Without a Leg to Stand On
After all
the talk in the last few days about spiritual people understanding spiritual
concepts, we have a pretty serious boom being leveled on the Corinthians in the
opening verses of 1 Corinthians 3. What
does Paul say to them? I had to give you
milk, not solid food. I had to treat you
as spiritual infants, as people of the flesh.
The divisions in their congregation demonstrated that they were not on
board at all with this spirituality thing.
They were still more interested in getting their way and getting their
agenda accomplished rather than humbling themselves before God’s agenda.
Now, I
need to be very clear for a second.
There is one very good reason for being immature in one’s faith – or
spiritual infancy as we tend to call it.
That reason is this: you have just recently come to know Jesus Christ
and the salvation that He offers. After
all, it takes some pretty serious time to grow up in Christ. You have to learn the popular stories and
learn what those stories really teach us.
You have to learn how to be strong enough to give up the carnal
desires. You have to take time to make
spiritual connections and seek out spiritual mentors. All of those things take months – and that’s
after you finally bring yourself to legitimately commit to Jesus Christ. A person in that position has every right to
be a spiritual infant, because that is what they are.
There is
no shame in being a spiritual infant if you have just come to know Jesus Christ
in a deep and meaningful way.
However,
you’ll notice that I said months, not years.
Yes, we should be growing all the time.
There is maturity, and then there is perpetually becoming more and more
mature. We will never reach the climax
of our spiritual maturity – Lord willing!
But we should reach a point where we are “mature.” And I have to believe that this is measured
in months, not years. It is especially
not measured in decades.
An Example from Jesus’ Life
Think
about the disciples. Jesus was teaching
for a time and then He began to call disciples.
About three years after He started teaching He was crucified,
resurrected, and handing over the keys to Peter and the rest of the
disciples. Three years – in most cases
probably less than that – after the disciples decided to follow Christ they
were in a position of sharing leadership within a congregation. They were the teachers and preachers within less
than three years time!
I
know. Three years is a measurement in
years. But to me, considering how long
most of the Christians I am around have been Christians, three years is a drastically
short amount of time. Three years is a
small measurement compared to how long most Christians I know claim to have been
in a relationship with Christ.
I am sure
that this is true of the Christians in Corinth as well. Most of them were Jewish well before Paul
ever came along and told them about Jesus Christ. So they had a running start into the
faith. It shouldn’t take them too long
to actually get up to speed if they were genuinely devoting themselves to Jesus
Christ. In these opening verses, Paul is
laying a huge chastisement on all those in Corinth who have not matured out of
their spiritual infancy. He is laying a
huge chastisement upon all of us who have known Christ for longer than average
and who are still in our spiritual infancy as well.
Paul, Apollos, and Peter
This point
is vital to understanding the rest of the chapter, which is why I spent so much
time upon it today. Paul then moves on
to talk about Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (The Greek name for Peter). But his overarching point is that God is the
one in charge. It doesn’t matter who
does the work. For that matter, it
doesn’t even matter what the work looks like as long as it is genuinely God’s
hand at work!
Think
about that point for a second. If I see
God’s hand at work and it is not being done the way I think it should be being
done, am I really going to want to raise myself up and say, “That’s not right?” Do I really want to put myself in a place of
criticizing God’s work just because it doesn’t look quite like I want it to
appear? The shape and the form are
nothing compared to whether or not the work that is being done is God’s work.
Understanding
this point takes spiritual maturity. It
takes a spiritually mature person to put aside my own ways and embrace God’s
work in my midst regardless of what it looks like. It takes a spiritually mature person to
genuinely pursue God’s leading rather than my own thoughts on what is
correct. It takes a spiritually mature
person to admit that the thoughts and ways of human organization are nothing
compared to the thoughts and ways of God’s agenda.
That’s why
I love where Paul ends this passage. My
ways are foolishness before God. There
is no other way of saying it. My ways
are foolishness before God. Why would I
ever spend my time pursuing what I think is right unless I have also verified
that it actually is God’s ways, too?
Find God, join
Him in doing whatever you are doing.
It doesn’t
matter what shape it takes. Where God
is, that’s where I want to be. Anything
else is foolishness and spiritual immaturity.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment