James Fisher
Question 12. What are the several ways in which believers grow at once?
Answer. They grow inwardly and outwardly; upward and downward (Is 37:31).
Question 13. How do believers grow inwardly?
Answer. By uniting more closely to Christ, and cleaving more firmly to Him as the head of influences, which is the spring of all other true Christian growth (Eph 4:15).
Question 14. How do they grow outwardly?
Answer. By being fruitful in good works in their life and conversation (Tts 3:8).
Question 15. How do they grow upward?
Answer. In heavenly-mindedness and contempt of the world: “Our conversation is in heaven” (Phil 3:20).
Question 16. How do they grow downward?
Answer. In humility and self-abasement. [Those who are] the branches of the largest growth in Christ are, in their own eyes, less than the least of all saints (Eph 3:8); yea, the chief of sinners (1 Tim 1:15); they see that they can do nothing (2 Cor 3:5); that they deserve nothing (Gen 32:10); and that they are nothing (2 Cor 12:11).
Question 17. May not Christians mistake their case by measuring their growth in one of these ways, exclusively of the rest of them?
Answer. Yes. If, for instance, they measure it upwards and not at all downwards; for, though a Christian may [lack] the sweet consolations and flashes of affection which he has sometimes had, yet, if he be growing in humility, self-denial and a sense of needy dependence on the Lord Jesus, he is a growing Christian: “I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall . . . cast forth his roots as Lebanon” (Hos 14:5).
Question 18. When believers cannot perceive their growth, how may they know if they have true grace at all, however weak?
Answer. If they have any measure of self-loathing of account of sin (Ezk 36:31), if they have a desire for grace (Neh 1:11), if they prize Christ above all things (Phil 3:8), and if they love His members for His sake (1 Jn 5:1).
1Taken from The Assembly’s Shorter Catechism Explained by Way of Question and Answer, by James Fisher and other ministers of the gospel (particularly Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine), Berith Publications reprint, 1998. There are five parts to the answer to Question 36 in The Shorter Catechism: “What are the benefits which, in this life, do accompany or flow from justification, adoption and sanctification?” The fifth part is “increase of grace”. Fisher’s Catechism has 18 questions and answers on the increase of grace; the section relevant to the preceding article is Questions 12-16.