Tag Archives: fully mature

FULLY MATURE

Christian life, ,

FULLY MATURE

Spiritual maturity, like holiness, is one of those Bible “goals” that we often dodge or ignore because we don’t know what it means or how to get there.

The Apostle Paul often wrote about being “complete” in Christ, or “fully mature”. He expressed, as his goal, the desire to present his beloved saints across Europe and Asia Minor…little pockets of believers who came to Christ directly or indirectly through his ministry… fully mature.

Paul was not content to make converts. His goal was to make disciples. He wanted his converts to be so connected to Jesus that they would, like newborn babies, thirst after and grow into mature believer in Christ.

How would he achieve his goal?

“He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.”
Colossians 1:28‭-‬29 NIV

Paul worked with the Holy Spirit to achieve his goal. It was a divine/human partnership led and energised by the Spirit and carried out by Paul.

There were many obstacles to overcome on this journey to maturity – false teachers sowing seeds of deception, fallen human nature demanding to gratify the desires of the flesh, power struggles and conflicts among individuals and groups wanting their own way, baggage from their pagan past that kept reappearing, etc.

Paul was patiently sowing truth into the minds and hearts of people whose life philosophies were formed in a godless environment. What an impossible task… if he had to do it alone.

What are the elements of spiritual maturity?

“My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Colossians 2:2‭-‬3 NIV

The Apostle John, in his first letter, gives us the two commandments of the New Covenant.

“And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”
1 John 3:23 NIV

So, essentially, Paul and John were in agreement regarding the goal of the Christian ministry.
Believers learn to live out in practice the life of Jesus in them through teaching and admonishing, ie, the tools by which every believer is rooted and grounded in “the faith” – who Jesus is and who we are in Him. By guiding them through teaching and example, into expressing their new life in Christ by loving one another, they grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus.

So, that’s, what it means to be fully mature.

“So, Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach UNITY IN THE FAITH AND IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE SON OF GOD AND BECOME MATURE , attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.  Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
Ephesians 4:11‭-‬16 NIV

Do you get the picture of maturity now?

A mature church is a group of people who are

1. Secure in the knowledge and understanding of who Jesus is and who they are in Him so that they can fully trust Him in every circumstance no matter what life throws at them.

2. Doing life together, caring for and serving one another out of, and expressing their love for Jesus by being givers and not takers.

We are mature, then, to the extent that we know God through Jesus and live out in our everyday lives the love and trust that we have in Him.

We express that love and trust by the way that we relate to one another through humility and mutual submission, honouring one another and meeting each other’s needs at our own expense.

Therefore, we all need teaching, correction, encouragement and fellowship to become a fully mature body in the body of Christ. According to Jesus, this is the greatest demonstration to the world of His life in us.

“So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.  Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
John 13:34‭-‬35 NLT

” I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.”
John 17:21 NLT

Fully Mature

Bible Study, , ,

FULLY MATURE

To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me. (Colossians 1:27-29).

Fully mature! Paul’s goal was to present everyone fully mature in Christ by teaching and admonishing them with the truth in the hopes that they would respond and become what he urged them to be.

Of course he had no guarantee that they would respond to his teaching as fully as he hoped. All he could do was to provide the food; whether they ate it or not was up to them. He had two powerful weapons with which he contended – the Word of God and prayer – and he used them both with all the energy which the Lord provided.

The Scriptures present God’s Word as a weapon.

‘Is not my word like fire,’ declares the Lord, ‘and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?’ (Jer. 23: 29).

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Heb.4: 12).

By prayer, Paul interacted with the Father through the Holy Spirit, discerning His mind and becoming one in spirit with the Father so that the Father’s will would be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Although he could not make anyone respond, he trusted his weapons to break down opposition and resistance and open up the channels of the heart for the light of God’s truth to penetrate and transform.

What was his goal? Fully mature in Christ! Those two words open up a world of meaning for those who aspire to maturity in Christ. It is the Father’s purpose to restore every believer to the image of His Son.

For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Rom. 8: 29).

God’s goal is that every child of God become an exact replica of His Son. What does He mean by that? Jesus was the perfect and model Son. He was submissive and obedient to His Father, serving Him by doing what the Father wanted. He lived in union with and dependence upon the Father. He refused to do anything the Father did not tell Him to do and He did everything to protect the unity He had with the Father, even to laying down His life to fulfil the Father’s will.

Yet is was the Lord’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, He will see His offspring, and prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand. (Isa. 53: 10).

Surprisingly enough, it seems, maturity is not about learning to be independent, as we train our children to be, but about growing in dependence upon Him as our source. Paul contended with the energy supplied by Christ through the Spirit. The secret is ‘Christ in you’. If we are ever to come anywhere near to maturity in this life, we must learn to become one with Jesus, living in union with Him in our everyday walk, doing His will in His way.

Working for Jesus is not what we are called to do. It is a mistake to think that our job is to be busy doing His work. We are called to live out His life wherever we are, because that is His work. It is Christ in us, being Himself through us that will accomplish His will. Working for Jesus does not mean doing what we think He wants us to do in our way. Working with Jesus means allowing His Spirit to recreate us in His image so that the world can see who He really is.

Paul called it a ‘mystery’? This doesn’t mean that it cannot be understood. It means that this truth was hidden until the moment when Jesus revealed it to His disciples to whom He gave the responsibility and authority to interpret His ‘yoke’. It was their duty to ‘bind’ it on all His followers and to free them from the ‘yoke of bondage’.

As I have explained many times, Jesus’s ‘yoke’ was His way of interpreting the ‘Torah’, God’s teaching in the books of Moses, and the way He lived it in His own life and taught it to His disciples.

It is only by following His way that we can every hope to become ‘fully mature’.

SCRIPTURE TAKEN FROM THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.