The progression of our faith - II Peter 1:5-7

In our Bible study today we talked about the list that Peter wrote when he was talking about our efforts to "participate in the divine nature" through God's power and our knowledge of his Son, and ultimately to "escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." (vs. 4)  That sounds great, but how are we to make any progress from the fallen state which God saved us from through Christ to the elevated state that God has promised we will one day attain through his power?  Where do we begin such a journey?
There are several lists of virtues in the New Testament whose order would not seem to be overly significant.  The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, for example, are not listed in any ascending or descending order.  Here, however, in II Peter, the list is set up from the beginning of our journey, faith, to its eventual conclusion, love.  The journey must begin with faith.  We cannot approach God any other way because of our sinful rebellion against his holiness. 
Once someone becomes a believers in Jesus Christ, a Christian, where do they begin in the process of becoming Christ-like?  The first step is goodness; begin by doing that which is kind, generous, merciful, etc. and let your new found faith put down roots.  The next step is knowledge.  One needs to learn WHEN to do this or that, HOW to do it, and WHY.  Our motives become significant as well as our wisdom as we learn the difference between absolute truth and the freedom that we have in Christ to judge in debatable matters.  The attainment of knowledge leads to the realization that self-control is necessary as well.  Once we learn the depth of what it takes to act in goodness, we need to learn to control ourselves so that our progress is forward (and not 3 steps forward, 2 steps back) and doesn't self-destruct in fits of anger, jealousy, pride, anxiety, or fear.  Self-control is one of the hardest things to learn for any Christian, a difficult step to move beyond.  How can we possibly continue to have self-control when life throws curve balls at us?  Now we need perseverance.  We need the ability to do the right thing, in wisdom and self-control even when the circumstances of life are working against us.
When we have come this far, we can begin to glimpse the mind and heart of God, we can begin to understand what godliness is all about.  Why would God send his Son to die for our sins, why would God create us in the first place?  Understanding God's motives helps us to live in imitation of our savior.  It is only now, when we have made so much progress in fixing our own flaws (through the Holy Spirit's power and God's patience with us) that we can understand why we should care about other people.  Brotherly love costs us something.  It is easy to love those who love you back, but we are called to a higher standard.  We must show kindness to strangers, to those who can do nothing to repay us, and we must show kindness to our families, to those with whom we have a history.  And now, at the end of the list comes the word that our world places at the beginning: love.  We don't know what love really is in our culture.  We use love when we mean lust, we use love when we mean "a mutually beneficial arrangement", and we use love when we intend to toss it away when it now longer serves our purpose.  The Christian knows love because Christ died for our sins while we were still in rebellion against God.  The love at the top of Peter's list is a self-sacrificial love that puts others first at great cost to itself.  That this love is far removed when the kind people talk about every day is no surprise to any who observe the shallow and self-centered "love" that fails time and time again to stand in the face of adversity. 
How does the Christian advance in his or her faith and reach toward being like Christ?  By adding to faith with goodness, then knowledge, and then self-control, and perseverance, and godliness, then brotherly kindness, and finally love.