A People with a Purpose: Maturity
A People with a Purpose: Maturity by Rev. L. John Gable
March 19, 2023
We had an agreement in our family when our kids were growing up that I would not use any family member in a sermon illustration without first asking their permission. We didn’t want our kids to come to worship each week wondering how dad was going to use them as an unintended object lesson. About a month ago, our son Timm, now grown and married with a family of his own, called to say he was thinking about that practice and wanted to tell me how much he appreciated it, as did I his call. With that out of the way, he and Jane and Beau are here this weekend, so the opportunity seems just right to tell you a Timm story…and yes, I got his permission to do so!
Timm was born two months premature. Kris and I were living in Princeton, N.J., during my middler year of seminary. He was due on May 5th, but chose instead to arrive on March 9th. Looking back on the events of that day it is a good thing Timm was our first child and that Kris and I were sufficiently young and naïve enough not to understand all that was going on around us because as soon as he was born he was immediately rushed into the neonatal intensive care unit. The reality of the severity of his condition hit home for us though as we waited in the recovery room. The doctor came in and said, “Your son is doing OK, but the next 24-48 hours are critical. If he makes it through that, he’ll be fine, and by the time he’s five you’ll never know he was a premie, but now it is up to him to start growing.” And grow he did, thank God.
I tell you that story because the same can be said of you and me, of us, as the Church. We must continue to grow. By that I do not mean primarily in terms of numbers, although that too I believe is part of our God-given task, but in terms of spiritual maturity. Our growth must be both in quantity and in quality. As the Church, the Body of Christ, we are designed to “grow up” in to the likeness of Christ. As Paul writes to the Ephesians, it is the Church’s purpose, and with that responsibility, to help people grow spiritually in to a mature faith, “so that the Body of Christ may be built up until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Just as it was essential for Timm, and for that matter for any infant, to grow, so it is essential in our spiritual lives that we continue to grow. It is not enough for us to be able to point to the moment of our spiritual birth if we are not also able to show evidence of our spiritual growth toward maturity. I am reminded of a very practical lesson I learned in my 8th grade biology class. How can you tell if a plant is dead or alive? Look for evidence of growth. That which is not growing is dying.
During this season of Lent we have seen that the purpose of the Church is to be the people of God called to carry on the ministry of Jesus Christ through worship, mission and witness. Next week we will add to that list the important element of fellowship, but today we will focus on the importance of providing the means for individuals to grow in their relationship with Christ and so develop Christ-like patterns for living. It is clearly the responsibility of the Church not only to reach people for Christ, but also to teach or disciple them to become more like Christ in their thoughts and feelings and behaviors. This is what we will call “maturity” in Christ or growth in Christian discipleship.
One would suspect that every follower of Christ would desire such growth and maturity in the faith, but apparently that is not the case, then and perhaps now. The writer of the book of Hebrews rather sharply rebukes his readers by saying, “You have become dull in understanding. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food”. You’ve heard the term “the Peter Pan Principle” to describe those adults who simply refuse to grow up, to take responsibility, to make commitments. Remember the lines from the musical when Peter sings, “I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to go to school, just to learn to be a parrot and recite the Golden Rule. If growing up means it would be against my dignity to climb a tree, I don’t want to grow, never grow up, not me.” Spiritually speaking this is what the writer of Hebrews is trying to address here. There are some who are still taking Bible 101 when they should in fact be teaching it. Some who are spending all of their time talking about their faith when they should be doing it. Some who are still acting like spiritual infants when they should be well on their way to maturity.
While it is true that milk is very good for us, stay with me here if you are lactose intolerant, we will never grow strong until we get a more solid diet. So, using a bit of reverse psychology perhaps, the writer of Hebrews tries to move and motivate his hearers, then and now, off of their soft and comfortable spiritual spot. He encourages them to desire the more “meaty” things of God, saying, “let us go on toward perfection (or maturity), leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ and not laying again the foundation.” He is not saying we are to abandon the fundamental truths of our faith; rather, after mastering them, we are to build on them and move on. It is essential for us not to become complacent in our faith but to continue to grow up…in to the likeness of Christ.
Friends, this is the call to discipleship. Our Tab mission statement is framed around this statement, that we are called to “demonstrate the Kingdom of God through worship, discipleship and service.” I believe it was Homer who said, “a disciple is one who is in the process of adapting him or herself to a new way of life.” That describes the Christian life exactly. As disciples of Christ we are continually in the process of being shaped and formed in to His likeness, after His character. It doesn’t happen overnight, but over the course of time, over the course of a lifetime. Spiritual maturity has less to do with chronological age than it does with an attitude and desire of the heart. It is a process of transformation by which we commit ourselves to abandoning the old ways, our ways, the world’s ways, and embracing the ways of God.
I believe that “becoming” a Christian is the easiest thing we will ever do. It can happen in an instant. It is simply saying “yes” to the invitation of God’s love and forgiveness. But “being” a Christian may well be the hardest thing we will ever do. It is not something that comes naturally to us but supernaturally. The life of discipleship is the continual process of growing up in to the likeness of Christ, of dying more and more to ourselves every day so that we can live more and more to Him.
Let me offer you a Lenten exercise. Give yourself a spiritual check-up. Make an honest evaluation of your spiritual condition by asking, “Is there evidence of spiritual growth in my life? Am I growing up, maturing, becoming more Christ-like in my attitudes and actions compared to a year ago? Five years ago? The time I mark as my spiritual birth? The simple truth is, it is not enough to simply be born we must also grow, physically and spiritually. That which is not growing is dying.
One essential purpose of the Church is to provide a resource and create an environment where the teachings of Christ are embraced and put in to practice, where those who are further along in the journey can serve as models and guides for those who are just beginning, recognizing that all of us are moving toward the same end. We, at Tab, are deeply committed to this. Look at each of the three legs of our Vision Renewal statement: Greater Faith, Deeper Relationships, Stronger Community. All of the adjectives, the modifiers, speak to our desire for growth and maturity: greater, deeper, stronger.
The Church is called to help us understand that the spiritual disciplines of worship and prayer, witness and mission, study and fellowship and service are all means of grace given to help us grow in to the maturity of our faith. As Christians we are an “already” and a “not yet” kind of people. We are the people of God in process of both “being” and “becoming”. Though we at times flag in energy and lose our way we are not aimlessly meandering our way through life, looking for meaning and direction. We are journeyers, not wanderers. Our purpose is clear. We are in the process of growing up, together, into the likeness of Christ.
So, why is the idea of maturity in the faith so important? Why isn’t it alright for us to remain as spiritual infants sipping on milk rather than chewing on solid food? Why do we need to wander in to the deeper spiritual waters when we are perfectly happy paddling around in the shallows? Why do we have to grow up? The answer is simple: As disciples of Jesus Christ you and I have been called to carry on His ministry. That means we have been given the responsibility to reproduce in others the life of faith that has been given to us, and infants can’t reproduce. It is another biological truth that only mature organisms can bear fruit or produce offspring, and that is a spiritual truth as well. We must grow up if we are going to disciple others in the way of Jesus. We must grow up if we are going to echo His call and reproduce His life.
Elton Trueblood, one of the great Christian thinkers of this century and former professor at the Earlham School of Religion, writes, “The verification of our religion consists in the changed lives to which it can point and for which it is responsible.” As we’ve seen, the effectiveness of the witness of the Church should not be measured by what happens in here, but by the evidence of changed lives and the measure of our influence out there. A church could grow by leaps and bounds in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons. We’ve seen it happen. Rather than focusing on the worship and service of God it is so easy to be seduced in to the idolization of a pastor, a program, a style of music or worship, a practice or tradition. The focus can so easily become inward, not outward or upward. Growth is good and essential as long as it is growth in to Him who is the head, in to Christ.
The Church has been called by God to be an agent for change in the world. The change begins first within us, individually and then collectively, but it mustn’t stay there, lest our faith become ingrown and shallow. As faith matures and grows it finds that it exists not just for itself but for others. Individual faith finds expression in the fellowship of the Church, and together we make an impact on the world for Christ. We have been called to bear witness in word and action to the difference Christ has made, and is making, in our lives, and we do this, not by becoming more and more like the world, “no longer like children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming” but by becoming more and more like Christ, by growing up in to His likeness.
Every child wonders, what will I be when I grow up? Sometimes we adults still ask that of ourselves, don’t we? This is the question we, as the Church, must continue to ask of ourselves as well. What kind of Church do we intend to be? What is God calling us to do and be? What are we in the process of becoming? Is there evidence that we are growing more and more in to the likeness of Christ: greater in our faith, deeper in our relationships, helping to build a stronger community?
As we seek answers to these questions may we be guided by Paul’s words to the Ephesians when he writes, “The gifts He gave were to…equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ, until all of us (not some of us, but all of us), come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”
Ask yourself: what do you want to be when you grow up?
Ask it of us together: what do we want Tab to be?
May it be our heart’s desire and fervent prayer that we grow up to be more like Jesus.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN