Do not hinder the sequence of graces. Do not hinder them by sin, by watching images that pollute your mind, and ruin your faith and love, and make you offensive to God – then you will not receive any more graces until repentance and renewal – or by gossip and evil speaking and doing down, by unbelief, or by grumbling against God and his provision. All these hinder grace for grace – sequence of graces – and we stop the process and stop enjoying the grace of God.
Some of the modern translations change this to something like ‘grace upon grace’. That is not wrong, but ‘grace for grace’ is better, and it has more meaning and is closer to what is intended. What is the difference? It is wonderfully true that we receive grace upon grace. Every blessing we have received by Christ, every advance, is by grace, so it heaps up grace upon grace. But the older translators are very shrewd – ‘grace for grace’. It works like this: one grace opens the door to another, so it is a staircase, as it were. You receive faith; it is the gift of God as Ephesians 2.8 tells us. When he first touched my heart, I was woken up, my mind was opened, my prejudices were shattered and I was inclined all of a sudden to believe. That was the work of the Spirit in regenerating grace, illuminating me, convicting me, working in my life. Except for that work of the Spirit, I would never have believed the Gospel, or been inclined to hear, and responded to God. All the doubt that I carried, and the misinformation with which my mind was stopped, the lies I had been told about the Bible and about its alleged errors and the foolishness of the Faith, and the superiority of science and the world, and evolution and everything else. But then the door opened to another further grace – conscious rebirth. I was given a new understanding, an emancipated mind that could grasp spiritual truth. I realised my sonship, my daughterhood, I realised I was adopted by Christ. I knew I was his, and assurance swept in. Then came the grace of sanctification and the deep obligation descended upon me to keep the laws of God, and to obey him and to please him, and I suddenly found that sin, my old friend was my worst enemy, and I hated it, and the battle against sin began. As we entered into it, we were given further grace to fight it. Then it dawned on us with this sense of sonship, daughterhood, belonging to God that we should serve him, and please him, and witness for him, so that one taught in the Sunday School, and another did something else. We all wanted to please him and be in his service. Each grace leads to another, until finally the home call and the greatest grace of all to be transformed and to see the Lord.