Increasing in Grace

“But grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2Peter 3:18)

Be sure to read this verse as a command. We are to grow in grace and in knowledge. We can understand and even know how to grow in knowledge, but how does one grow in grace? Grace isn’t something that comes from us. It’s God given. It’s God's undeserved favor. “For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9) We don’t earn it. We can’t work at it. Paul continues, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) He adds this making this an extension of his discourse on grace. We are God’s workmanship. God did it. It wasn’t anything we did to make us God’s workmanship. The Lord gave us the gift of grace so we could be His workmanship, His creation to do His Will. And His will is for us to do good works. These good works were determined for each one of us since the beginning of the world for us to be occupied in.

The question still isn’t answered. How do we grow in grace? The word grow in the Greek means to increase. So we are to increase in grace. We are commanded to live increasingly in God’s favor which we do not earn or work for. God’s grace gives us forgiveness, salvation, a new heart, freedom from sin and darkness, relationship with God, God’s constant companionship, help, provision and blessings, and an eternal future with God.  These are just a few of the benefits of God’s grace. So to increase in grace means to increase in all the benefits. Keeping in mind that these benefits come from God and are not earned or worked for, how do we increase in them. The truth is that they are available in abundance and infinitely for us, but we have not accessed them fully for some reason. When God gave us grace, He didn’t just give us a smidgen of it but gave it fully to us. What is keeping us from accessing the fullness of His grace? The second part of that sentence that Peter wrote gives us a hint. We are not fully aware of the fullness of His grace because we lack knowledge. I’ll give you an example in earthly terms. Electricity was always available. It was the lack of knowledge of it and how to harness it for use that kept man from utilizing it in their homes and had to use candles and lanterns to light up their homes. So, it is similarly with grace. Its fullness is available, but we lack knowledge of God's great grace to know about its benefits.

There is a very real and present example of this in our lives. Many Christians believe in God’s provision for healing. But this grace of God is so much doubted and ignored. We run to medicine and the doctors first before we trust God that we “were” healed. (1Peter 2:24) We are as healed as much as we are saved. But our bodies are victims of this defiled earth. We must believe that God will use the means available to us for healing which may be medicine, doctors, therapies and surgeries as much as any prescription He used in the Old Testament for healing. Ultimately, we believe we were healed, speaking the end from the beginning, like our Father does regardless of the doctor's declaration that we can’t be healed.

Back to our need of knowledge, how do we increase in knowledge of the grace of God? This seems like an easy answer to a difficult discipline. Reading and study of the Word of God is imperative. This means meditation of God’s Word and the grace of which we have knowledge. For instance, we take at face value that we are saved by God’s grace. But it involves so much more. When we meditate on God’s love, the sacrifice of Jesus, the plan of salvation since the fall and even before the fall, what it means to the Jews and to the Gentiles and etc... we can begin to grow in knowledge and increase in the grace concerning salvation. And that would only be a tiny bit of His grace. It is infinite just like He is infinite and eternal.

We are near the end of our space and have only covered one half of the Scripture. Continuing, to Him and only to our God, the holy heavenly Father is worthy of glory. We cannot even begin to extol His Goodness and might. He is eternally revealing Himself in the heavens. We only know a portion of Who He is. Eternally He is full of glory of which we only have an idea but know nothing about. We get a glimpse of what it may be in the study of the New Jerusalem. “And the city had no need of the sun, nor of the moon, that they might shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:23) God’s glory radiates from Him and illuminates the New Jerusalem. We can’t even imagine how that is. It would take more than another thousand words to study it and we would still not really know about His glory. To us it’s enough to know that He is glorious and worthy of worship.

Briefly, our study was mostly about God’s grace concluding that it’s infinite. We can grow in it as we come to know about it in study and meditation in His presence and guided by the Holy Spirit. And we also determined that God’s glory is beyond our imagination and knowledge, understanding that it’s so magnificent, it’s able to illuminate the New Jerusalem.