-Femi Ologhobo
Maturity is an innate quality for which every living creation is expected to aim. It is the natural implication of growth and the ideal measure by which the full development of anything living is measured.
Similarly, though the new life reflects newness previously unseen in this carnal world, it is yet bound by the same biological expectations of all things possessing life. One might say that life is a quality possessed by those entities that exhibit certain biological characteristics, namely the ones we were taught in elementary science class.
I remember the mnemonic, NIGERDOC; the one by which many Nigerian elementary school kids memorized the functions of living things. The functions of living things were taught as:
- N – Nutrition
- I – Irritability
- G – growth
- E – Excretion
- R – Reproduction
- D – Digestion
- O – Osmoregulation…
I wish I could recall what the C stands for, but I can’t at the moment (and it makes me feel old). But the important takeaway was that living things did not only exhibit these qualities because they were alive, but they were alive specifically because they exhibited these qualities.
It’s not surprising therefore, that with all the plant analogies that scripture uses to exhibit our salvation experience, the expectation of our father would mirror the biological requirements of all living things.
It is particularly so with GROWTH, which is the expectation of every well-adjusted life form (not to mention the most unique and excellent creation The Lord has ever created: his own children). How could He or we expect anything less?
We can therefore tell the most important point: if we are truly alive in Christ, it is expected of us to grow in Him.
Many of us may hear this and suddenly feel overwhelmed by the all too familiar burden and guilt of responsibility, accompanied by a list of dos and don’ts, then followed by a depressing surge of memories of failures in our attempt to meet up with expectations.
Growth is the precursor to maturity and to add to this weight of responsibility is the clearly stated requirement of God himself in Matthew 5:48 — “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (NKJV). You might ask, “What has this got to do with maturity?”
Well, guess what the Greek meaning for maturity is? The word we’re looking for is teleios, pronounced: tell’-ee-us. It means perfect. Maturity in Christ literally means perfection and that is the father’s clearly stated expectation of all His children. Like father, like kids.
And this is usually where prior messages would stop, leaving you with a feeling of dread at the immense task of figuring out how to become like the almighty God.
Get perfect!
I’m only kidding. But did that sound familiar? I grew up hearing that and struggled with a cycle of futility as I continued to fail at the basic requirement of Christian life. How could I not when I was being conditioned to take on the responsibility that belonged solely to my father, the gardener (remember John 15)?
It was only when I asked myself the most obvious question that the futility of this task became obvious to me: when was the last time you willed yourself as a human to grow? Does it make sense?
Imagine yourself as a 5-year-old, when you looked at your parents, older siblings or uncles and aunties and wished you were that tall. How did that work out? It didn’t. All you did was eat your carbs, proteins and vegetables. As a human, growth occurred automatically because you did what living things do.
You ate when you were hungry. No matter how much faster you wanted it to happen, you could not accelerate the natural process ingrained into the natural lifecycle of every living thing. Over time, you naturally grew taller because you did what humans must do to go on living.
Doesn’t it make sense that growth towards maturity in Christ happens the same way?
But don’t take my word for it. Let’s see what scripture says:
1 Peter 2:2 (NKJV) — as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby…
Mark 4:26-28 (NKJV) — And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head.”
John 17:20-23 (NKJV) — “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
Hebrews 12:22-24 (NKJV) — But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
James 1:17 (NKJV) — Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
Each of the above scriptures spell out a specific point: we’re not trying to be perfect, we are being made perfect. The task of perfection is that of our father who sows the seed that sprouts and grows overtime towards maturity. That seed according to Luke 8:11 is the food of his word which He has written in the scriptures and is the heavenly sanctioned means by which we are meant to grow.
Remember the popular saying, “You are what you eat”? According to John 1:1, we are children of the word made flesh. It is therefore no surprise that we would require the word to grow. Continuous exposure to the word of God is the only scriptural requirement to attain perfection or maturity.
But that’s why I really love the plant analogies that Jesus uses to describe the kingdom. You see, plants don’t look for food; they produce their own food by simply leaning towards the sun. The plant can gain nutrition that causes it to grow because of photosynthesis, the sun and the nutrients that the root supplies.
Now it’s easy to understand why Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden light. If Jesus was into puns, one could say that Jesus was being inadvertently literal here. His burden, the only burden He gives us, is to lean into the light (see what I did there?).
That remains the only responsibility of the growing believer: lean into Christ.
For all you churchy nerds out there, that means to abide in Christ. Another way of saying it is described in Colossians 3:1-4 — If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory (NKJV).
Abiding in Christ means thinking about the things He cares about. Thinking like Him by searching the scriptures to see how He sees things, how He would see things if he were walking around in person today. That’s called meditation.
It means exposing ourselves to the scriptures delivered in the assembly of believers by pastors, ministers and servants of God who He has commissioned according to Ephesians 4:11-16 — Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever, they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. This is what leads us to maturity and perfection (NLT).
2 Corinthians 3:18 — But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (NKJV).
Since every believer has the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them, the exposure to the light of the word is all the Spirit of God in us needs to produce fruit, namely those mentioned in Galatians 5.
Remember the plant experiments we did in science class where we covered some plants with black bags and moved others away from the window only to discover they always leaned in the direction of the light? That’s our job!
Lean in the direction of the light of His word and lean away from the darkness of dead works and the flesh. Growth will happen normally if we continue to expose ourselves to the divine word that cleanses us (John 15:3) while denying every distraction from our focus (that is, Christ, as revealed in scripture.
This process continues until, as stated in Ephesians 4:13, 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.
As we feed, God’s promise remains sure, as is stated in Philippians 1:6 — being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (NKJV).