Thank God for the past year and the New Year. Together with my family and church Session, I wish you a blessed New Year. Have you made your resolutions for this new year? Let us make sure we take time to pray about setting good resolutions to the glory of God.

“Growing in Grace and the Knowledge of Christ” is our church theme for 2018. Let us give God our commitment to grow in His grace and knowledge. Apostle Peter says, “ Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen ” (2 Pet 3:17-18). Only God’s children can grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ. Those who are not God’s children, cannot grow because sin has made them dead spiritually. What is sin? Sin is the wrong that is done against God. All of us have sinned. Every lie, every wicked thought, every bad word and action, disobedience, rebellion, all these are sins against God. In order to grow spiritually, we must first become alive spiritually. The power of sin that caused us to be dead, must be completely removed from us. But who can remove it for us? Not our parents. Not our teachers. Not our brothers or sisters, or our good friend. Because they too are sinners like us. So who can help us? Only Christ! He removed our sin problem by dying on the cross. He wants us to be saved. He does not want us to die in our sins and perish in hell. And so He took our punishment and died on the cross for us. He was buried and on the third day, He rose from the dead. He overcame death. We now live because He lives. We are alive forevermore.

If you are living but not growing, something is wrong. It is not normal. If you are sure that you are alive spiritually because Jesus is your Lord and Saviour, then the next thing you have to make sure of is that you are growing spiritually, and growing well. Just as we need a proper diet for our physical body to grow and be healthy, our spiritual body also needs a proper diet. The proper spiritual food for our spiritual body is the Word of God. When we feed on the Word of God, we will grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

By the grace of God we have been saved. It is something which we do not deserve at all and yet God gives it to us freely. God, by His grace, puts us in a place that we do not deserve, because He loves us even though we are sinful and disobedient to Him. He wants us to come back to Him. He wants us to do the right thing and walk on the right path. Because He knows that is good for us. He wants us to receive the best. And He always gives us the best. That is grace. For us to grow in grace means we to grow in the same grace that God gives to us freely. The way we show forth this grace is in the way we treat one another. Just as God wants the best for us, we must also desire the best for others. Growing in grace affects how we treat one another. How should we treat one another? We treat one another just as God would treat us. But we know it is not easy, because we are selfish people. We often think only for ourselves. We do more good to ourselves than to others. We do not like to sacrifice. We do not like to lose. We like to win. And even when we do not win, we do not want others to win either. Isn’t this true? But grow in grace is to be like Jesus Christ who gives His all for God's children, you and me. He gave even His own life. What will He not give to us? It is not easy to give as Jesus gives, but it is not impossible. If it is impossible, God will not give us 2 Peter 3:18. It is possible because God's grace is all sufficient for us. We can grow in grace and be more like our Lord Jesus Christ. To be like Christ is to be loving, kind and compassionate, forgiving, helpful, responsible, obedient, and many more.

Now to grow in grace, we must also grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. These two cannot be separated. You cannot grow in grace without growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Knowledge is something we know. It can be a fact, a skill, or some information. In this case here, it is to know Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Do you know who He really is as revealed in the Word of God? Or is John 3:16 all that you know about Him? Do you know why He died? Do you know why that is the only way for Him to save you? Why can't He just forgive us of all our sins without the Cross? He is God, right? He is all powerful. Surely He is able to cancel all our sins without having to die in this manner. But if you grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, you will learn that He is a righteous God. He is a just God. He cannot close an eye to sin. He cannot tolerate sin at all. All sin must be punished. That is why Jesus must die on the cross for us. We ought to be punished for our sins. Yet God chose to save us. But Jesus was punished on our behalf. And this is only a small aspect of who Jesus is and what He has done. The Bible reveals to us His love, His compassion, His faithfulness, His prayer life, His obedience to God, and much more which we can learn as we read the Bible and pray every day. As we grow in the knowledge of who Jesus Christ is, we will also be more and more like Him. To grow in grace, we are to grow to be more Christ-like in how we treat others. We cannot do it without growing in our knowledge of who He is.

Do you know Jesus Christ? Do you know Him rightly? It takes a whole life time just to know Him. There is great joy when we know Him more and more. And this is the reason why Apostle Peter wrote this letter to encourage the Christians who were going through great persecutions. Many in the world do not like Christians. They do not like you just because you are a Christian. Why? Because this world is full of darkness and sin. They reject Christ and because they reject Him, they reject you as well. And this is going to be painful because you can imagine your own loved ones rejecting you because of Jesus Christ. And many evil men are out to get rid of you. And that was what happened and that caused Apostle Peter to write to encourage the believers to look to Jesus Christ.

We are not to retaliate but to grow in grace, i.e. to treat everyone including our enemies how God would treat us. God is so gracious to forgive us of our sins and He wants us to receive the best. We must therefore show forth the same to one another, even to our enemies. Let us be kind and loving, be more and more Christ-like in our behavior and attitude towards one another. To do so, we must know Jesus Christ more and so we must grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us grow together in the Word of God. We are not alone. Let us pray for one another. May God help us. Blessed New Year!