Growth in Grace (Rewritten)

We are urged to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Some people say the real logic of Christian growth works better if we reverse that order, putting the knowledge of Christ first as the way to grow in grace. But the apostle’s order—grace first, knowledge second—is actually the deeper and more natural one. 

We come to know Christ through the heart, not merely through the mind. We do not truly know Jesus until we love him; and the more we love him, the more closely we know him. 

The more we study the perfect character of Jesus, the more we admire him, just as studying Michelangelo’s works can make us admire him more. But admiration is not love. Admiration does not set the affections burning like a furnace; it does not drive the soul forward through loss and labor, self-denial and persecution, all the way to the martyr’s stake. As Christ’s character unfolds its splendor under the long, earnest gaze of the student, that student may grow aesthetically through contact with so much moral beauty. He may also become more firmly settled in his theological beliefs about the divinity of the man of Nazareth. And yet, in his own heart, he may still be refusing to receive and enthrone Christ as his rightful king.

We can go a step further and say that growth in grace, while it is accompanied by increasing power to avoid outward acts of sin, does not have the power to destroy the spirit of sin itself, commonly called original sin. 

The Three Kinds of Perfection (Rewritten)

When the Bible talks about “perfection” in relation to human beings, it doesn’t mean just one thing. In fact, much of the confusion around the idea of Christian perfection comes from blending together three very different meanings. Once we separate them, the picture becomes much clearer.