What does it mean for a Christian to grow in faith?

It is a great comfort that, in looking at Christ, I not only see the thing I ought to be, but I get the thing I ought to be, "grace for grace." "We all, with open face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory unto glory." There is real growth there. … In likeness to Christ, and it ought to be growth every instant.

But these demands which He makes on the hearts of His disciples they find to be quite beyond them, and lead them to know that they must needs get strength out of Another for them. Under this consciousness they say, "Increase our faith" — faith being that which takes us into the resources of One Who is greater than ourselves, and draws virtue out of that which has been divinely ordained to meet our necessity.

For, in addition to our previous meditations on faith, I might say that, considered as that by which a sinner is justified, faith is simply the believing of a testimony, that testimony being the gospel; our justification being "by faith, that it might be by grace." This intimates that work must be excluded. And this the fourth chapter of Romans discusses and teaches. But Scripture also speaks of faith as the principle which animates the life of a saint. This the eleventh chapter of Hebrews presents to us. And, in this character, it is a growing virtue or principle in the soul. It may be either weak or strong, great or little. As we read here, "Lord, increase our faith;" and as we elsewhere read, "O ye of little faith;" and again, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed;" and again, "Your faith groweth exceedingly."

In this sense Scripture considers it, as I before said, a growing principle in the soul. It is our entrance into the power of the testimony which is believed; "the substance [confidence] of things hoped for, the evidence [conviction] of things not seen." It is, we may say, the power of divine life in the soul, and may be in health and vigour there, or the contrary. It stands for the energy of the kingdom of God within us. Scripture mentions it as that which apprehends God, waits on Him, walks with Him. So that if faith be strong, those, and the like graces and actions, are fresh and lively. And being this, it should be with real, unfeigned humiliation we speak, when we confess that our faith is weak; for this, if made in spiritual intelligence, is a confession of how little our souls are alive to God.

The maturity of the fathers consists in knowing Him that was from the beginning, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritual progress and maturity is a deep knowledge and appreciation of Christ. The Apostle Paul illustrates what real Christian maturity is. He had but one desire to know Him; not I but Christ; Christ is all. The Fathers have Christ for their fullest portion and walking in Him have learned the depths of His grace and the glory of His person. They are occupied not with their experience but with Himself It has been well said, "All true experience ends with forgetting self and thinking of Christ." To know Him, to know Him still better, to be entirely dependent on Him, to have none other but Him, never losing sight of Him-- that is the highest attainment of a Christian.

It is blessed indeed for a young convert to start well by making a definite break with the world and accepting the path of faith in company with the people of God. A good start however, is not enough. If we are to be maintained in the path of faith there must be growth in grace. If, says the Apostle Peter, Christians are to enjoy "grace and peace" in abundance, if they are to enjoy all things that pertain to life and godliness, and to escape "the corruption that is in the world through lust" it will only be "through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ our Lord" (2 Peter 1:2-4); therefore he closes his Epistle by exhorting believers to "grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18).

May we then, Christian brethren, always remember that the true secret of growth is laying aside what is evil in God's sight, and constantly and eagerly drinking in what His own grace has so richly given us in His own word of eternal truth. Without these exercises of soul, how is it possible that we, though redeemed and born of God, can be healthy or happy?

GROWTH. The third link in this precious chain of divine truth is growth. For Scripture speaks of the inner man being strengthened, of our growing up into Christ, sanctified, or practically separated unto God by the truth, growing in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thus the soul makes progress. But two things here are taught us as being necessary in order to grow. One is, that the activities of evil, which we all have in the old man, the flesh, must be unsparingly denied. To walk and act carnally is to produce the opposite to growth; hence in this same chapter we are exhorted to "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." And what Christian is there that has not found this out by bitter experience? Who of God's children does not know that when he has given way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, that it has chilled his fervour, damped his energies, and checked his comfort? But, you may say, Is it possible that I, who am born of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Ghost, that I can be the subject of such foul activities as here recorded? Indeed, dear fellow-Christian, it is so. What! Can malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, and evil-speakings be perpetrated by a child of God? Yes; and it is children of God, those who are born of God, that he addresses, and insists on their laying aside all these fleshly activities, all malice, all guile, all evil-speaking." Those who see that God has judged both the nature and the fruits of the old man on the cross, and given them a new life, a new nature in Christ risen and ascended, will understand this, and find power from it. But if our souls would make progress in divine things, there must be this absolute, unsparing setting aside of all these fleshly buddings. Yes, "all;" for they are like worthless weeds, which grow up and check the growth of what is really good.

Now the apostle said to some of the household of God, “Your faith groweth exceedingly,” and the disciples once asked the Lord to increase their faith, so we read also of the faith of the saints at Corinth increasing, and of the “progress and joy in faith” of the Philippians. This shows that development is to be expected and not decline in faith. How is this to come about? If it comes to us by God’s Word at the beginning, surely it is by that same Word, which increases our true knowledge of God, that faith is also both sustained and increased. Without question we should desire to be rich in faith; but it must be remembered that it is a matter of the heart rather than the head. “With the heart man believes,” we are told, and it “worketh by love,” as we have seen.

If a person is untrustworthy, the better one knows him the less one confides in him; but if a person is trustworthy, one's confidence increases as one gets to know him better. The more we learn of the Lord Jesus, the deeper our personal acquaintance with Him goes; the more we explore the heights and depths of the grace of God, the stronger our faith in Him becomes. Every fresh lesson learned of Him strengthens our faith.

(Vv. 2-4). The Apostle commences by encouraging us to rejoice in the trials that become the occasion of developing the practical life of godliness. Firstly, he tells us that trials test and prove the reality of our faith. Secondly, they are a means used by God to develop patience, or endurance. Thirdly, if patience is allowed to do its work, it will lead to a well-balanced Christian life, in which our own wills are refused and God's will is accomplished. For this we must “let patience have her perfect work.” The work of patience is to break down our self-confidence and self-will and teach us that, apart from God, we can do nothing. When patience has had her perfect work, the soul will show its submission to God in trial by bowing to what God allows and waiting for the Lord. “It is good that one should both wait, and that in silence, for the salvation of Jehovah” (Lam. 3:26 N.Tn.).

In verse 14 the apostle shows more fully what is meant by "the perfecting of the saints." It is, that "we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Nothing less than this will meet God's thoughts about us. Here it is not a question of filling up the body of Christ, but of individual growth. The point towards which we are to grow, that which constitutes the perfect man or the full stature, is oneness in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God. This will not indeed be fully reached till we see face to face; but meanwhile there is to be growth — growth in "the faith;" that is, in acquaintance with God's revealed mind, and growth of heart in knowledge of Jesus the Son of God Himself. These are in accordance with the two prayers of the first and third chapters. In the first the apostle asks for growth in the faith, "that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe." In the second He asks for growth in knowledge of Christ, that He "may dwell in your hearts by faith;" that ye may be "rooted and grounded in love;" and that ye may "know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."