Week 3: The Spirit Who Does the Growing

Lesson 3 asks who does the growing, and the answer is a person. Paul tells the Romans that the Spirit of God lives in every Christian, and he closes the verse so that nobody is left out: if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Galatians shows how that works. Nearly every verb in chapter 5 is ours — walk, live, keep in step — while what the Spirit produces arrives as a single noun, fruit, and fruit keeps a calendar nobody can rush. Philippians sets both halves in one sentence: we work out our own salvation, and God is working in us the whole time. That is part of why growth feels slow. The pace was never ours to set.