2-peter 1:8

For if these things be in you and abound - If ye possess all there graces, and they increase and abound in your souls, they will make - show, you to be neither αργους, idle, nor ακαρπους, unfruitful, in the acknowledgment of our Lord Jesus Christ. The common translation is here very unhappy: barren and unfruitful certainly convey the same ideas; but idle or inactive, which is the proper sense of αργους, takes away this tautology, and restores the sense. The graces already mentioned by the apostle are in themselves active principles; he who was possessed of them, and had them abounding in him, could not be inactive; and he who is not inactive in the way of life must be fruitful. I may add, that he who is thus active, and consequently fruitful, will ever be ready at all hazard to acknowledge his Lord and Savior, by whom he has been brought into this state of salvation.

For if these things be in you, and abound - If they are in you in rich abundance; if you are eminent for these things.

They make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful - They will show that you are not barren or unfruitful. The word rendered "barren," is, in the margin, "idle." The word "idle" more accurately expresses the sense of the original. The meaning is, that if they evinced these things, it would show.

(1) that they were diligent in cultivating the Christian graces, and,

(2) that it was not a vain thing to attempt to grow in knowledge and virtue.

Their efforts would be followed by such happy results as to be an encouragement to exertion. In nothing is there, in fact, more encouragement than in the attempt to become eminent in piety. On no other efforts does God smile more propitiously than on the attempt to secure the salvation of the soul and to do good. A small part of the exertions which men put forth to become rich, or learned, or celebrated for oratory or heroism, would secure the salvation of the soul. In the former, also, men often fail; in the latter, never.

1:8 For these being really in you - Added to your faith.And abounding - Increasing more and more, otherwise we fall short. Make you neither slothful nor unfruitful - Do not suffer you to be faint in your mind, or without fruit in your lives.If there is less faithfulness, less care and watchfulness, since we were pardoned, than there was before, and less diligence, less outward obedience, than when we were seeking remission of sin, we are both slothful and unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ, that is, in the faith, which then cannot work by love.