Spiritual Maturity

 

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; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us go on towards perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith towards God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement. 

The author presents spiritual life as being like physical growth, there is birth, infancy, childhood, young adulthood and eventually maturity. Ahead of this he was teaching about Jesus and interjected that those listening were spiritually sluggish and infantile. Note what the author considered basic and foundational teaching: repentance from dead works, trust toward God, teaching about washings, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement.

I have been attending churches for over seventy years and have never heard or given a lesson that would have exceeded the "basic elements" given by the author. Churches do not focus on individual development but on group harmony; individual maturity if considered is judged on participation and attendance. The goal of churches is to have a homogenized congregation, all singing from the same hymnbook and quoting the same scriptures. Oddballs are tolerated but not celebrated. Many Churches focus on increasing membership rather than individual development.

Adult to the author is – people who have reached maturity through repeated practice, evidenced by trained judgment. This maturity is not having the memory to call up scriptures supporting your Church’s doctrines. It is not the ability to refute someone else’s “erroneous” beliefs. It’s not being able to quote a myriad of scriptures. It is the outcome of trusting Jesus, having God as your father and his word as your guide. It’s not having to rush to a verse of scripture its spiritual awareness and a principled life.

Churches need to refocus; the goal must be the spiritual health of individual members. In every congregation there are some who will boast that what they believe now is what they were taught when they were introduced to the Church. Hopefully not, as that would be an admission that they have not developed spiritually. It sounds like what Stephen Covey, said about experience; People say they have twenty years experience, when, they only have one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.

Churches must drop the business model and move to an egalitarian gathering of individual believers – a fellowship of God’s children.