GROWING IN GRACE
we need God's grace in our lives to not only know him rightly and overcome sin but to also pursue him and love others as he loves them. We need His divine strategy and wisdom to walk in faith, hope and love in our daily lives. It is my greatest desire to see a city fully captivated with the man Jesus and to see Him and what he has done on the cross. He is the Hope of Canton and the solution to all our needs. We need his grace to be his body and represent him well to those we encounter so they also can grow in love with the man we adore.
In Second Peter 3:18 we are told to “grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.” When we grow in grace we mature as a Christian. We are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9), and we must remember that we mature and are sanctified by grace alone. We must realize that grace is a blessing that we don’t deserve. It is God’s grace that justifies us, sanctifies us, and eventually glorifies us in heaven. When we go through the sanctification process, we become more like Christ, this is synonymous with growing in grace.
We can grow in grace by reading God’s Word and letting it “dwell in us richly” (Colossians 3:16) and by praying daily. Those two actions alone don't mature us, but God uses these spiritual disciplines to help us grow. Therefore, if we are maturing in our Christian life it is not about what we do, but about what God does in us, by His grace. Understanding and applying God's grace in our lives is important. We are not to impair God’s grace by being proud, because God says that He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). We should look at grace as an attribute of God that enables us to break free of our sinful nature and follow Him. Grace will give us strength and protect us. If we are without God's grace, and his favor we are hopelessly lost in this world. The more grace we have and ask God for, the more mature as Christians we will become.
When we grow in grace it does not mean that we will gain more grace from God. God’s grace never increases; it is infinite, it cannot be more, and according to the nature of God, it could never be less. God gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him should be saved (John 3:16). How much more grace do we possibly need than that? But for us to grow in grace we should grow in our understanding of what Jesus did and then grow in our appreciation of the grace we have been given. The more we learn about Jesus, the more we will appreciate all He has done, and the more we appreciate His love and sacrifice for us, the more we will perceive the never-ending grace of God.
Peter also confirms that we need to grow in our knowledge of Jesus and we should have that intimate relationship with Him because the more we know of Him, the more of Him that will be seen in our lives. Paul said in Colossians 3:1–4: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
The Scriptures contain all the knowledge we will ever need to learn of God, His Son, and His Spirit, at least in this life. He wants us to become more holy like Himself. He wants to transform us into the image of His Son. The way to do this is by meditating on the Scriptures and applying their principles to our lives as we yield to the conviction and power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Then we will prove 2 Corinthians 3:18: “We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.”