The Power of Virtue

You will find it more difficult to uproot faults than to choke them out by gaining virtues.

For this very reason, adding your diligent [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence), and in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety), and in [exercising] godliness [develop] brotherly affection, and in [exercising] brotherly affection [develop] Christian love. For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) (2 Peter 1:5-8 Amplified).

And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity [ideal harmony] (Colossians 3:14).

The abundance of God’s love will do more to correct you than all anxious self-contemplation.