The just shall live by faith.
Growth is the process of development by which the immature advances toward a state of perfection. Growth is as much a possibility and a necessity of spiritual life as of physical life. The spiritual life begins with birth the “new birth.” You are then a babe in Christ. If you remain a babe then you cannot become a soldier of the cross, enduring hardness in the service of your Master. You can’t partake of the strong meat which, with the more simple “milk of the word,” is provided in the Gospel of Christ. From the condition of a babe, you must pass to that of the full stature of a man or woman in Christ; and this can only be done by growth.
What are the essentials to growth? Almost anyone can tell what is necessary to the growth of a plant, but scarcely anyone seems to understand what is necessary to development as a Christian. Yet it needs no greater effort to know what is necessary in the one case than in the other. A Christian is but a plant in the garden of the Lord; and spiritual plants, like any other plants, need plenty of water, good soil, and sunlight.
The Lord has provided all of these for His garden, and it only remains for His plants to assimilate what they find. But there is a strange perversity about these human plants that is not seen in the physical world. The Lord complains to the prophet Jeremiah about His people of old, that though He had planted them “a noble vine, wholly a right seed,” yet they had “turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine;” and it is that way with many now who have enjoyed similar privileges. There is no fault in the provision that God has made; but there is an evil principle that finds its way into the plant and perverts its nature, causing degeneracy and ultimately the loss of all that is noble and good.
It is the nature of a plant to turn towards the sun; but in God’s spiritual garden some plants try to grow in another way. There are some that try to grow by something inherent in themselves. Of course, no growth can be attained in this way. Imagine a plant trying to make itself grow, exerting itself if it could be capable of exertion to become higher and stronger and to strike its roots more deeply into the soil! The idea is absurd; yet this is what many people think they must do in order to grow as Christians. But Christ said, “which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?” Luke 12:25. Who would think of exerting himself in order to grow physically?
It is true that exercise influences growth, but it is not the cause of growth, and there isn’t anything that you can do to cause it. The principle of development is in every person by nature; and all that you can do is to secure those conditions so that this principle can operate. So it is in the spiritual world. The principle of growth is implanted by God at the new birth, and only needs right conditions to cause the babe in Christ to grow up to the full stature of Christian maturity. You can interfere with this principle, and repress it, but you cannot create it. But the devil, who understands all this, continually sets people to work to try to make themselves grow by exertion. He would have you think that by taking thought and doing a large amount of good works you can add a cubit to your stature in Christ. And people try this plan, as they have been doing for ages in the past, and keep trying it until they find that it does not work. They find that after years of such efforts, they are not any stronger Christians than they were at the start, nor do they reach higher up into the spiritual atmosphere of heaven. Then they become discouraged, and the devil, who knew what the result would be, comes and tempts them, and finds them ready to fall an easy prey to his devices.
But there is no impossibility in the way of Christian growth. The difficulty was, you did not understand the nature of that growth. You did not know the conditions under which alone it could take place. You were not instructed by that which God has revealed in His word and in nature. A plant grows and reaches up and becomes stronger without any exertion on its own part. It simply looks to the sun. It feels the vivifying influence of its rays, and reachess is simal the source from which they come. The whole process is simply an effort to get nearer to the source of its life. In the soil it finds water and the various elements that enter into its composition as a plant, and the principle of assimilation within it, which it has, so long as it looks at the sun, draws up the substances through the roots and into the stem and leaves. The plant simply lets the process go on according to this law of assimilation which its Creator gave it.
So it must be with the plants in the heavenly garden. They must look at the sun. You cannot grow by looking at yourself; you cannot grow by looking at other plants around you. Neither should you exert yourself to assimilate what is necessary to build you up and make you strong, but simply let the process of assimilation go on according to the “law of the Spirit of life” that has been put within you. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,” is the exhortation that is given you. It will be in you if you will let it. All God wants of you is to let Him work in you.
People are continually doing something to hinder God’s work. They are continually putting self in God’s way. They refuse to submit their will to God’s will. And this is all the difficulty in living the Christian life. It is not a difficulty of performing works, but the difficulty of making the right choice, of yielding to God and not to self, of looking to Christ and not to something else, and of letting His mind and His spirit be in you. He is your Sun, the “Sun of Righteousness.” Mal. 4:2. If you will look steadfastly at Him as the plant looks at the sun that shines in the heavens; if you will make it your constant effort to turn toward Him as the plant turns to the source of its life, and to reach up more and more toward the brightness of His face, then you will experience no difficulty in obtaining the full measure of growth that you desire.
But you need not expect to realize the fact that you are growing, any more than you can realize that you are growing physically by trying to note changes in your height from day to day. If the plant turns its head away from the sun to look at itself to see how fast it is growing, it will soon cease to grow; and just so with the Christian. When you try to see yourself growing spiritually you are taking one of the most effective means to stop your growth entirely.
So there is no cause for discouragement in the fact you don’t at any time realize this process of growth. It is taking place just as truly as it takes place in the physical world, and you don’t need to make the outcome a matter of anxious concern. The outcome will be what the Apostle Paul describes in his letter to the Ephesians, for whom he prayed that they might be strengthened by the inward presence of the Spirit, “that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” Eph. 3:17-19.
You are not told to grow in the knowledge of self or the knowledge of your sinfulness or that of your neighbors, but “in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Pet. 3:18. You cannot know His grace and all His attributes unless you see them; and you cannot see them unless you look to Him.
Living By Faith- E.J. Waggoner, and A.T.Jones
Maranatha