It is a command, that is to say, the will is involved. Growth is to be
done by effort, and the fact that it is a command teaches us this, that
we are not to take this one metaphor as if it exhausted the whole of the
facts of the case in reference to Christian progress.
You would never think of telling a child to grow any more than you would
think of telling a plant to grow, but Peter does tell Christian men and
women to grow. Why? Because they are not plants, but men with wills,
which can resist, and can either further or hinder their progress.
'Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is wooed from out the bud,
... and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care.'
But that is not how we grow. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' with pain and
peril, with effort and toil, and not otherwise, do men grow in
everything but stature. And especially is it so in the Christian
character. There are other metaphors that need to be taken into
consideration as well as this of growth, with all its sweet suggestions
of continuous, effortless, spontaneous advance.
The Christian progress is not only growth, it is warfare. The Christian
progress is not only growth, it is a race. The Christian progress is not
only growth, it is mortifying the old man. The Christian progress is not
only growth, it is putting off the old man with his deeds and putting on
the new! 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the
ear,' was never meant for a complete account of how the Christian life
is perfected.
We are bidden to grow, and that command points to hindrances and
resistance, to the need for effort and the governing action of our own
wills.
The command is one sorely needed in the present state of our average
Christianity. Our churches are full of monsters, specimens of arrested
growth, dwarfs, who have scarcely grown since they were babes, infants
all their lives. I come to you with a very plain question: Have you any
more of Christ's beauty in your characters, any more of His grace in
your hearts, any more of His truth in your minds than you had a year
ago, ten years ago, or at that far-off period when some of you
greyheaded men first professed to be Christians? Have you experienced so
many things in vain? Have the years taught you nothing? Ah, brethren!
for how many of us is it true: 'When for the time ye ought to be
teachers ye have need that one teach you which be the first principles
of the oracles of God'? 'Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord
and Saviour.'
And we need the command because all about us there are hindrances. There
is the hindrance of an abuse of the evangelical doctrine of conversion,
and the idea that springs up in many hearts that if once a man has
'passed from death unto life,' and has managed to get inside the door
of the banqueting-hall, that is enough. And there are numbers of people
in our Nonconformist communities especially, where that doctrine of
conversion is most distinctly preached, whose growth is stopped by the
abuse that they make of it in fancying if they have once exercised faith
in Jesus Christ they may safely and sinlessly stand still. 'Conversion'
is turning round. What do we turn round for? Surely, in order that we
may travel on in the new direction, not that we may stay where we are.
There is also the hindrance of mere indolence, and there is the
hindrance arising from absorption in the world and its concerns.
If all your strength is going thither, there is none left to grow with.
Many professing Christians take such deep draughts of the intoxicating
cup of this world's pleasures that it stunts their growth. People
sometimes give children gin in order to keep them from growing. Some of
you do that for your Christian character by the deep draughts that you
take of the Circean cup of this world's pleasures and cares.
And not unfrequently, some one favourite evil, some lust or passion, or
weakness, or desire, which you have not the strength to cast out, will
kill all aspirations and destroy all possibilities of growth; and will
be like an iron band round a little sapling, which will confine it and
utterly prevent all expansion. Is that the case with any of us? We all
need--and I pray you suffer--the word of exhortation.