Understanding Understanding

This week’s blog is the beginning of a series of thoughts on the subject of MATURITY. I am choosing to do this simply because of the importance of it.

“We announce the message about Christ, and we use all our wisdom to warn and teach everyone, so that all of Christ's followers will grow and become mature.” Col 1:28 CEV

Many different analogies are used to illustrate spiritual life in the Bible. But they all involve change and growth in some way. Whether the analogy is farming or family life, or even building construction, the idea of growth is the common and dominant theme, particularly in the New Testament. We are not called to go and make decisions. We are called to go and make disciples.

Moms and Dads know full well that a lack of maturity is a failure of life’s most basic task. What we want for our children is for them to grow up; to become mature healthy human beings. Our Heavenly Father feels the same way about us.

Over the course of the next few weeks I simply want to outline some of the more significant ‘Marks of Maturity’. My desire is that we might by these evaluate ourselves to ensure that we are in fact growing into the mature followers Christ is calling us to be. I will not be trying to say everything important that can or should be said about each one of these marks. I just want to identify them in a cursory manner and to present them as a sort of ‘check list’.

The first mark I want to identify is UNDERSTANDING. There are probably a few different words that could be used. In the passage above Paul says that he used all the wisdom he had to warn and teach so that we might grow and become mature. In the wisdom literature of the OT (IE. Proverbs) wisdom is clearly identified as a central mark of maturity. We want our children to grow to have as much understanding as possible into what is true and right and good. This is the main idea about wisdom in the NT as well. It is knowledge based, but it is particularly a knowledge that leads to genuine discernment, particularly the discerning of truth from error and right from wrong.

Take a look at these passages:

“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's 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 men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.” Eph 4:11-15

“We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” Heb 5:11-14

These passages, both in the context of growth to maturity, give us the biblical priority when it comes to knowledge or understanding. To be wise is not just to know things but to know how to live according to the designs of our Creator and Redeemer.

The obvious implication from this is that we need to see ourselves as life long learners. We need to commit ourselves to having a right attitude about our responsibility to know the truth and to live it out in our lives. We need to be people of The Book.

Practically speaking, in order for this to happen, we must adopt a life style that allows for it. It will mean time and energy and perhaps some money too. We need to make a thorough biblical knowledge our priority and to ensure we are not only learning in the academic sense but living it out in our lives for this is what it means biblically to have true understanding, wisdom or discernment.

The first thing we are told about the brand new church of Jesus Christ in Acts chapter two is that they devoted themselves to the Apostle's teaching. (Acts 2:42)