Transformation, Growth, and Christian Maturity

From where does growth come? It is product of God, the Spirit bearing fruit in our lives (Gal. 5:22). As the branch must be attached to the base and roots in order to bear fruit, we have to be attached to our Lord (John 15:4-5). Without Him, we can do nothing.

Nevertheless, our efforts matter. Paul described the Christians he was growing as “our letter”:

• You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, recognized and read by everyone. It is clear that you are Christ’s letter, produced by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on stone tablets but on tablets that are hearts of flesh. We have this kind of confidence toward God through Christ. ⌊It is⌋ not that we are competent in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our competence is from God. (2 Corinthians 3:2-5)

After declaring them “our letter,” Paul then insisted that they are “Christ’s letter, produced by us” and written by the Spirit. Well which is it? Does growth come from Paul or from the Spirit? Both! But it is the Spirit working through Paul. Paul therefore confessed that he could do nothing on his own:

• But by God’s grace I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not ineffective. However, I worked more than any of them, yet not I, but God’s grace that was with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

Paul confessed that even his strenuous efforts were the work of grace. Consequently, he could not take credit even for his labors! Instead, it was a matter of God working in him to produce His fruit (Phil. 2:13).

The Spirit uses certain means, foremost of which is the Word:

• Like newborn infants, desire the pure spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it for ⌊your⌋ salvation. (1 Peter 2:2; also Rom. 12:1; Acts 20:32; 2 Peter 1:2-3; Psalm 1) 

Paul understood that the Word of God was the tool of the Spirit. Therefore, he entrusted the Church to this Word:

• “And now I commit you to God and to the message of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32) 

But this work of the Spirit does not preclude our obedience, our responsibilities. We must pray (James 4:1-3) and meditate on His Word if we want to receive (Psalm 1). Nevertheless, we thank God for nourishing our heart to accomplish these responsibilities:

• [Jesus] the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, develops with growth from God. (Colossians 2:19)

What are these “ligaments and tendons” through which God grants growth? That’s us – the Body of Christ. In order to maximize growth, we need to be connected. How?

• But speaking the truth [of Scripture] in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head—Christ. From Him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

If our muscles are to receive their nutrients, they must be connected to the blood vessels, and the blood vessels to the heart, and the heart to the lungs and stomach. These pull in nutrients from the outside. As the Body does its job, it channels the grace of God (the growth nutrients) to the rest of the Body. Foremost among the nutrients is the “speaking the truth in love.” Why love? If the truth is spoken in the context of love, it is better understood and received. How can we receive the message of truth when we are entrapped by bitterness! However, when we are experiencing the love of the Body, our mouths and ears are open to the next morsel of food.

Why are we not open to the brethren? Why does the food of the Word not find fertile soil among us? Perhaps we are too full.

Imagine being hunted down by ISIS and the only comfort we can find is among our brethren. How different would things be! Thank God for the trials!

“Christians – Children of God? Just Look at How They Act!”

Many militant atheists will say, “Christianity screws up everything,” citing warfare, slavery, the Crusades and intolerance.

Christians will generally respond in three different ways:

1. “Christianity is about Christ and not about individual Christians. I am deeply sorry about what people who have called themselves ‘Christian’ have done. However, I’m here to tell you about Jesus.”

While this response majors in the major – Jesus – it simply makes an end-run around the challenge. The challenge still remains: “How can those who claim to have God act so ungodly?”

2. “Let’s take the big picture and compare those nations that have emerged from a Bible-centered culture to those nations that haven’t. The former are superior in regards to any measure you want to use.”

Although this might be very true, it often leads into endless back-and-forth argumentation: “Well, the Christians did…” “Have you forgotten that the Communists did even worse!”

This approach also takes us away from what is central.

3. “Logically, you cannot bring charges against the Bible or against Christians because you, as a moral relativist, have no basis to make such charges. You are unable to demonstrate how any moral absolute has been violated.”

Although this is very true and perhaps the most effective way to respond to a militant atheist, it fails to win hearts for Christ. It also leaves people with a gut-level feeling that this is a mere cover-up for the failures of the church.

There is a place for each of these approaches. However there is also another approach. This one is intended primarily for in-house consumption. It is an approach that helps us to understand why we, both individually and church-wide, fail to look as good as we should.

1.      We endure great trials. When we are caught in the pressure cooker, steam pours forth in the form of bitterness, anger, envy and discouragement. God ordains these struggles so that we’d cry out for understanding and find our comfort in His revelations and in His Word (Psalm 119:67, 71).

2.      Trials begin with the church (1 Peter 4:17). Those whom God loves, He chastens (Heb. 12:5-11). We are therefore works in progress. Therefore, we are not going to look as morally competent as we would want to look.

3.      We are often perplexed (2 Cor. 4:8). This can be very discouraging and de-motivating. Although God is eager to grant us understanding, there is a great danger that understanding can produce arrogance and self-sufficiency (1 Cor. 8:2) if it comes to us before we have the spiritual capacity to handle it (Romans 8:24; 2 Cor. 5:7).

4.      Perhaps the greatest fruit—the one that underlies them all—is humility. Humility teaches us that it’s about Him and not about us. This is something we need to learn if we a really going to trust in Him—something that can only arise out of affliction and failure:

·        We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

Only after we despair of our good deeds and merit can we learn to trust. We are simply far too addicted to self-reliance and our own giftedness to rely on an unseen God. If the other “fruits of the Spirit” aren’t built upon self-despair, they’ll produce arrogance, self-reliance, and eventually contempt for others—the very opposite of what God wants to accomplish in our lives.

5.      We Christians were scraped from the bottom of the barrel, and so we’re going to look so good. Because many of us come out of broken and abused circumstances, we’re not going to look very appealing to the rest of the world and even to the faithful.

·        He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:28-29)

Unbelievers often exhibit personal qualities that make us envious. However, without the presence of the Spirit to shape and guide them, they will eventually become corrupted. A rose can look wonderful after it is cut and placed in a vase, but it nevertheless is dying.

6.      It’s when we are struggling with weaknesses and even moral failures that we become spiritually strong:

·        But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

God has a vested interest in keeping us humble. He will not exalt us when we are strong, self-sufficient, and morally adequate in our own eyes (Luke 18:14). This would merely enable us to become proud, arrogant, and look down on others, convinced by our successes that we deserve God’s good graces. Instead, God targets the needy and broken as recipients for His comfort (Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2; Psalm 34:17-18). Eventually, we will bear good moral fruit.

7.      God loves us too much to make the faith-walk easy for us. He might even restrain our attempts at moral rectitude. Instead, He uses the struggle to make us like Jesus:

·        We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Cor. 4:10-11; Hebrews 12:8, 11)

8.      Being morally successful in the eyes of the world might not produce an eagerness for Christ. Instead, it will allow us to feel too comfortable in this world:

·        We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23; 1 Peter 4:12-13)

Consider this scenario: Christ returns and we tell Him, “Jesus, would You just delay for another week. There’s a ball-game and a new Chronicles of Narnia movie was just released and…” This is the antithesis of the joyful meeting Christ has in store. But such a meeting is only possible if we are longing for His return because this life isn’t so pleasant. If, instead, we become a moral success-story, we might simply become too comfortable here.

Nevertheless, we have to continue to model ourselves after the moral example of Christ (1 Peter 1:15-16). However, it is inevitable that we will fall far short of this goal.

9.      Moral success might produce complacency, not a love for God and His Word:

·        He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:3)

Trials bring out the worst in us, at least at first. We scream and complain but are humbled in the process. It’s only when we’re humbled and despair of self and our own opinions that we come to rely on His Words. We have to grow less in our own sight so that He might become greater. Therefore, God might withhold moral success until we have acquired the understanding to handle it.

10.  Moral success can prove counter-productive, unless we are prepared. Some of the most moral people have become the most vicious people. Their moral success had enabled them to believe that they were more valuable and deserving than others. And once they have this entitlement mentality, they can easily justify abusing others.

The examples of this are inexhaustible. Many Communists had devoted themselves so sacrificially and completely to their cause that they had convinced themselves that they were entitled to exterminate any who didn’t fall into line behind their moral cause.

Of course, none of these ten points should be used as an excuse to not act morally. However, I would instead hope that these would help give us some degree of cognitive peace when we are troubled by our own failures and also those of the church. Although we should grieve over our moral failures (Matthew 5:3-4), let’s not become discouraged.