December 9 Daily Devotional

Growing in Grace

The Apostle Peter realizes that we need to ‘grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 3:18), but before we can grow we must be born. It is only a living child who can grow. There can be no growth where there is no life. The very notion of growth and development and perfection presupposes a life already in existence. Exactly the same point is made by Paul at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 3. He complains that the Corinthians are still babes, that he cannot write to them as men because they are not yet in a condition to receive it. But remember, they are already Christians, ‘called saints’; they are born again, they have believed in ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’. They are on the one and only ‘foundation’ already. But that does not mean that they are complete. They need to be taught. This knowledge needs to develop and to grow; there are aspects of it they have not yet understood.

At the end of Hebrews 5 the author makes the same complaint about his readers that he cannot feed them with ‘strong meat’ but can give them only ‘milk’. He would like to tell them about the wonderful doctrine of Christ as Melchisedec, but he cannot. Yet the life is there; they have believed the truth; they have laid hold of the ‘first principles’, the elements of the gospel of Christ. The writer’s concern is that they should not ‘slip away’ by believing false teachers. At the same time he wants them to ‘go on to perfection’.

The Basis of Christian Unity, pp. 37–8