- We start out wrong about everything important. We have an innate sense of God, but we suppress and pervert it (Romans 1:1-32). We're dead and blind (Ephesians 2:1-3; 4:17-19). In this condition, even if we hear the Word of God, nothing savingly significant happens (Matthew 13:4-7, 18-22).
- God sovereignly gives us life (Ephesians 2:5), causes His word to be life to us (1 Peter 1:23-25), enables us to see what we had been unable to see (2 Corinthians 4:3-6), and saves us by grace through faith as a gift (Ephesians 2:8-10).
- Thus awakened and made alive, we respond to God's word in faith (Romans 10:17), yoke ourselves to Christ in repentant faith (Matthew 11:28-30; Acts 11:18; 17:31), in witness to which we are baptized (Acts 2:38) and committed to a lifelong process of learning His word (Matthew 28:18-20; John 8:31-32).
- Our goal then becomes to grow to maturity in and unto Christ (Ephesians 4:15-16; 2 Peter 3:18).
- Specifically, what this maturity looks like involves (among other things) a grounded stability in God's revealed truth that is resistant to the gusty winds of fad and fashion (Ephesians 4:13-14), and a well-practiced adeptness in the Word of God that enables us to assess, discern, and judge right from wrong, good from evil, and truth from falsehood (Hebrews 4:12; 5:14).
Thursday, May 15, 2008
the path to maturity
I found this EXCELLENT summary by Dan Phillips on the Christian's growth from pre- to maturity:
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5 comments:
I'm just curious why he (you) would use sovereignty for Eph 2:5 when the word is love.
"4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved."
It's stuff like this that makes we wonder if what you mean by sovereignty is what I mean by love. In other words are we saying the same thing a different way and getting lost in translation.
Jonathan - no, we really do mean two different things. Well, perhaps you and I do not but many others do.
What I mean to say is God exercised His sovereignty motivated by His love (and from other texts other reasons). There are many who are so focused on God's love that they miss or try to usurp His sovereignty. Or another common mistake is that they superimpose their definition of love over the Biblical one.
This leads to universalism, etc.. I'm not suggesting you are doing this. I am reinforcing that the two words are not interchangeable and contrary to what the "love crowd" thinks, they are not mutually exclusive. Many judge those who speak of God's sovereignty as being "mean". It is not mean, it is the most loving, excellent way. Again, we fail because we attribute human weaknesses to God.
In the end, He is sovereign and it was He that made us alive, not ourselves. A motivation for that cited in this text is love.
The differentiating point is not whether it was love or not but who was the agent of the change.
Well, I agree that Rick has the correct read on Eph 2.4-5, but I wonder about the admittedly conventional reading of Heb 4.12.
Most people, I guess, read "the word of God is sharper" and understand "word of God" to be the bible. I think that's unlikely, as did Young the literalist translator who noted that "logos" appears again at the end of Heb 4.13 where most translations say "account."
But whether you believe v 12 means the bible is alive or that Christ (or the Spirit) is alive, does it really say that you the reader become the discerner?
Defining or describing maturity is difficult, that's for sure. Enduring despite gusts of fad & fashion (as you say) and gusts of difficulty and gusts of prosperity and gusts of opposition -- endurance in practiced faith is the evidence of maturity.
George - Good that you mention this. I had emailed this extract to some friends and in that email I included a comment that I did not include in the post. The comment was that this fifth point was "limited" and I would have liked a broader definition.
Given the pre-disposition of the TeamPyro bloggers however this was all I expected from them. It is not wrong and it met the intent of Phillips' post.
I like your point so I have mentally added that to my list of why that point was too restrictive.
I'm not sure I understand then how you draw sovereignty out of the verse then. Help me understand this.
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