LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1977, Page 84

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84 CONVENTION SERMON

Grow in Christ!

In the words of St. Peter recorded in our text for this
occasion we ask you to “keep on growing”—that is, keep
increasing—“in grace and knowledge from our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory both
now and for eternity.” God grant this blessing, this
progress in sanctification to you and to our fellowsin the
faith throughout the Synod, as together we study,
ponder, exalt, and adhere to the Word of truth!

I. Grow in Relation to Christ: Obtain
the Full Measure of Knowledge from Christ

Growth is the normal concomitant of life. Where
there is life, the expectancy is that there will be growth.
This is true in the realm of nature, in the plant and
animal kingdoms. Such is the case with human beings:
when a physical life is begun, the anticipation is that
physical and mental growth, steady development from
babyhood through childhood to manhood and
womanhood, to maturity of body and mental powers,
will follow. Necessary to the growth of body and mind, of
course, is a continuing intake of the nourishment
appropriate to each.

So it is in the realm of the spirit. Where there is
spiritual being and life, the normal thing is that
spiritual growth occurs, steady development from
spiritual infancy to maturity. What is spiritual growth?
According to the teaching of Scripture this consists in
the acquisition of the knowledge which our text says
comes “from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” the
Savior in whom ultimately are hid all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge. This is the knowledge which
Jesus provides us, His people, through the nourishment
of His inscripturated Word and the agency of His Spirit
operative in that Word. The Bible tells us that God both
continually prompts His people to grow spiritually, to
increase in knowledge, and makes them responsible for
their growth. We determine to a degree the rate of our
growth, for the Lord has said: “With what measure you
mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Mark 4:24);
that is to say, in direct proportion to the amount of
sincere and earnest effort you put forth in studying the
divine Word, you will receive instruction, knowledge,
and accompanying blessings in return.

One of our problems is that, on account of the
opposition of our sinful flesh, we do not always give
attention to the intake of spiritual nourishment, do not
study the Word as we should. The result is that we
weaken ourselves, slow down the rate of our growth,
stunt our spiritual development. Frequently, when this
happens, the Lord intervenes and promotes our growth
again through chastening, which causes us to return to
the Word and its nurture. When Peter in our text asks us
to keep on increasing in knowledge, he reminds us that it
is our constant obligation to see to it that we go on
growing spiritually.

Holy Writ reveals that much of the growth that takes
place in the church is fostered by the members of our
congregations who, under the training of their pastors,
lovingly communicate the Word of truth to one another
in the home, at church, and elsewhere, for each other’s

upbuilding in knowledge, faith, and life. In the fourth
chapter of Ephesians Paul specifically states: ‘He [the
ascended Christ] gave .. . pastors and teachers for the
equipping of the saints for the work of ministration” —
that is, ministration to one another—“for the upbuilding
of the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12). The goal of this
mutual ministration work, to go on with this apostle’s
explanation, is that “we all attain to the unity of the
faith in and knowledge of the Son of God, to full-grown
manhood, to a measure of age [marked by reception] of
the fullness of Christ ... with the result that we have
gotten to be grown up in relation to Him in everything”
(Eph. 4:13-15).

These words show that Christian maturity, or
adulthood, consists in our possessing the full measure of
knowledge that comes from Christ, our comprehension
of all the fundamental saving and sanctifying truths
which fill Him, so that “we have gotten to be grown up”
in relation to the Lord Jesus in the proper way—we,
Christ’s body, corresponding to Christ the Head in terms
of knowing and understanding essential spiritual
realities. Thus, to know something of Jesus and His will
is not enough; this is not to correspond to Him as we
should and not to have full oneness with our fellow
saints. We must receive into our hearts and minds all
that our faith and knowledge are able to understand.
Nothing less than this fully glorifies the Lord; nothing
less than this must be the objective of our Bible study
and our endeavor mutually to edify one another with the
Word.

This means that where we have been remiss,
sluggish, indifferent, halfhearted in searching the
Scriptures; where we have not made it our deliberate
goal, indeed our preoccupation in life, to keep on growing
in the knowledge they afford, to keep striving for the
mastery of as much of the Biblical teaching as is
possible to us, we have sinned before God and have
retarded our spiritual development. We have not shown
supreme love to Him and not had proper love for
ourselves and our fellow Christians. This means thatif
we as people, pastors, teachers, professors have not
communicated the Word accurately to others in the
church; if we have helped promulgate the notion that it
is the normally-to-be-expected, even the God-pleasing
thing to have conflicting or antithetical theologies
presented to our people, to have differing practices
stemming from differences in doctrine obtaining in the
Synod, if through divisiveness of this kind we have
contributed to the disunity in our midst, then we have
transgressed the will of our holy God; we have interfered
with our people’s growth in Christ. If we are guilty of
these iniquities, we have called down the judgment of
God upon ourselves and upon our church body.

Let us confess all our sin before God and flee to His
grace and mercy in Christ, the Son of God, who loved
and loves us, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from
our sins. Let us through faith in our sin-bearing, sin-
atoning, sin-removing Savior receive full, free, and final
cleansing from our transgressions. Let us in the power of
His pardon determine in earnest to grow in Christ, to
develop fully in relation to Him, to come by the total
complement of knowledge He is ready to provide us