According to 2 Peter 1:5-7, the progression of the believers' growth in the divine life is from the God-allotted faith to the divine love of God through the six steps of virtue, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, and brotherly love.
Virtue is our sweet Christian conduct. Love is a virtue. Kindness and humility are also virtues. Our Christian virtues in our growing in the divine life are the spiritual expressions of the divine attributes of God.
First, we have the God-allotted faith as a base, and then we progress in our growth in the divine life from faith to virtue. From virtue we need to progress further to knowledge. We need to know the Bible, to know God according to the Bible. We need to know God in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament. We need to know God in the four Gospels, in the fourteen Epistles of the apostle Paul, and in all the other books of the New Testament. Therefore, we must learn to study the Bible to get the divine knowledge in the proper and full way.
From knowledge we need to progress in our growth in life to self-control. A foolish man is always free in everything. If you are a man full of the divine knowledge, full of the knowledge of the divine truth, you will know how to restrict yourself, that is, how to control yourself. Some of the saints do not know how to restrict their speaking. Those who do not have the proper spiritual knowledge may behave in a very foolish way. They may be like a truck without brakes. We need to progress by our growth in life from knowledge to self-control, self-restriction.
Then, we need to progress from self-control to endurance. Whereas self-control is to deal with ourselves, endurance is to bear with others and with circumstances. These two items should be the fragrant virtues of those who have seen Christ as the centrality and universality of God's eternal economy and who are pursuing Christ, growing Christ, living Christ, and magnifying Christ. Then they would progress in the growth of the divine life into the state of godliness, God-likeness, to express God in Christ in all His attributes as their virtues. We all need to progress in this way to the next step, that is, brotherly love in warm affection, characterized by delight and pleasure. Our godliness needs to be supplied with such a brotherly love.
From this brotherly love we still need to progress until we reach the climax, the divine love, which is God Himself. Every item in this progression is Christ expressed in our living of Him. The base, the foundation, of this progression is the God-allotted faith, and its capstone, its topstone, is the divine love of God.