Maturity
Chapter 3
MATURITY
When I was travelling in the 1990s in the interests of the Langham Partnership International, I would often ask an audience how they would summarize the Christian scene in the world today. I would receive a variety of answers. But when invited to give my own answer to the question, I would sum it up in just three words, namely ‘growth without depth’.
There is no doubt of the phenomenal growth of the church in many parts of the world. The statistics of church growth are amazing. ‘Explosion’ is not too dramatic a word to describe it. For example, the church in China has grown at least one hundred fold since the middle of the twentieth century. More Christian believers now worship God every Sunday in China than in all the churches of Western Europe put together.
At the same time we should not indulge in triumphalism, for it is often growth without depth.
There is superficiality of discipleship everywhere, and church leaders bemoan this situation. A leader from South Asia wrote to me recently that although the church in his country is growing numerically, ‘there is a huge problem with lack of godliness and integrity’. And similarly an African leader has written that although he is well aware of the rapid growth of the African church, ‘this growth is largely numerical...the church is without a strong biblical or theological foundation of her own’.
More striking still is a statement made in April 2006 in Los Angeles by Mrs Cao Shengjie, at that time President of the China Christian Council:
Some say the church is doing well when there is growth in numbers...and we want to see people added to the church every day. But we are not only looking for numbers, but for the increase in numbers to go in parallel with the confirmation of the faith of the church.
These three quotations from Majority World leaders are enough to show that ‘growth without depth’, or statistical growth with no corresponding developing discipleship, is not a judgment imposed by the rest of the world – it is the view of the leaders themselves.
More than that, this situation is serious because it is displeasing to God. We dare to say this because the apostles whose letters we find in the New Testament rebuke their readers for their immaturity and urge them to grow up. Consider for example Paul’s critique of the Corinthian church:
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere human beings?.
(1 Corinthians 3:1–3)
But there is another passage from the pen of Paul in which he writes about maturity, and it is on these verses that I propose to focus in this chapter:
We proclaim [Christ], admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature (teleios) in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
(Colossians 1:28–29)
The Greek adjective teleios occurs nineteen times in the New Testament and whether it is translated ‘perfect’ or ‘mature’ depends mainly on its context. It rarely if ever means ‘perfect’ in an absolute sense. Instead the teleios (person) is contrasted with the child or infant (e.g. 1 Corinthians 13:10–11). It is in this sense (‘mature’) that I think it best to understand the meaning of teleios.
Now in order to grasp the full significance of any biblical text, it is often a good thing to put it in the witness box and ply it with probing questions. This is what I propose to do with Colossians 1:28–29.
The first and essential question to ask concerns the nature of maturity. What is Christian maturity? The fact is that maturity is rather hard to pin down. Most of us suffer from lingering immaturities. Even in the grown adult the little child is still hiding somewhere.
Besides, there are different types of maturity. There is physical maturity (having a healthy well-developed body), intellectual maturity (having a trained mind and a coherent world-view), moral maturity (referring to people who ‘have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil’, Hebrews 5:14), and emotional maturity (having a balanced personality, able to establish relationships and assume responsibilities). But above all, there is spiritual maturity. What is that? Well, the apostle calls it maturity ‘in Christ’, that is, having a mature relationship with Christ.
Paul’s most common way of defining Christians is to say that they are men and women ‘in Christ’, meaning not inside Christ as when our clothes are in a wardrobe and when tools are inside a chest, but rather as the branches are ‘in’ the vine and our limbs are ‘in’ the body, that is, united to Christ. So then, to be ‘in Christ’ is to be personally, vitally, organically related to him. In this sense, to be mature is to have a mature relationship with Christ in which we worship, trust, love and obey him.
The next question to ask is how do Christians become mature? Our text gives us a plain answer. Consider the basic skeleton of verse 28: ‘We proclaim Christ...so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.’
To be mature is to have a mature relationship with Christ in which we worship, trust, love and obey him.
It is only logical. If Christian maturity is maturity in our relationship to Christ, in which we worship, trust and obey him, then the clearer our vision of Christ, the more convinced we become that he is worthy of our commitment.
In the introduction to his book Knowing God,1 Dr J. I. Packer writes that we are ‘pygmy Christians because we have a pygmy God’. We could equally say that we are pygmy Christians because we have a pygmy Christ. The truth is that there are many Jesuses on offer in the world’s religious supermarkets, and many of them are false Christs, distorted Christs, caricatures of the authentic Jesus.
In our own day, for example, we find Jesus the capitalist and Jesus the socialist in competition with each other. Then there is Jesus the ascetic versus Jesus the glutton. And of course there have been the famous musicals – Jesus the clown of Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar. There have been many more. But they have all been defective, and not one of them deserves our worship and our service. Each is what Paul called ‘another Jesus’, a Jesus different from the Jesus the apostles proclaimed.
So if we want to develop truly Christian maturity, we need above all a fresh and true vision of Jesus Christ – not least in his absolute supremacy which Paul sets out in the earlier half of Colossians 1, from verse 15 to verse 20. It is one of the sublimest Christological passages in the whole New Testament. Here is a loose paraphrase:
Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God (verse 15), so that whoever has seen him has seen the Father. He is also ‘the firstborn over all creation’. Not that he was himself created, but that he has rights of the firstborn, so that he is the creation’s ‘lord and head’ (verse 16). For through him the universe was created. All things were created through him as agent and for him as head. Their unity and coherence are found in him. Also (verse 18) he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything he might have the pre-eminence. For God was pleased (verses 19–20) both to have all his fullness dwell in Christ and also to reconcile all things to himself through Christ, making peace through the blood of his cross.
This is how Paul proclaimed Christ as Lord – as Lord of creation (the one through whom all things were made) and as Lord of the church (the one through whom all things have been reconciled). Because of who he is (the image and fullness of God) and because of what he has done (the one who brought about creation and reconciliation), Jesus Christ has a double supremacy. He is head of the universe and head of the church. He is the lord of both creations.
This is the apostle’s masterful portrait of Jesus Christ. Where should we be but on our faces before him? Away then with our petty, puny, pygmy Jesuses! Away with our Jesus clowns and pop stars! Away too with our political Messiahs and revolutionaries! For these are caricatures. If this is how we think of him, then no wonder our immaturities persist.
Where then shall we find the authentic Jesus? The answer is that he is to be found in the Bible – the book which could be described as the Father’s portrait of the Son painted by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is full of Christ. As he himself said, the Scriptures ‘testify about me’ (John 5:39). Jerome, the early Church Father, wrote that ‘ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ’. Equally, we may say that knowledge of Scripture is knowledge of Christ.
Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.
If only the blindfold could be taken away from our eyes! If only we could see Jesus in the fullness of who he is and what he has done! Why then surely we would see how worthy he is of our wholehearted allegiance, and faith, love and obedience would be drawn out from us and we would grow into maturity. Nothing is more important for mature Christian discipleship than a fresh, clear, true vision of the authentic Jesus.
Now that we have defined Christian maturity and thought about how disciples become mature, we are ready for a third question, namely to whom is this call to maturity directed? It cannot have escaped our notice that in this text Paul repeats the word ‘everyone’: ‘We proclaim Christ, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ’ (Colossians 1:28). The background to this threefold repetition is likely to be what is known as the ‘Colossian heresy’. Scholars are still debating the exact form which it took, but almost certainly it was an embryonic Gnosticism which became full-grown only in the middle of the second century.
These early Gnostics seem to have taught that there were two classes or categories of Christian. On the one hand there were hoi polloi, the common herd, who were united by pistis, faith. On the other hand there were hoi teleioi, the élite, who had been initiated into gnosis, special knowledge. Paul was horrified by this Christian elitism and set himself firmly against it. In his proclamation of Christ he hijacked the Gnostics’ word teleios and applied it to everybody. He warned and taught everybody, he claimed, so that he might present everybody teleios (mature) in Christ. Maturity in Christ is emphatically not open only to the special few; it is open to everybody. Nobody need fail to attain it.
It is an interesting question of interpretation whether (as we study a biblical text) we identify with its author or with its readers. Sometimes (as here) it is reasonable to do both. It is certainly right to sit down alongside the Colossian Christians as they receive this message from Paul, and let him address us. In this way we will listen attentively to the apostle, receive his admonition about growing into maturity, determine to take our Bible reading yet more seriously, and as we read Scripture, look for Christ in order to love, trust and obey him. For the discipleship principle is clear: the poorer our vision of Christ, the poorer our discipleship will be, whereas the richer our vision of Christ, the richer our discipleship will be.
But it is also legitimate to stand alongside the apostle Paul as he addresses the Colossian Christians, especially if we are in a position of Christian leadership. It’s true that he was an apostle and we are not. So we do not have his authority. Nevertheless, we do have pastoral responsibilities comparable to his, whether we are ordained or lay leaders.
So we need to note Paul’s pastoral goal. The popular image of Paul is of an evangelist, the pioneer missionary and church planter, whose goal was to win converts, set up a church and move on. But this is only one side of the picture. Here he portrays himself as a pastor and teacher. His great longing, he writes, is to go beyond evangelism to discipleship, and to present everybody mature in Christ. And because this is the goal on which he spent his energies, so should we! ‘To this end I labour, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me’ (Colossians 1:29, NIV). Both Greek verbs (‘labour’ and ‘struggle’) express metaphors which imply physical exertion. The first is used of the farm labourer, and the second of the competitor in the Greek Games. Both conjure up a vision of rippling muscles and pouring sweat.
It’s true that Paul could strive only with Christ’s energy. Yet even with that divine energy he still needed to toil and struggle, no doubt in prayer and study. There can be no higher goal of ministry. What a wonderful slogan this is for anybody called to leadership – longing to present everybody for whom we are in any way responsible mature in Christ.
Looking back we can see a double responsibility: maturity in Christ is the goal both for ourselves and for our ministry to others.
So then may God give us such a full, clear vision of Jesus Christ, first that we may grow into maturity ourselves, and secondly that, by our faithful proclamation of Christ in his fullness to others, we may present others mature as well.