“A Spiritual Foundation:
To the Measure of the Stature of the Fullness of Christ”

The Appomattox Court House Presbyterian Church Pulpit
Rev. Cameron S. Smith
The Lord's Day, August 7, 2005
Ephesians 4:11-16

As a father of two beautiful children, one thing that brings me delight, more than anything, is their increasing level of maturity with each passing day. With Matthew, he's grown by leaps and bounds in the past year. He's beginning to assert his independence with gusto in many of the tasks that mom and dad had to do exclusively at one time: like changing his diapers; picking out his clothes and dressing him; feeding him; bathing him, etc. But now he's doing all of those things, pretty much by himself. He's also growing inside - growing spiritually. My little boy has a tender heart for God, and he's getting to know Jesus better every day. Each night, we all read a Bible story and then finish by praying together. My three year old son already knows more about the Bible than I knew when I was eighteen!

But, as far as both of my children have come thus far, it's just a beginning. Maturity, as we all know, is a process that lasts a lifetime. I want to talk about maturity this morning, specifically, spiritual maturity. This is something that God desires for all of us. The encouragement to maturity is a message that comes through clearly in our passage from Ephesians 4:11-16:

"And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."

Cutting to the chase, God's given apostles, prophets, and more recently, evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip the saints, that is to say, to help us identify, develop and nurture our spiritual gifts. This graciousness from God is for the express purpose of building up the Church, "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…."

We need to pay special attention to that last phrase because it's in those words that we find a Biblical definition of maturity. Maturity, according to Ephesians, means two things:
     1) LOVE: Growing up in love and appreciation for one another. That's what attaining "to the unity of the faith" really means. AND
     2) KNOWLEDGE: Attaining to "the knowledge of the Son of God," which means growing experientially strong in the Scriptures.

Notice how well this definition fits with the greatest of all commandments. In Mark 12:28-31, a Scribe asks Jesus, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' (KNOWING = scripturally, doctrinally, devotionally & spiritually. Not just head knowledge!) The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Take a look next to you, that's your neighbor!) Now, don't miss this important conclusion: Jesus says, "There is no other commandment greater than these."

In the parallel account found in Matthew 22:40, Jesus says, "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." Luke (10:28) says simply, "Do this, and you will live."

I firmly believe that what we have here in Ephesians is a reminder of the great commandment and how it is to be lived out within the "body" of Christ. In reference to maturity in knowledge, Paul stresses how important it is "that we…no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes" (Eph. 4:14). This knowing must be intimate and it must be intense. It requires a lifetime of meditating on His Word; a lifetime of pursuing holiness. This is far more than some kind of head knowledge of the Word. Far more than being competent enough to pass an exam on the Bible! I would argue that it is a lifestyle that is able to resist the chaos of a fallen world and the spiritual wisdom to discern bad teaching and those who seek to promote it. And this is possible because the mature disciple knows God intimately.

In modeling a mature love, Ephesians encourages us in this manner: "Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,…[so that] when each part is working properly, [it] makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love" (Eph. 4:15-16).

This blend of knowledge and love is a delicate one. It's not easy to maintain, and throughout the history of the Christian Church, one side or the other has usually been played to the exclusion of the other. On the knowledge side of the equation, I think of the great Church scholastics of the Middle Ages. These guys were so wrapped up in the minutiae of doctrine that there was a long running joke that they debated furiously over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin!

The greatest of the scholastics was St. Thomas Aquinas, known in the Roman Catholic Church as "the Angelic Doctor." His writings are rational, cold and distant - but very logical! It's said that this great doctor of the Church was once deep in thought - thinking great theological thoughts with his extraordinarily oversized head-- while riding his horse. He apparently was sitting sideways and didn't see a low lying branch, and he smacked his big head into the branch and fell over dead!

In reaction to this seemingly passionless, relation-less scholasticism, there emerged a group that came to be known as the Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation. To put it in the most general of terms, the Anabaptists couldn't stand formal doctrine! They refused to formulate doctrine into writing, thinking it to be a waste of time and counter productive to Christian discipleship. They had a few general principles that they adhered to, but for the most part, they eschewed the academic life.

So now, in response to these two extremes, let me suggest a couple of observations for you as you seek after spiritual maturity.

     1. If you find yourself leaning too heavily in the direction of knowledge - and that has been a Presbyterian emphasis - almost to a fault -- throughout our collective history; then consider well 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, "If I [Paul] speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Recognize that this is only my humble opinion; but I think that we Presbyterians get too wrapped up in a different kind of knowledge: For example, we expend far too much energy on our politics, our programs and our bureaucratic process than we really should. Our polity is spectacularly precise and efficient. As a reminder of our Presbyterian propriety, our collective Presbyterian life verse is taken from 1 Corinthians 14:40: "All things should be done decently and in order." Sometimes I think we accomplish this so well that we lose touch with the things that matter the most to our Lord. But, when you think about it, it's so much easier to do just that. It's more difficult to be passionate about holiness and loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Somehow, the pursuit of godly knowledge gets bogged down in polity and its process.

     2. Perhaps you find yourself weighing in too heavily on the love side of the equation. Now don't get me wrong here, love IS important. If you follow the line of thought in 1 Corinthians 13, you can see that the final, definitive thought of that passage is, "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13). But! And this is my passionate point: When we throw out all doctrinal considerations; all truth considerations, in the name of love, then we've crossed a line that God never intended for us to cross.

I've read far too many sermons and articles where the writer expressed grave doubts about whether or not we could actually know God's truth because of our human limitations. God is infinite and we are not, therefore truth is illusory. This leads to the mind-set that it's arrogant for Christians to make definite truth claims concerning salvation in Christ Jesus. It's as if Jesus said, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will only confuse you, so don't even try!" No! He said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32).

If we truly desire what we're reading about here in Ephesians 4, then we must seek a godly balance between love and knowledge. Only then can we arrive at maturity and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.