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“Add To Your Faith | Arete | Excellence or Exhaustion”
Categories: Add To Your Faith | 2025
In most areas of life, we’re looking for the sweet spot – that point of perfect balance. As employees, we don’t want to be overworked or underworked. As parents, we want to be in control without being too controlling. We want to be financially responsible without turning into Ebenezer Scrooge. We want to eat healthy, but also enjoy some indulgences. In so many ways, we’re seeking to find that sweet spot.
Sometimes the same is true when it comes to spiritual matters. In 2 Peter 1, Peter advises us to add “arete” or “moral excellence” to our faith, but doesn’t that pursuit require some balance? Can’t chasing excellence easily lead to burnout and exhaustion? Where is the sweet spot as we seek to add “arete” to our faith?
I think we should mention that the Bible endorses the idea of rest and respite. Jesus provides a great example of this. He made of habit of withdrawing into the wilderness alone to pray (Luke 5:16). Not even the Son of God thought it right to work Himself to death. Still, I wonder if the issue isn’t finding the sweet spot between excellence and exhaustion, rather it is properly understanding what sort of excellence is under discussion.
Often we measure excellence in terms of good deeds done, work accomplished, things achieved. That’s not exactly the kind of excellence Peter is talking about. “Arete” is moral excellence. “Arete” is virtue. So, Peter is not talking about the stuff you do, but the person you are. He’s not talking about how big our bank of good deeds ought to be, rather he is talking about the kind of character we ought to build. He’s not talking about how busy you are this week, but who you are this week.
Adding “arete” is not about finding the balance between achievement and exhaustion. We’re not looking for a sweet spot, nor are we trying to work ourselves to death. Adding “arete” is about deciding that in every possible way I am going to strive to attain the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).
- Jonathan Banning – minister at Temple Terrace Church of Christ
