Insidious in Difference - Chambers, Oswald

And i think it right, as long as i am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance. 2 peter 1:13 (RV)

Insidious means advancing imperceptibly. Are you as spiritually alive and enthusiastic as you once were? Are you finding it expedient not to have so keen an edge on your discipleship as you used to have? Are you a little more inclined to sit complacently to the fashions and customs of that form of worldliness which you used to avoid with horror? Then may this word of the apostle peters stir you up and preserve for you a vivid apprehension of the truth.

1. Knowledge of the truth

Wherefore i shall be ready always to put you in remem- brance of these things, though ye know them, and are established in the truth which is with you. (2 peter 1:12 RV )

These words indicate that the warning is addressed to those who know the truth and are established in it. This may be a little startling, but it ought to prove very profitable. You are a christian, perhaps a prominent worker, your testimony is outspoken on every occasion, you are fearless in your stand for the truth, and yet it is to such as you that these words are spoken. You would be surprised and incredulous if you were told that you were threatened with insidious indifference, and that on this enchanted ground you may sleep the fatal sleep.

Beware of your testimony when you can give it without thinking. The more decided our testimony, the more decided and growing should our thinking be. When we use the words salvation, sanctification, holy spirit, or any of the great words, do we think more about them than we used to? Or have we used them so often that we heed them little because we are established in the truth? Bear in mind that unwilled attention soon flags, but willed observation gives discernment.

2. Knowledge of failure

For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. (2 peter 1:9 rv)

Another cause of insidious indifference is from a different source, viz. , the knowledge of having failed. Perhaps you have not grown in grace, you are not stablished in the faith, you have been lazy and self-indulgent, and you have slowly become what you know you are to-day blind, you have become unfruitful in your knowledge of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ. If this is your portrait, let these words rouse you out of your fatal sickness. Thank god it is not yet too late. Rouse up now! Add diligence to your faith, and by the grace of god you will soon begin to add the other things also.

3. Knowledge of being kept

. . . Who by the power of god are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 peter 1:5 RV)

Insidious indifference is begotten not only by a knowledge of the truth, and by a knowledge of failure, but also by a knowledge of being kept. The sublime truth of the security of being kept may degenerate into a lazy drift towards destruction. The keeping power of god is a grand eternal fact; but beware of going to sleep on the decrees of god and saying, in gods good time, when in your heart and by your habits you really mean, in my bad time.

Let such considerations as these stir up our minds by way of remembrance. It is as if the voice of our master called to us saying, be saved! Be sanctified! Be renewed in the spirit of your mind! Taking the word be to mean a steady growth in the grace and knowledge of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ (RV ).