“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen” (2 Peter 3:18).
When Peter wrapped up his second letter to Christians scattered across Asia, before he put down his pen, he wrote a final directive: “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). I’ve been thinking about his comments in the context of the twenty-first century, and I’m not sure we really understand what he was talking about half as well as did those battered but not broken Christians who were the recipients of that letter. They had felt the fire of persecution—the brutal end of ill-will coming from people who didn’t like them or their faith.
Yet says Peter, “Grow in grace!” I suppose one of our challenges is to understand what grace is and what it is about. Yes, we sing “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” yet part of our confusion comes because the word seems to have slipped from our vocabularies today. In fact, most modern translations avoid the word “grace”, substituting concepts as “kindness” or “favor” or “compassion,” things that are well and good but really fall short of the real meaning.
Taking the word grace, g-r-a-c-e, someone said that grace is “God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” That’s a good start understanding it. But grace is even more than that. It involves the interaction of God’s love, compassion, and care with your need in such a way that He guides, overshadows, and enriches your life, usually when you don’t sense it or even know what He’s doing, and can only look back in retrospect and say, “Wow! I see now how God met me in this time of crisis!”
It’s clear that we are to grow in this interaction of God with the challenges we face. That’s what grace is about. So where do we go from here? You plant flower seeds, cultivate the ground, and watch the green sprouts eventually push through the soil, burst forth, and finally blossom. It takes time and a combination of conditions—not too much heat but enough, sunshine but not too much, nutrients but not so much that the flower burns, and so forth.
African violets are tender and sensitive and they grow well in a hothouse environment, while cactus is tough—it can handle the scorching heat of a desert. So is it with people. God knows how much you can handle and never gives you more than you can take. Warren Wiersbe says that when you face affliction, God always keeps his eye on the clock and his hand on the thermostat.
I’ve had concern over the vast numbers of people—many of whom have written to me—who feel that God has forsaken them, disappointed them, turned His back on them, or shut the door of concern in their face—when tough times confront them. No, God hasn’t forsaken you. He’s simply pruned the tree. He’s breaking up the hard soil so you can grow in grace. He’s exposing you to enough heat to allow you to grow, not to despair. Remember, the sun that melts the wax also hardens the clay.
Once you have a deep-settled understanding that God is really a good God, and that when trouble comes, He hasn’t turned His back on you or shut off the phone when you are calling on Him to help you, you are in a position to grow in grace. Letting the strong hand of God lead you through your tough experience, knitting the spiritual sinews of your soul together in such a way that you will someday look back and say, “Ah, yes, now I see how the grace of God brought me through the many dangers, toils and snares that old John Newton wrote about.” “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” Indeed, think about it.
Resource reading: 2 Peter 3:14-18.
