6. to your knowledge add self-control; to your self-control add patience; to your patience add devotion to God;
7. to your devotion add kindness toward your brothers and sisters in Christ, and to this kindness add love.
8. If all these things are in you and growing, you will never fail to be useful to God. You will produce the kind of fruit that should come from your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9. But those who don’t grow in these blessings are blind. They cannot see clearly what they have. They have forgotten that they were cleansed from their past sins.
10. My brothers and sisters, God called you and chose you to be his. Do your best to live in a way that shows you really are God’s called and chosen people. If you do all this, you will never fall.
11. And you will be given a very great welcome into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, a kingdom that never ends.
12. You already know these things. You are very strong in the truth you have. But I am always going to help you remember them.
13. While I am still living here on earth, I think it is right for me to remind you of them.
14. I know that I must soon leave this body. Our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me that.
15. I will try my best to make sure you remember these things even after I am gone.
16. We told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We told you about his coming. The things we told you were not just clever stories that people invented. No, we saw the greatness of Jesus with our own eyes.