2 Peter 1:7

2 Peter 1:7. And in the godliness brotherly-love. See note on 1 Peter 1:22. In the former Epistle the grace of brotherly-love has a still more prominent place assigned to it (1 Peter 1:22-23; 1 Peter 2:17; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 4:8). Here it is the complement to ‘godliness,' keeping it in living connection with what is due to our brethren, and saving our regard for God and His claims from becoming an apology for neglecting His children and their interests.

and in the brotherly-love love. This is not a repetition of the exhortation to an intense degree and unfettered exercise of love to the brethren, which is given in 1 Peter 1:22. Our love, it is meant, strongly as it should beat within the Christian household, ought not to be confined to that, but should enlarge itself into a catholic interest in all men. So Paul charges the Thessalonians to ‘abound in love toward the brethren, and toward all men' (1 Thessalonians 3:12). This ‘rosary and conjugation of the Christian virtues,' as it is called by Jeremy Taylor, differs both in its constituents and in its arrangement from Paul's delineation of the spiritual character in Galatians 5:22-23. The one begins where the other ends. With Paul, love stands at the head, and naturally so. For Paul is drawing a picture of what the spiritual character is in contrast with the ‘works of the flesh' and in our relations to our fellow-men. Hence he begins with love as the spring of all other graces in our intercourse with our fellows, and introduces faith in the centre of the list, and in the aspect of faithfulness in our dealings with others. Here Peter is engaged with the growth of the spiritual character, and there-fore begins with faith in Christ as the foundation of all Elsewhere Paul varies the order, giving love, e.g., the first place in Romans 12:9-21; Philippians 1:9; and the last place in 1 Corinthians 13:13; Colossians 3:12-14. It is hazardous, however, to make more than this of the particular arrangement adopted here. There is no doubt a logical order in the list, and it is possible that it is laid out, as is supposed, e.g., by Canon Cook, so that we get first those graces (virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience) which ‘form the Christian character viewed in itself,' and then those which ‘mark the follower of Christ (1) as a servant of God, and (2) as a member of the brotherhood of the Church of Christ, and (3) as belonging to the larger brotherhood of all mankind.' But it is enough to notice how these graces are made to blend into each other, each being in the other ‘like adjoining colours of the rainbow, mingled with it, and exhibited along with it' (Lillie). It is also worth observing that all the graces which are presented together in living union and interdependence here, are separately expounded with more or less fulness in the First Epistle; cf. 1 Peter 1:6; 1 Peter 1:13-16; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 2:11; 1Pe 2:21, 1 Peter 3:4; 1Pe 3:8; 1 Peter 3:15; 1 Peter 4:8.