7. Growth | God's Good News | Presenting the biblical gospel so that you might find free and abundant eternal life.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18)

Just as babies grow to be toddlers, toddlers develop into teens, and teens grow up into adults, so Christians grow and mature. We grow in our relationship with Jesus and in our appreciation for all he has done for us. And we grow up, maturing toward becoming like Jesus.¹ The grace that gives us life in Jesus is the grace that grows us in Jesus.

Two Bible passages help us to understand this growth.

Life in Jesus

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

(Titus 3:3–7)

When we first come to Jesus, we have some awareness of our sin, enough to make us realize our need for him. Like when we discover mold in our home, we know there is a problem and that we need to do something about it. It’s only when we take a closer look that we come to realize the full extent of the problem and just how serious it is.

As we grow and mature as Christians, we come to see how invasive and widespread sin is in our lives. It seems to be everywhere. Our hearts can be a breeding ground for sin. We discover a lack of love for God and others. Even the best of our intentions are tainted with selfish motives.

Just as bright light exposes dirt and grime, the closer we grow to God, the clearer we will see the guilt and the extent our sin. Yet no matter how great our sin is, the grace of God in Jesus is greater.² Whatever sin we discover in our lives, we can know that that sin was accounted for by God and paid for at the cross of Jesus Christ.

Over the course of our Christian lives, we grow in appreciation for this amazing grace of God to us in Jesus. As we see our sin, our amazement grows that God would love us and give his Son for us, and our hearts are filled with peace, joy, and gratitude.

Every day we need to keep the gospel, God’s good news, front and center, reminding ourselves of God’s mercy, grace, and love for us in Jesus. It is easy for us in sinful pride to think that we need Jesus less than some others or to mistake our Christian growth to mean that our obedience makes us better in God’s sight, and so we don’t need Jesus as much.

The first way we grow as Christians is downward, becoming more fully rooted in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. Look again at the passage above and answer these questions: Why did God save you? How did God save you? Throughout your Christian life, you will need to remind yourself of God’s answers so that Jesus will receive “the glory both now and to the day of eternity” (2 Peter 3:18).

Life with Jesus

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

(Titus 2:11–14)

The second way we grow as Christians is developmentally, from the inside out, as God grows us by His grace to become more like Jesus.³

Did you know that flamingos are not naturally pink? They are born a dull gray and gain their pink color from what they eat. The pigments from their diet saturate their skin and feathers so that their pink hue becomes even more pronounced.

That is how it works in our life with Jesus. As we open our mouths in prayer, feed on the truth of God’s Word (the Bible), savor God’s glory, goodness and grace in our hearts, and find our strength in Jesus for the journey, we will increasingly take on the character of Christ. Our transformation will not just be on the outside either, but in the whole of our being.

To help us understand, Jesus used a metaphor of himself as the vine and us as the branches.⁴ Branches get their life from being connected to the vine. We are branches that, by God’s grace, find life in Jesus and that draw upon Him for our maturity, vitality, strength, and fruitfulness.

If we truly have life in Jesus, his presence will show up in our beliefs,⁵ our behavior,⁶ our ambitions,⁷ our motivations⁸, the way we do our work,⁹ the way we treat our family¹⁰—everything about us.¹¹ Life in Jesus will flow out in life with Jesus.

All this has to do with God’s handiwork of grace in our lives. As the passage above emphasizes, it is the grace of God in Christ that trains us and transforms us. While we are the ones who endeavor to live lives pleasing to our Father in heaven, it is God who works in us by his power to bring forth the fruit of our salvation—fruit that is authentic, abounding, and abiding.¹²

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Previous Chapter: 6. Response

Ephesians 4:13-14

until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Romans 5:20-21

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ephesians 4:13, 20-24

until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ...

But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
John 15:1-17

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Colossians 2:6-8

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
John 14:15

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
Matthew 6:33

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Colossians 1:10

so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God...
Colossians 3:23

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men...
Ephesians 5:25

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...
Colossians 3:17

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Philippians 1:9-11; Philippians 2:13-14; Ephesians 3:14-21

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

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for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing...

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For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.