on agape. Now you might say, well, I know about that because that's that's you know hallmark. That's where it gets all its material. Well, has it ever occurred to you that 1 Corinthians 13 was not written to couples? It was written to Christians. Couples could use it, but it's written to Christians. Single, married, young, and old alike. Now, before we dive in, let's notice the introduction he writes here in verse 1. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not agape, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. Now, in other words, what he's saying is if I know all the languages on the planet, glosa is the word used here for tongue. If I glossary, if I know all of the vocabulary of every language on earth, and I am as fluent as an angel, who, by the way, have you ever noticed, whenever they appear in the Old Testament or New Testament and they address a human being, they speak in that human being's language. So Paul is saying, if I'm as fluent as an angel, I know every language on the planet, yet I don't care about the people to whom I'm talking. I'm just making noise. I'm just a clanging symbol. We've had some incredible music this weekend. If you're visiting today, we actually get to enjoy this every Sunday. And it's wonderful. And you know, those symbols, they are crashing this morning at just the right crescendo, aren't they? But have you ever thought about the fact that you've never heard a cymbal solo? There are no symphonies written for symbols. It doesn't mean we don't like them. We love it. A percussion. I sit right behind it. I know it's coming, and man, is that a wonderful crescendo. They're perfect when they crash at the right time. Paul is saying here that if you speak with eloquence and you don't care about people, all they're gonna hear is noise. It's kind of like that Charlie Brown Christmas special that'll be on TV. You know, the teacher, all it is is that that's kind of what he's talking about. Just noise. Now, somebody in his audience might say, Well, wait, Paul, if you're delivering God's word, who cares how you feel about the people? If you're telling the truth to someone and you're delivering the scripture, who cares? If you care. It's almost like he's expecting that response. He adds another qualifier, verse 2. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and have all knowledge. Now, wait a second. What is he saying? Even if I, notice how he uses himself as the example, an apostle, the person you're supposed to listen to. Even if I, as an apostle, deliver God's truth, in fact, if I have all prophetic power, I can tell the future and it's always accurate. Who wouldn't want to hear that? But I don't have agape. Just noise. If I understand all mysteries. I mean, if I can understand God's ways that are not yet explained and explain them to you, I mean, who would want to listen to that? Without love? Just noise. Just noise. Even if you have all knowledge, Paul adds there. I mean, you're a walking Bible commentary. Anybody asks you a question, you can take them right to chapter and verse, give them the biblical definition, the explanation, and the application. And wow, no, not at all. If you don't love them, noise. Just noise. In fact, Paul writes here at the end of this: I, without love, am nothing. That is strong language. In other words, without love, our lives add up to one big zero. Peter says, You're gonna lead an ineffective and unfruitful life. This is why Jesus told his disciples, your world is going to identify you as belonging to the true living God. How? By your agape, your love for one another. John 13, 35. Jesus did not say, and they will know that you are my disciples by your grade point average. Thank God for that. They're gonna know you're my disciples because you are eloquent and you are so knowledgeable of the Bible, you have such deep insight, you've got an answer from Scripture for everything. No, by love. Because the world knows nothing of it, it is so distinctive. No wonder Peter says, give it all diligence, give it everything you've got to add this to your life. And we need Paul's commentary because we're not gonna love, we're not gonna learn love from the world. The love of the world is self-centered, it's self-enamored. Even when it seems to do something good for someone else, they're doing it because it makes themselves feel better. They may be blind to it. It isn't natural, it is super natural. Because the world will teach us how to be self-enamored, how to be self-promoting, how to love ourselves. It is self-love. They're all about that, isn't it? That's very natural. Started revealing itself at a very young age. I mean, do you think down there in the toddler room this morning with the two-year-olds, that it is one demonstration of sharing after another? Random acts of sharing. Hey, my mother gave me too many Cheerios for the morning. Here, everybody, Cheerios on the house. I've had this toy long enough. Who wants it? No. It isn't natural. It has to be learned by the Spirit of God. And if it weren't were not for God's revelation, we'd be scratching our heads today to say, I don't have any idea what you're talking about. What is it? Well, Paul says, without it, I'm a zero. All right, Paul, what is it? What he does next is he gives us 15 verbs. And this is not the start of a new series, so relax. We'll cover what we can today. But he's going to give 15 present tense verbs. I like the way David Garland writes it. He says, Agape can only be defined by what you see it do and what you see it not do. Nearly impossible to come up with this. A sentence definition. Is it a feeling? Is it a decision? Well, frankly, it involves both. But it is observed in what you do and what you do not do. So here we go. He writes in verse 4 about twin sisters. I like to think of it this way. Paul writes, love is patient and kind. And that's important there together. Why? Because it's possible to be patient without being kind about it. You're going to wait, but you're going to tell them you're not happy, you're waiting. You're going to tap your fingers and you're going to huff and puff and you're going to scowl. Agape determines to act with patience and kindness. To those disappointing moments, those obstacles, those difficult people in life. And I wonder what tests of patience and kindness are you going through today? Paul goes on to write, love does not envy. It's not envious. William Barclay writes, there are only two classes of people in our country, those who are millionaires and those who want to be. But the verb runs deeper than just desiring to be rich. It's actually a dangerous warning. Carries the idea of boiling over. Someone who fervently desires what someone else has. And they're not happy about it. In fact, this particular word not only refers to wanting something that someone else has, but it wants that other person to not have what they have and you have it instead. That destroys goodwill. They got it, I want it, I don't want them to have it. It's infantile, but it is destructive. Paul adds now in verse 4 agape does not boast. You could translate it, love does not brag about oneself. The one who loves others is not the subject of their own ever-ready, never-ending conversations or looking for somebody else they can begin to talk with about themselves. The one who does this is merely proving they're in love with themselves. Solomon, in that wonderful Proverb, chapter 27, verse 2, says, Let another man praise you and not your own lips. I wonder if social media, I'm going to meddle again, is perhaps one of the most popular ways or forms of bragging in our generation today. Be careful. Be careful. Envy that just came before this word, envy is wanting the life someone else has. Bragging is wanting people to envy the life you have. So be careful. You may not be helping people with what you post. Poem is to the end of verse 4 to write, love is not arrogant. Your translation might read, Love is not puffed up. That's a great, a great description. It didn't full of itself. It didn't puffed up. Remember Marcia and I sitting through our baccalaureate when I was finishing seminary in Dallas, and Chuck Swan was our speaker, and he said, Now that you've gotten your graduation, get over it. Great advice. Now that you've gotten that promotion at work, don't remind everybody about it. Now that you've been honored in some way, get over it. Don't get puffed up. Now Paul adds at the beginning of verse 5 that love is not rude. It doesn't act rudely. Your translation might say that love isn't unbecoming. One author who researched this word in the ancient world said that this verb shows up numerous times in these settings. They seem to be such a variety of settings. Let me read a few of them. Acting rudely can refer to dressing inappropriately. Acting rudely can be disregarding someone else's schedule. Running roughshod over other people's plans. Acting rudely can mean flirting inappropriately with the opposite sex. It can mean being discourteous toward others. All these are evidences of rudeness. Now Paul adds, next, love does not insist on its own way. It needs very little, if any, commentary at all. It's self-explanatory. It'll be proven in how you treat your mother for what she fixed you for lunch today, or maybe even how you decide where to go get it today. The next description reads, Love is not irritable. Your translation might read, love is not easily provoked. The original word, again, is a little more descriptive. It gives us our transliterated word paroxysm. It talks about an eruption of anger. This is more than being slightly irritated. This is an explosion of fury. Someone might argue with the Apostle Paul and say, hey, listen, I lose my temper a lot, but it's over in a few seconds. Well, so is a nuclear bomb. But look at the damage. Again, agape, beloved, is not so much about self-control. I'm gonna try harder to do better. It really involves surrendering to the Spirit's control. Being committed in that direction. Now in the next phrase, Paul moves from outward anger to secret inward emotion. He writes here at the end of verse 5 that love is not resentful. You could translate this a little more fully to read: love does not count up wrongdoing. Love does not keep a record of wrongdoing. In other words, agape doesn't keep a ledger, volumes over a lifetime of wrongs. Agape lives with a well-worn eraser at work. One author provoked my thinking when they wrote that one of the finest accomplishments of agape is learning what to forget. Learning what to forget. One of the things I love about Christmas is that my wife will pull out this special recipe for hot chocolate. Only drink it in the Christmas season if we drank it year-round. I wouldn't fit up here behind this pulpit. It's kept in a big pot on the stove and it just simmers all day long or all afternoon. It fills the house with the aroma of hot chocolate. I don't know what the ingredients are. I've never made it. I don't belong in there. And she knows it, but she's got the recipe. And is it ever good? If you're interested, Marcia, we'll see you after the service, and she'll be happy to sell you the recipe. Half off today. Oh, the only thing I can tell you about it, and the only thing I have to do with it, other than you know, stand there with my mug like a beggar, is uh if I'm in the kitchen, she'll say, honey, would you stir it? And so if I'm nearby, I'll go in there and I'll I'll stir that pot. It's all you do all afternoon. Every so often, you just stir the pot. Agape refuses to keep that pot on the stove because we're inclined, as it were, to put all our insults and injuries and all our slights in that pot. And periodically in life go over there and stir it up. Still there. Yeah. Agape turns off the stove. Paul goes on to write in verse 6 that love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. In other words, it doesn't celebrate sin, it doesn't celebrate sinful people, which our world does today. What makes agape throw a party, rejoice, be happy, is when God's truth is advanced in our lives and through our lives into the lives and the world around us where it is appreciated and followed. Now, in quick fashion, Paul wraps it up by saying in verse 7, love bears all things. By the way, that means it stays under the weight of pressure. That word comes from a phrase of a, of a beam in a roof that holds the roof up. It's bearing up, a roof covered with snow. So it doesn't try to find its way out from underneath it, it bears up under it. Under the weight of life's pressure. He says love believes all things and hopes all things. I love this. One author said this is the optimism of agape. It's going to believe the best about others. It's going to hope for the best in others. And when that best doesn't seem to be turning out, Paul adds here, love will endure all things. It's going to stay there. It's not going to look for the back door. It's going to stay at it, stay the course, and endure in little things. Big things. I came across this some time ago. I thought it'd be an illustration I'll end with, but it's about an elementary teacher. She was a kindergarten teacher. She was helping one of her kindergarten students get his cowboy boots on before leaving for home. And he'd asked her for help. He couldn't do it. And she soon figured out why. I mean, it was hard. They just didn't fit. His feet just wouldn't slide in. He'd asked her to help. So with all the pulling and the pushing, and finally she she got those boots on, and she'd worked up a sweat, and she almost cried though. When she finished, the little boy said, These are on the wrong feet. And you know how boots can can you know be a little tricky, hard to tell. She was in a hurry, and sure enough, they were on the wrong feet. She pushed and pulled, tugged, and finally got the boots off, managed to keep her cool, and and finally she finished. She sat back to kind of catch her breath, and she started all over again, putting them on the right feet, pushed and pulled, had them up against the wall, pushing. Foot seemed smaller than the boots, they just wouldn't slide in. She worked them on and finally got them on and finished. And he looked at her and he said, You know, these aren't my boots. She kind of bit her tongue and once again struggled to pull them off and finally got them off. No sooner had she gotten them off, he said, They're my brother's boots. Mom said I could wear them today. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but she mustered up with patience she could and wrestled him back on his feet one more time. He just wouldn't slide all the way in. But finally, she finished. She stood him up and helped him into his coat and said, Now, where are your gloves? He said, They're in my boots. In four years, she'll be eligible for parole. I wonder what God will bring into our lives, big and small. But aren't we glad that this season, this is the basis for this gospel? For God so loved Agape, Agapah, the world. Aren't we glad? Are we sure he did? Well, look what he did. He gave his only unique son. And then if you believe in his son, he's gonna give you not only a rescue from perishing eternally, but eternal life with him forever. So when we demonstrate agape, we're going to look a little bit more like our Lord who loves us like that. Stand with me, would you? If well, your heads are bowed for just a moment. If you know him, he's your savior. You know this lesson is not a coincidence, probably just perfectly timed as he does so in our growth. Maybe there's an area that he has already pointed out. This is a moment of rededication to that. And that's how he does it. He points out this or that. So wherever it is that he is at work even now, ask the Spirit of God to walk you out of here and into whatever that is. To guide you, to strengthen you. While you as a believer are praying, if you're here today and you don't know the gospel, you've never come to understand his personal love for you. The sacrifice his son made on the cross for your sin. I'll be greeting visitors just across the hallway to your right. I'd love to begin a conversation with you. Thank you, Father, for your inspired word that gets to the very heart of who we are. We thank you that you are committed to our growth. You've promised that what you began in us, you will complete in the day when we see Christ. You're asking for our commitment. Dedication. You deserve that. Thank you for gathering us to celebrate.