Dale Ortlund asked “a handful [26] of thoughtful men of God” the question “What’s the Key to Healthy Christian Growth in Godliness?” and collated their responses into a post on his blog.
In his prefacing comments Ortlund qualifies:
Please understand: I explicitly asked our brothers to keep it to a single, short sentence. Of course, whole volumes could be (and have been!) written addressing this question (here’s my favorite). So we gladly receive these wise statements remembering that sanctification is not a math problem. There is no formula. Every answer below needs a hundred footnotes. Point taken.
Some examples:
Graham Cole:
The key is to treasure Jesus Christ, for that will be where your heart is.
The constant, disciplined practice of reminding ourselves who we are in Christ.
The key to healthy growth in godliness is to be an active, serving member of a local church where the gospel is preached and the eldership care about nurturing the congregation as outward-looking, humble servants of Christ.
Growing knowledge of and love for God, particularly as revealed in Christ and through the Scriptures, that re-structures one’s mind and enflames one’s heart, resulting in increasing transformation into Christ-like character.
Ortlund brings these summaries with the hope that:
The purpose of this exercise is not to provide an opportunity to nit-pick but to re-center, refresh, encourage, spur on, help one another.
Michael Bird decides to ignore that advice with his own post which, at longer length, spells out a pattern of Christian growth as disciplined application of the Scriptures in response to God’s grace, which I think the posters on Ortlund’s blog would generally support.
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