GROWNING IN GRACE
J. C. Ryle
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 any
one dreams that by growth in grace I mean growth in justification, he is
utterly mistaken about the whole point I am considering. I would go to
the stake (God helping me) for the glorious truth that, in the matter of
justification before God, every believer is complete in Christ (Col. 2:
10). 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, vigour, 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. I leave it to others to describe
such a man's condition by any words they please. For myself, I think the
truest and best account of him is this: he is growing in grace.
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