Grow in Grace

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18a, ESV).

What does it mean to “grow in grace”? Does it mean that those who grow in grace have less sins and more grace? In my reading, I have a chance to read James M. Gordon’s Evangelical Spirituality (Wipf & Stock, 1991) in which he introduces Christian spirituality through different spiritualities of evangelical figures in the past (e.g. John and Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, etc…). One of the chapters is about the spirituality of John C. Ryle whose classic book Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrance, Difficulties, and Roots (Hendrickson, 2007) that I purchased last year and haven’t had a chance to read.

In Holiness, he proposes that religious growth is a reality. In this reality, “There is such a thing as ‘growth in grace’” (p. 104). Ryle wrote:

When I speak of “growth in grace,” I do not for a moment mean that a believer’s interest in Christ can grow. I do not mean that he can grow in safety, acceptance with God, or security. I do not mean that he can ever be more justified, more pardoned, more forgiven, more at peace with God, than he is the first moment that he believes. I hold firmly that the justification of a believer is a finished, perfect, and complete work; and that the weakest saint, though he may not know and feel it, is as completely justified as the strongest. I hold firmly that our election, calling, and standing in Christ admit of no degrees, increase, or diminution. If anyone dreams that by “growth in grace” I mean growth in justification, he is utterly wide of the mark, and utterly mistaken about the whole point I am considering…Nothing can be added to his justification from the moment he believes, and nothing taken away.

When I speak of “growth in grace,” I only mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigor, and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in a believer’s heart. I hold that every one of those graces admits of growth, progress, and increase. I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like, may be little or great strong or weak, vigorous or feeble, and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life. When I speak of a man “growing in grace,” I mean simply this—that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual-mindedness more marked. He feels more of the power of godliness in his own heart. He manifests more of it in his life. He is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace” (pp. 105-106, emphasis added).

This is a very good description of what it means to “grow in grace.” There is nothing we can grow in terms of justification. We can only grow in sanctification, which, however, is forever grounded in justification. We can never grow out of being justified by the finished work of Christ. We can only grow deeper and deeper into the life of Christ through the life of the Spirit in this sanctifying process. May we all grow in grace.