Grow in Grace

Grow in Grace

An elderly professor of New Testament Greek taught the same course for forty years. Students noticed that each year his lectures were different — not the same material repeated, but deepened. In his final year of teaching he told his students: 'I have been studying Paul's letters since 1962. I know them less now than I did in 1965. Not because I know fewer facts — because I have discovered how much more there is.' His colleagues called this 'evangelical humility.' He called it growth. 'The more you know of Jesus,' he said, 'the more you discover there is to know. Grace and knowledge both increase together — and neither reaches a ceiling.'

Peter closes his second letter with a double imperative: grow in grace AND in knowledge. These two things together protect against the heresy he has been warning against. False teachers produce people who are knowledgeable but not gracious, or sentimental but not truthful. Genuine spiritual growth is simultaneous: growing in received grace (the unmerited favor of God actively appropriated) and in knowledge of Jesus (the personal, relational knowing that comes from time spent in His word and presence). The spiritual life does not plateau. There is always more grace to receive, more of Jesus to know. The question is not 'How much have I grown?' but 'Am I growing?' The direction is more important than the distance.