What Does 2 Peter 1:5 Mean?
And bringing all your eagerness in beside this, supply to your trust strength, and to your strength, knowing;
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;THE KEY
The Greek pictures excellence and knowing as provisions supplied within the trust already holding them.
THE MEANING
Your trust is where excellence takes shape, and excellence becomes the ground in which knowing can grow. The verse gives this growth an order: you lean your full weight in trust, embody excellence within it, and come to know through what is lived. This unfolding carries full earnestness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that maturity is a pile of achievements disconnected from trust: each quality takes root within the one before it.
THE ROOT
ἐπιχορηγήσατε
epichorēgēsate
GROWS FROM
χορηγέω
chorēgeō
to furnish, supply, or provide what is needed
“supply” in this verse is epichorēgēsate. This verb’s history reaches back to the χορηγός (chorēgos), the provider who furnished a chorus. Virtue is supplied within trust, and knowing within virtue, so growth reads as a provisioned sequence rather than disconnected trophies.
ALSO GROWS
chorēgos: chorus provider or sponsor
χορηγός
The provider furnishes what a chorus needs; the verse uses the same word family for furnishing qualities within trust.
epichorēgia: provision or supply
ἐπιχορηγία
This related noun makes the supplying sense explicit and echoes the verse’s picture of qualities being furnished.
πίστις
pistis
GROWS FROM
πειθ-
peith-
to be persuaded, convinced, and brought to trust
“your trust” in this verse is pistis. This word family connects trust with being persuaded and with being reliable. Here trust is the settled ground in which excellence grows, not one separate achievement among others.
ALSO GROWS
peithō: persuade or convince
πείθω
It links trust with being persuaded or convinced, rather than merely agreeing with an idea.
pistos: reliable, firm, or trustworthy
πιστός
The family’s sense of firmness gives “faith” the shade of trust you can lean your full weight on.
γνῶσις
gnōsis
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω
ginōskō
to know, recognize, or perceive
This is knowing as recognition, not merely information collected apart from life. Placed after excellence, it suggests that practiced goodness opens into a deeper knowing.
ALSO GROWS
ginōskō: know, recognize, or perceive
γινώσκω
The related verb shows knowledge as an act of knowing, not a store of detached facts.
gnōstos: known or recognized
γνωστός
This related word carries recognition into the state of being known, reinforcing knowing as lived contact.
THE PATTERN
Trust grows through an ordered supply, as each lived quality opens into the next capacity.
For the LORD gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and discernment.That you might walk in a way that matches the weight of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the full knowing of God.For thus the entrance will be supplied to you richly, into the age-long governance of our Lord and Deliverer, Jesus the Anointed One.THE THREAD
For thus the entrance will be supplied to you richly, into the age-long governance of our Lord and Deliverer, Jesus the Anointed One.The Greek verb translated “add” here is the same verb rendered “ministered … abundantly” in 2 Peter 1:11. The qualities supplied within trust lead toward an entrance that is itself abundantly supplied.
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