CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 14
Growth
One great objection made against those who advocate this life of faith is that they do not teach a growth in grace. They are supposed to teach that the soul arrives in one moment at a state of perfection, beyond which there is no advance, and that all the exhortations in the scriptures that point toward growth and development are rendered void by this teaching.
Since exactly the opposite of this is true, I will try, if possible, to answer these objections and to show what seems to me the scriptural way of growing and in what place the soul must be in order to grow.
The text that is most frequently quoted is 2 Peter 3:18: “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Now, this text expresses exactly what we who teach this life of faith believe to be God’s will for us, and what we also believe He has made it possible for us to experience. We believe in a growing that does really produce continually progressing maturity and in a development that, as a fact, does bring forth ripe fruit. We expect to reach the aim set before us. No parent would be satisfied with the growth of his child if day after day and year after year he remained the same helpless babe he was in the first months of his life. And no farmer would feel comfortable under such growing of his grain as should stop short at the blade and never produce the ear or the full corn in the ear. Growth, to be real, must be progressive, “Ah! But, Mrs. Smith, I believe in growing in grace.” “How long have you been growing?” I asked. “About twenty-five years,” was her answer. “And how much more unworldly and devoted to the Lord are you now than when your Christian life began?” I continued. “Alas!” was the answer. “I fear I am not nearly so much so.” The trouble with her, and with every other such case, is simply this: they are trying to grow into grace, instead of in it. They are like a rosebush, planted by a gardener in the hard, stony path, with a view to its growing into the flower bed and which has of course dwindled and withered in consequence instead of flourishing and maturing. When the children of Israel started on their wanderings at Kadesh Barnea, they were at the borders of the land, and a few steps would have taken them into it. When they ended their wanderings in the plains of Moab, they were also at its borders, only with this difference: that now there was a river to cross, which at first there would not have been. To get possession of this land, it was necessary first to be in it; and to grow in grace, it is necessary first to be planted in grace. When once in the land, however, their conquest was rapid; and when once planted in grace, the growth of the spiritual life becomes vigorous and rapid beyond all conceiving. For grace is a most fruitful soil, and the plants that grow therein are plants of a marvelous growth. They are tended by the divine Husbandman and are warmed by the Sun of Righteousness and watered by the dew from heaven. Surely it is no wonder that they bring forth fruit, “some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.”
Grace is the unhindered, wondrous, boundless love of God, poured out upon us in an infinite variety of ways, without stint or measure, not according to our deserving but according to His measureless heart of love. Put together all the tenderest love you know of—the deepest you have ever felt and the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you—and heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by infinity, and you will begin perhaps to have some faint glimpses of the love and grace of God!
To “grow in grace,” therefore, the soul must be planted in the very heart of this divine love, enveloped by it, steeped in it. It must let itself out to the joy of it and must refuse to know anything else. It must grow in the apprehensions of it, day by day; it must entrust everything to its care and must have no shadow of doubt but that it will surely order all things well.
To grow in grace is to put our growing, as well as everything else, into the hands of the Lord and leave it with Him. It is to grow as the lilies grow, or as the babies grow, without care and without anxiety; to grow because He who has planted us has planted a growing thing and has made us on purpose to grow.
Surely this is what our Lord meant when He said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Or when He says again, “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” There is no effort in the growing of a babe or of a lily. The lily does not toil or spin; it does not stretch or strain; it does not make any effort of any kind to grow; it is not conscious even that it is growing. The result of this sort of growing in the Christian life is sure. Even Solomon in all his glory, our Lord says, was not arrayed like one of God’s lilies. Solomon’s array cost much toiling and spinning, and gold and silver in abundance, but the lily’s array costs none of these. And though we may toil and spin to make for ourselves beautiful spiritual garments and may strain and stretch in our efforts after spiritual growth, we shall accomplish nothing. For no man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, and no array of ours can ever equal the beautiful dress with which the great Husbandman clothes the plants that grow in His garden of grace and under His fostering care.
What we all need is to “consider the flowers of the field” and learn their secret. Grow, grow in God’s way, which is the only effectual way. See to it that you are planted in grace, and then let the divine Husbandman cultivate you in His own way and by His own means. Put yourselves out in the sunshine of His presence and let the dew of heaven come down upon you and see what will be the result. Leaves and flowers and fruit must surely come in their season; for your Husbandman is skillful, and He never fails in His harvesting. Only see to it that you oppose no hindrance to the shining of the Sun of Righteousness or the falling of the dew from heaven. The thinnest covering may serve to keep off the sunshine and the dew, and the plant may wither, even where these are most abundant. And so also the slightest barrier between your soul and Christ may cause you to dwindle and fade as a plant in a cellar or under a bushel. Bask in the sunshine of His love. Drink of the waters of His goodness. Keep your face upturned to Him as the flowers do to the sun. Look, and your soul shall live and grow.
We are not inanimate flowers but intelligent human beings with personal powers and personal responsibilities. What the flower is by nature, we must be by an intelligent and free surrender. To be one of God’s lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive and yet infinitely active also: passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. Self must step aside to let God work.
You need make no efforts to grow, therefore; but let your efforts instead be all concentrated on this, that you abide in the Vine. The divine Husbandman who has the care of the Vine will care also for you who are His branches and will so prune and purge and water and tend you that you will grow and bring forth fruit. Put yourselves absolutely into the hands of the good Husbandman, and He will at once begin to make the very desert blossom as the rose and will cause springs and fountains of water to start up out of its sandy wastes. Our divine Husbandman is able to turn any soil, whatever it may be like, into the soil of grace the moment we put our growing into His hands. He does not need to transplant us into a different field; but right where we are, with just the circumstances that surround us, He makes His sun to shine and His dew to fall upon us and transforms the very things that were before our greatest hindrances into the chief and most blessed means of growth.
Let yourselves grow. No difficulties in your case can baffle Him. If you will only put yourselves absolutely into His hands and let Him have His own way with you, no dwarfing of your growth in the years that are past, no apparent dryness of your inward springs of life, no crookedness or deformity in your development can in the least mar the perfect work that He will accomplish. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.” These words give us the picture of a life and growth far different from the ordinary life and growth of Christians—a life of rest and a growth without effort; and yet a life and a growth crowned with glorious results. We may rest assured that all the resources of God’s infinite grace will be brought to bear on the growing of the tiniest flower in His spiritual garden as certainly as they are in His earthly creation. As the violet abides peacefully in its little place, content to receive its daily portion without concerning itself about the wandering of the winds or the falling of the rain, so must we repose in the present moment as it comes to us from God. This is the kind of “growth in grace” in which we who have entered into the life of full trust believe; a growth without care or anxiety on our part, but a growth that does actually grow. We rejoice to know that there are many such plants growing up now in the Lord’s heritage. They are like the lilies. As the lilies behold the face of the sun and grow thereby, they are, by “beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” being changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
They grow so rapidly and with such success, their answer would be that they are not concerned about their growing and are hardly conscious that they do grow. Their Lord has told them to abide in Him and has promised that, if they do thus abide, they shall certainly bring forth much fruit. They are content to leave the cultivating and the growing and the training and the pruning to their good Husbandman. Let us look at the subject practically. We all know that growing is not a thing of effort but is the result of an inward life principle of growth. All the stretching and pulling in the world could not make a dead oak grow, but a live oak grows without stretching. It is plain, therefore, that the essential thing is to get within you the growing life, and then you cannot help but grow. And this life is the “life hid with Christ in God,” the wonderful divine life of an indwelling Holy Spirit. Be filled with this, dear believer, and whether you are conscious of it or not, you cannot help growing. Say a continual yes to your Father’s will. And finally, in this, as in all the other cares of your life, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”