SPIRITUAL GROWTH

G. C. McKay

1 Peter 2: 1–5; Psalm 92: 7, 12–15; Colossians 1: 9–11; Ephesians 4: 7–16

It is in mind, dear brethren, to speak about spiritual growth, a matter that would be a concern and a challenge to us; that not only should we be assured of eternal salvation, and assured too through exercise that God has begun a work in us (these are deep exercises), but a further matter is that God has in mind that each of us should grow spiritually. He has great pleasure in that, life and growth—growth that pleases God’s eye. I have not read as to the Lord Jesus personally as a Man here, as a child and as a boy, but I would be careful in bringing forward that side of the truth because we cannot transfer matters always from Christ to ourselves, because His manhood was unique in flesh and blood here. How precious to think of this, that not only did God have the infinite pleasure of a Man who pleased Him every moment, but He had pleasure in the fact that the Lord Jesus grew. He was in favour, it says, with God and men (Luke 2: 52). There is something mysterious in that, that. He grew, a real man and yet a divine Person in manhood. He is set before us as a babe, as a child and as a boy. Then, it says—“Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old” (Luke 3: 23); full grown manhood before God.

It is interesting that in the prophets where the Lord Jesus is alluded to, there is not infrequently a reference to His manhood, and even to His birth—“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9: 6), and then Isaiah also says—“For he shall grow up before him as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground” (Isaiah 53: 2). What pleasure God had in that One, a root out of dry ground. The dry ground contributed nothing; it was dry and could contribute nothing to that wonderful growth. He was a root, He was Himself that, a root out of dry ground. What appeared in manhood for the delight of God did not derive from anything around Him, but from Himself, from who He was, a divine Person in manhood. And yet, He was said to have grown before God. God has pleasure in that, not only in life but in growth. In the creation in the beginning of Genesis He brought so much in in the way of life, life that in one instance swarmed. But in Genesis 2 we have another thought; not simply that the earth brought forth herb and fruit trees yielding their fruit, but that God planted a garden in Eden, and it says—“Jehovah Elohim made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food” (Genesis 2: 9); so God has pleasure in growth. We would need to take account of that, that if there is going to be divine pleasure in us, there has to be growth. Then not only do we need life and a certain vigour of growth (how delightful it is to see it among the saints, and in young people!), but also suitable growth; growth that would meet with the approval of heaven, because even as in natural things there are such things as stunted growth, and abnormal growth, and malformation, that can be so spiritually.

What God has in mind is that we should all grow and become more like Jesus, more like Christ. That is, He is God’s ideal, and He is the pattern in new creation. The idea of pattern did not seem to appear in the formation of the physical system, but in the new creation there is only one pattern, and that is Christ, He is the pattern for everything; He sets forth exactly what God has in mind to arrive at. We ought to therefore be concerned as to our own growth, because while there is the necessity in it all for divine operations in us, there is also our own responsibility to make way for these—for example, what we feed on is our responsibility to a large extent. I think also, in a way, we are responsible for other person’s growth to an extent.

Adam was set to till and guard the garden. It was to be tilled; it was cultivated growth for the pleasure of God and for the delight of man too. So life is essential. The Holy Spirit being received by the believer, there is life and there may be vigour in that, and power. We have seen it, the work of God evidencing itself, and how delightful it is to see, but together with that there is the thought that there should be cultivation of that growth so that the pattern is arrived at, that is Christ. It is not something that would derive from any human thought or specification, but what is suitable to God Himself.

Where we began to read we have the exhortation, “as newborn babes desire earnestly the pure mental milk of the word”. In the previous chapter Peter has referred to persons being born again; “being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the living and abiding word of God”, 1 Peter 1: 23. That suggests that persons have been affected by the word of God; born again involving a certain intelligence, a certain reception of the word in the person’s mind. Evidences of the divine nature show themselves in love for one another and in other features—“love one another out of a pure heart fervently”, 1 Peter 1: 22. Well, how wonderful that is, that God should work with us and we should be born again, and our minds should be affected by the gospel, by God’s word. But then we must not rest in that. It is wonderful to be assured of salvation, and in a sense complacent, in that our consciences and our histories are met, and to be conscious too that we belong to Christ and that God is working in us, but then that is not the end—the thought is that we should grow. This reference as to growing up to salvation must precede the other references that we may make; we must, “grow up to salvation”. The reference to the newborn babes does not imply that it applies only to young believers, it is just a figure. I suppose that we have all observed that in nature, what a newborn babe is like and how anxiously, how earnestly it desires to be fed.

Nothing can hinder it; how set it is on the milk. It says here “the pure mental milk of the word”. That is to apply to us all “if indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”, then there should be a thirst with us.

If you are converted and have received the Holy Spirit, the next thing is you are going to have to progress, and if you are going to progress you are going to need this milk; it is what is pure; it comes from God; it is the Scriptures, the word of God and the ministry. You are going to have to devote yourself to that if you want to grow up. You are going to have to read the Scriptures, and read the ministry, and listen, and begin to grow and “grow up to salvation”. It is not eternal salvation; your eternal salvation I trust is secure, but then there is salvation that you grow up to, and you grow up to it by imbibing this “pure mental milk of the word”. Mr Darby puts the word ‘mental’ in because he says it is ‘suited to the rational faculties’. We have been born again by the word of God, according to Peter, and here there is something that would build up a constitution and bring you into salvation. Salvation means that you are totally delivered from everything that might be against you; every adverse influence, every satanic, worldly or fleshly influence that would hinder you from entering into God’s great thoughts. You are saved, they have no more power over you. Certain worldly things that used to have power over you, have not power over you any more; you have been drinking this “pure mental milk of the word”. You have grown up, you are beyond devoting all your energy and your interests to things that belong to the earth, even things that are not sinful in themselves. You are free from all that. You are not under bondage to any feature of the world. You are like the priests in Psalm 132, clothed with salvation.

Now that is a kind of beginning, that you are completely delivered, and one of the things I would like to point out in these scriptures as to growth is that where there is growth predicated of the saints, immediately there seems to be some allusion to what is collective, to the assembly in fact. Here it is an allusion to the house of God, a spiritual house. As having thus grown up to salvation, you are coming to Christ, the living Stone. There is something being built up, “yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house”. Do you want to have part in that? Surely you want to have part in this building that is going on. Growth and increase are not simply individual. I would like to point out that it is mentioned in Scripture in a collective sense too; indeed, ultimately that is what God has in mind, a great vessel that is going to shine in the millennium for His pleasure; it is going to be a day of display, and a day of administrative activity under Christ that this world has never seen. He is going “to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body”, Ephesians 1: 22. Here it is a spiritual house, so that it is possible “to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”.

I read in Psalm 92 because I felt that it ran somewhat parallel to this. It brings out certain other attractive features. Verse 7 speaks about the wicked springing as the grass and the workers of iniquity flourishing. The wicked do that, they spring as the grass, they seem to be getting on very well, and the workers of iniquity flourish. You see that in the world, and it can be a testing thing to see that, but the psalmist says—“it is that they may be destroyed for ever’. So there is a growth that is going to be destroyed for ever, a development that belongs to man in the flesh. It is energetic and ambitious and it can be successful and can flourish, but in the end it will come to nothing; and indeed, as to ourselves what is purely of the flesh, which has been tainted, of course, and affected by sin coming in, is not something that is going to go through, “the wicked spring as the grass”. James alludes to the heat of the sun and its effect on the grass. It is really an allusion to what the flesh is apart from the work of God, simply the flesh in itself. James is speaking in this particular case to the rich; “let the brother of low degree glory in his elevation, and the rich in his humiliation, because as the grass’s flower he will pass away. For the sun has risen with its burning heat, and has withered the grass, and its flower has fallen, and the comeliness of its look has perished” (James 1: 9–11). It is not that it does not have a comely look, but it perishes.

Over against that we have what comes in in verse 12. There is another shooting forth, another springing, another flourishing, and it will go on for God’s pleasure. It will go on and develop into what is for God’s pleasure eternally, “The righteous shall shoot forth”. If we want to come into this side of growth we have to be righteous. Righteousness is attributed to us in the first place through faith and the work of Christ, so that we know what justification is. Then practical righteousness is worked out in our souls. It says in Romans that “the many will be constituted righteous” (Romans 5: 19). That is more than being clothed with the righteousness of God; it means that in their constitutions they are righteous, “so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted righteous”, Romans 5: 19. There is a race on earth that are righteous in their constitutions, and they are the kind of people that grow.

You cannot cut corners in spiritual things. Righteousness is an essential. “The righteous shall shoot forth like a palm-tree” is a very powerful image. The tree generally in Scripture is a powerful image of fulness of life and vigour. Here it is the palm-tree. As we know, the palm-tree in Scripture speaks about victory, and the person in whom there is this vigour of life is going to overcome. You do not need to be overcome; you can overcome. The Lord Jesus told his disciples not to be troubled, they would have tribulation in the world, but he says, “I have overcome the world”, John 16: 33. He had lived in the world and all its appeal and influence was brought to bear on Christ, and not for one moment in the slightest degree was He affected by the world. He overcame it, He was morally far superior to it, and the believer is to be superior. Then he is to “grow like a cedar on Lebanon”. How beautiful! A cedar is one of the stately trees; belonging to the mountains, to Lebanon; speaking of the saints in their spiritual dignity and in their own place, their elevation. How fine that is. You can see the pleasure of God in that, to see a saint who is like a cedar on Lebanon; he has a dignity, a bearing that is spiritual which does not belong to the flesh.

Then it speaks of those that are planted in the house of Jehovah, which brings in another matter and that is the environment in which you are going to grow. We know that environment does affect growth; it does so naturally and it does so spiritually. There are times when growth goes on in spite of environment, there can be that; there can be a vigour in the work of God that can overcome the hardest circumstances, and the work of God can be true to itself in the devoted believer. But environment does affect us. The thought is that we should grow up in all things to Christ (Ephesians 4: 15), in every department of our lives we should be moving in that direction; He should be our object and our growth should be towards Him. But here there is an environment conducive to growth and it is the house of Jehovah. I do not know to what extent we grow in the wilderness; I suppose the wilderness contributes tests and trials, which give moral formation and contribute to our growth, but I think the place where you really grow is in what scripture speaks about as the land, the land of promise—it is really heaven now. The land that the Israelites conquered is a type, not of heaven to come, but of heaven now. We enter into heavenly areas now and enjoy eternal life, and among the saints there is the place where we really can grow. The environment is fine, the company, the atmosphere, and there is the presence of divine Persons.

I understand some plants grow better if they are planted along with others of the same kind; they are not solitary, they like to be together, and I think there is an environment in the house of Jehovah where full growth can proceed. It is a planting too, not a casual visit, that is where your life is; that is where you are drawing your resources from, and your spiritual sap. I remember reading somewhere a calculation of how many tons of moisture a great tree draws up into its branches and leaves. You have to be planted for that. It shows the importance of being in the meetings because we grow in the meetings; that is where we grow more than anywhere. You want to grow? Come to the meeting; get into the atmosphere; get into the house of Jehovah where the Holy Spirit is free; where there is everything conducive to spiritual growth; where there is a kind of silent rebuke against everything of the flesh and what is worldly because the saints are not like that. You find a place of full salvation, because there is nothing there that is going to cater for the flesh, nor what is of man. Rather, there is what is conducive to spiritual growth. May our gatherings and may our localities be like that—places of spiritual growth.

Then there is the idea of flourishing in the courts of our God. It seems to be more a public idea, for it comes into testimony that there are such dignified persons full of life. It is fine when you read a scripture and can say—‘I have seen that’. “They are still vigorous in old age, they are full of sap and green”. Have you seen that—older brethren that are still growing, still increasing, still bearing fruit? They are not dry and withered, “they are full of sap and green”.

What company we have! How beautiful it must be for God to look down and see in the assembly in this scene, young believers growing up in the freshness and devotion of young life, and then all the different stages of growth including those that are—“like a cedar on Lebanon”, and those that are in old age and are still vigorous. Physically there is decline, there is what belongs to man naturally, but spiritually there is vigour.

I would just venture to speak of these wonderful epistles, Colossians and Ephesians. They speak more as to growth in its full sense than any others. It is in that area, I think, across the Jordan typically, that growth is seen most clearly and achieves its perfection; achieves what God has in mind. In Colossians we have a very fine company of believers, holy and faithful brethren. Paul had not seen them and they were not his converts, but the word of God, the gospel had come to them. Now, the allusions to growth that come into this chapter begin in verse 6. It says in the middle of verse 5—“of which ye heard before in the word of the truth of the glad tidings, which are come to you, as they are in all the world, and are bearing fruit and growing, even as also among you”, Colossians 1: 5, 6.

Bearing fruit and growing—it means, of course, that persons are affected by the gospel, and are converted, they are saved, but it means more than that; there is a development, there is growth, and these Colossian believers were like that, they were marked by great spiritual energy. Paul had heard of their faith in Christ Jesus; it was so striking that Paul had heard about it, people would speak about it and report it, the strength of their faith, and also their love towards all the saints and the hope that was laid before them (Colossians 1: 4, 5). They were a very fine company and they were marked, I believe, by certain vigour of life and growth, but that spiritual growth was in serious danger; there were elements that were going to distort and hinder it and spoil what God had in mind. Satan cannot remove entirely what is of God, but he will spoil it if he can, and that is what he was trying to do.

Philosophers were coming along and they were not denying Christianity, but they were bringing forward other ideas. It was not God’s word, what they were bringing forward, but man’s ideas, very clever ideas, very remarkable, complex, elevated ideas; philosophical ideas, and they would say—‘We can improve your Christianity; mix it with this; bring in what we have got as well’, and that was going to spoil everything; it was going to bring in what was of man. Others were asserting that there was very great power and efficacy in religious rituals, such as you find in Judaism, and they would encourage the saints to move in the direction of a kind of formality, an outward form. There were believers that taught that there is a certain efficacy in an outward form. Some believers taught and perhaps some still teach that even baptism is a matter of new birth in a believer, but it is not. So these things were being brought in to hinder the Colossians, and Paul wrote to them so that they might grow aright and arrive at full growth. Paul had in mind to “present every man perfect in Christ” (Colossians 1: 28), that they should all arrive at full growth, which is what perfection seems to imply in that phrase.

Where we began to read, Paul is praying and asking for them. Now what he has in mind for them is that as having all that faith and love, and all that energy, they should also have knowledge. Sometimes we might think that knowledge does not contribute, and the thing is what you are in your affections, but you do not grow without knowledge. It is not simply mental knowledge, but you do not grow rightly and properly without knowledge. So what Paul prayed for them was—“that ye may be filled with the full knowledge of his will”. There was a full sense of what God’s will was, they had been enlightened as to that, and then he prayed that they should have “all wisdom and spiritual understanding”. We touched that in the reading, that there is such a thing as spiritual understanding, that is understanding a thing not simply in its terms, however correct the terms are, but understanding the spiritual import and bearing of them. This “wisdom and spiritual understanding” would lead them to walking “worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the true knowledge of God”.

Now, that means that as they grew spiritually, they would become more like God. They were growing by the knowledge of God; therefore, their growth would be affected by that precious light in their souls, and more than light, it would be a sense of communion with that God whom they knew—the full knowledge of God. Thus the growth would be according to what God had in mind; it would not be a distorted growth, nothing dwarfish; it would be a matter of full growth and what would appear in them would be what was suitable to God. So the thought in Colossians is that there is a stamp put on the believer; God is working to a pattern, life and vigour are fine, and essential, but then there has to be a culture; there has to be a guarding, there has to be a teaching, so that the growth might be according to God. It says that the new man is—“renewed into full knowledge according to the image of him that has created him”, Colossians 3: 10. There is an image there, an imprint so that the life in the believer develops in a normal way. Really it means he becomes more like Christ; Christ is developed in him and it is for the pleasure of God.

Now, Colossians and Ephesians are collective epistles. It does not mean to say that we give up individual exercise, because what is individual must contribute to what is collective, and what is collective depends on what is in individual souls. In Colossians this wonderful matter appears called the mystery, and it is alluded to sometimes as the body; that is, there is something down here for God’s pleasure in believers, something that is like Christ. There is an allusion in chapter 2 to persons that should hold fast the Head; “holding fast the head, from whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increases with the increase of God”, Colossians 2: 19. It is not only that individuals increase and grow, but there is something growing collectively for God. There is a wonderful organism, the mystery, the body of Christ, and it is said to increase, it is an active matter. If there is to be amongst us something in the way of a collective arriving at what God has in mind, in the sense of touching these matters as to the assembly and the body of Christ, the mystery, it must be that we grow individually. Each of us must contribute to this because God has a great collective matter in view. We spoke in the reading of the great things God has in view; He has the assembly in view. We speak often of it, but it is wonderful to get a view of the assembly and its various features, and what it means to the eye of heaven; the body of Christ down here, a living organism that derives from Christ, the Head. Features of Christ are seen there and wonderful intelligence too. It is a mystery and the world cannot understand it.

Ephesians takes us to the summit of things. You find that if there is any truth presented in Scripture, and you trace it through, when you arrive in Ephesians you have it in its finest and highest and fullest character. Ephesians also speaks of this matter of growth.

Notice that in the psalm, the shooting forth as a palm-tree and the flourishing leads you to the house of God, and in Peter we see how growing up to salvation is in view of the spiritual house that is being built up. The assembly is in view in all these exercises. In Colossians the body is in view—and similarly here, in Ephesians, this great matter of what God has here collectively. We began to read of Christ on high, the Lord Jesus as the ascended One, and all that has come down in the Holy Spirit. All these persons were given, all these apostles and prophets, and all these gifts. Each one of us has been given grace too; you cannot count yourself out, you have received the Holy Spirit; “to each one of us has been given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ”. I used to think that meant that I do not have very much, it is just a measure that I have, but I think the measure of the gift of the Christ means you get a lot. The measure of the gift of the Christ is not a small matter; it is a wonderful matter to have been given grace. We perhaps little esteem it and make little use of that grace, but we have been given grace according to that gift, the gift of the Christ. He is the risen and ascended One, from whom the Holy Spirit has come, “he has poured out this” it says (Acts 2: 33), and here He has given grace to each one of us.

Then after the gifts are dealt with, what begins to come into view in Ephesians 4: 12 is the body of Christ. It says in Hebrews—“let us go on to what belongs to full growth” (Hebrews 6: 1). There is no reproach in being a babe in Christ, but there is if you have been a babe in Christ for years. We all begin as babes in Christ, but we want to grow; surely we want to develop in spiritual features and become more like the Lord Jesus, more like that blessed Man. That is what the ministry has in view, to build up or edify the body of Christ, and then, it says—“until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God”.

God’s thought is not that there should be some persons growing in a meeting and developing in manhood and others should not be; it was not Paul’s mind, and it is not in the mind and heart of anyone who would love Christ; he wants to see everyone growing because it says—“until we all arrive at the unity of the faith”, no doubt the truth being objectively before us, “and of the knowledge of the Son of God”. You know the Lord Jesus as your Lord, you understand that He is the Christ, and you know that He is the Son of God.

Here it is not the Son of God in the sense that we have in Matthew from the Lord’s own lips—“no one knows the Son but the Father” (Matthew 11: 27)—that is His inscrutability. He is a divine Person, but here it is His perfection in manhood. It has been said to be God’s ideal—the Son of God. What a moment it was when “Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old” (Luke 3: 23); full manhood in the sight of God. What testimony there was to that manhood and His service, and thus we can have the knowledge of the Son of God.

What God has in mind to arrive at in each of us has been set out, it can be known. It is not a vague, unspecified matter, it is set forth in its fulness and in its detail in Christ. “The Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”, it is everything that came out in Christ, every detail and feature of manhood, it is all to be known; and so as we know these things, our growth has to be in connection with that. We are to be no longer babes that are just tossed about at the mercy of every wind of doctrine, pushed this way and that way, but we are to be “holding the truth in love”. We have “heard the word of the truth, the glad tidings of your salvation” (Ephesians 1: 13), we hold the truth in love and we grow up to Christ in all things. That is the objective; we should all do that, and thus we arrive at the full-grown man. It has been set forth for us in Christ, and the Holy Spirit is operating, and there is a great operation proceeding on the earth that there might be growth with each one of us. May we “grow up to him in all things”. It seems to be a kind of general thought; whatever part of your life you take, the great objective is, you are going to grow up to

Christ. You are not going this way or that way, or following this man or that man, or this doctrine or that—you are going to grow up to Christ.

Then this One you are to grow up to is the Head, “who is the head, the Christ”. How great He is! He is the Head of the body, “from whom the whole body, fitted together”. This whole body that is fitted together is working, it is increasing—“connected by every joint of supply”—that means the brethren. Every joint of supply, every man perfect in Christ—do not count yourself out and miss the blessedness of this—“every joint of supply, according to the working in its measure of each one part”. It is an operation of spiritual life and vigour in each saint, and a knowledge of divine grace, and a knowledge of Christ. Now you get this thought that the body is increasing; not the individual believer only, but there is something increasing for God down here—“the increase of the body to its self-building up in love”. The gifts are out of sight now, it is what is operating in the body; so you can see (I think it would be right to say) that in a sense we are responsible for one another’s growth too, because it says here “the working in its measure of each one part, works for itself the increase of the body”. We are edifying one another, building one another up, so that there is this great result that is for God, an increase for God.

Just to finish, there is a mention in Ephesians 2 of what the great end is going to be. It speaks about “the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the corner-stone, in whom all the building fitted together increases to a holy temple in the Lord”, Ephesians 2: 20, 21. That lies ahead, for this increase is going to have an end, a wonderful fulfilment, millennially. The holy temple in the Lord will be seen millennially, but in the meantime, the saints are being “built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit”, Ephesians 2: 22. That is one of the great matters that is in mind, a place where God can dwell and a place where there are features of Christ shown. Well, I trust I have said enough to make these things attractive to us and to stir up exercise. May the Lord bless the word.

Address at Grangemouth
16 September 2006