Artemus Ward, an early American humorist, once described the South Platte River in northeast Colorado as “a mile wide and an inch deep”. It would be a considerable river, he mused, if it were turned on its side. Unfortunately, Ward’s description of the South Platte River could just as easily be applied to Christianity in the Untied States today – there is no depth.
Although surveys consistently show that 80-85% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, those same surveys reveal some frightening looks inside their faith. Here are some results from recent surveys by the Barna Group
• 54% of people surveyed agreed that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in heaven.
• 41% believe that when Jesus lived on earth He committed sins
• 55% believe that Satan is not a living being, but merely a symbol of evil
• Only 47% of people attend church in a typical weekend
• Only 48% agree that the Bible is totally accurate in all its teachings and only 47% read their Bible during the week.
Apparently Paul had some concerns that the faith of his readers was also susceptible to becoming a mile wide and an inch deep. As we continue our journey through Ephesians, let’s see how Paul addresses that issue. Although we looked at verse 11 and the first part of verse 12 last week, let’s read verses 11-14 this morning so that we can put our passage in its proper context.
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.
Ephesians 4:11-14 (NIV)
We saw last week that Jesus has gifted the church with apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor-teachers for the purpose of equipping all believers to be able to carry out the work of ministry. As we said last week, Christianity is not a spectator sport. Every Christian is to be a minister.
Beginning in the second part of verse 12, Paul goes on to explain that being involved in ministry is the key element in the process of us growing towards maturity and making sure that our faith does not become a mile wide and an inch deep.
Every baby that is born into this world is completely helpless. They all are dependent on someone else to feed them, bathe them, clothe them and protect them. And there is nothing wrong with that. But there is something wrong with a baby that remains an infant and never becomes able to do those same things for themselves.
The same thing is true for Christians. Every one of us is like a newborn when we become a follower of Jesus Christ and we need others to help us mature. Here’s how Peter described that process:
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
1 Peter 2:2, 3 (NIV)
But there is something wrong with a Christian that remains a spiritual baby and doesn’t grow up. Both Paul and the writer of Hebrews addressed that issue in their letters:
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly - mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?
1 Corinthians 3:1-3 (NIV)
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.
Hebrews 5:12-14 (NIV)
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul presents a very clear contrast between what his readers were like right then and what God desired for them to become. And, fortunately for us, he gives us some insight on how we are to get to where God wants us to be. Let’s begin with verse 14 that describes what Paul’s readers were like, and frankly what all of us are also like:
WHAT WE ARE LIKE: INFANTS
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.
When Paul writes that they will “no longer be infants”, he is implying that is exactly what his readers are right now. But interestingly, he also includes himself in that category when he uses the word “we”. So if that’s how Paul described himself, I think it’s fair to assume that all of us would certainly fit into that category as well.
Paul goes on to describe...
• Two characteristics of spiritual infants:
o Unstable
Back when I was in college a group of us would go up to Reservation Lake to fish as soon as we got out of school each May. One year, I can remember that we got out in the middle of the lake in a rowboat when a thunderstorm came in over the surrounding mountains. Since we didn’t want to be in the middle of the lake as the lightning approached, I began rowing for shore as fast as I could. But then the wind began to blow harder and the waves began to push against the boat. Although there were two of us in the boat, we were afraid to even take turns rowing because every time we switched places, the wind and waves would knock us off course. So I rowed as hard as I could for about 20-30 minutes straight and we finally made it to shore just as the storm hit in earnest.
That’s the same picture Paul is presenting here. Just as our boat wasn’t very stable that day, infant Christians are not very stable either. Those of you with small children don’t have any problem picturing just how unstable children are. They have very short attention spans. They play with one toy for a while, get bored, and then go on to the next one. They have a hard time concentrating on any one task for an extended period.
Newborn Christians are a lot like that. It seems like we’re born with spiritual ADD. We have a tendency to get drawn into the latest Christian fad or program for a while and then we get bored so we move on to the next one. There are even a lot of pastors like that. They go to a conference or read a book about the latest program and they come back and try to implement it in their church. And before it even has a chance to get fully implemented, the pastor goes to another conference and comes back with another new program to put into action.
o Easily deceived
Another characteristic of children is that they are easily deceived. That’s why those of you who are parents take precautions and teach your kids to beware of strangers. Unfortunately today, we have a huge group of predators who use the internet to deceive children and to try to draw them into dangerous and harmful situations. They prey on children because they are easily deceived.
In this passage Paul uses four different words to describe how susceptible immature Christians are to deceit and trickery. Certainly he was referring to the false teaching of many who were trying to draw these believers away from their faith. But it seems to me, based on both what Paul writes in this passage as well as the context of this entire letter, that there is a also a reference here to Satan, who uses deceit as one of his main weapons. Jesus Himself made that quite clear:
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
John 8:44 (NIV)
Satan and those people he uses are masters at using deceit. It’s interesting that many of the cults that are active in our country today tend to prey not so much upon unbelievers, but upon those who would claim to be Christians but who have a faith that is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Warren Wiersbe offers this insightful comment:
The cultists do not try to win lost souls to Christ. They do not establish rescue missions in the slum areas of our cities, because they have no good news for the man on skid row. Instead, these false teachers try to capture immature Christians, and for this reason, most of the membership of the false cults comes from local churches, particularly churches that do not feed their people the Word of God.
Even though that is what we are all like right now, at least to some extent, God has something much better in store for us:
WHAT GOD WANTS US TO BE LIKE: CHRIST
...and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ...
Howard Hendricks once said:
The Bible was not written to satisfy your curiosity, but to make you conform to Christ’s image. Not to make you a smarter sinner, but to make you like the Saviour. Not to fill your head with a collection of biblical facts, but to transform your life.
God’s goal for all of His children is that they would grow up and mature so that they can become like Christ. This isn’t the only place that Paul described that principle. Here’s what he wrote in Romans:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son...
Romans 8:29 (NIV)
When Paul writes about attaining the measure of the fullness of Christ, he is saying that Jesus alone is to be our standard by which we measure our spiritual maturity. We’re not to look around at others and determine whether or not we’re mature by seeing how we compare to them. And when we do that, no matter how mature we are, we recognize how far short of that goal all of us fall. Paul certainly recognized that:
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13, 14 (NIV)
If Paul hadn’t yet reached the goal of becoming like Christ near the end of his life, then certainly none of us has arrived there either. So how do we attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ?
HOW DO WE GET THERE:
• We partake in the process
...until we all reach...
With the word “until”, Paul clearly implies that spiritual maturity is a process, one that will not be complete until Jesus returns to this earth to take us home to be with Him or until we die physically and go to be with Him for eternity. That’s why Paul could write in the passage that we just looked at in Philippians that even at the end of his life he was still straining for the goal. He was still taking place in the process.
As long as we are here on this earth, none of us will ever reach the goal of becoming like Christ. Hopefully, we get closer each day, but we’ll never get there. But by going through the process, we will one day arrive at Christlikeness:
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
1 John 3:2 (NIV)
In the past, I’ve talked a lot about why God doesn’t just take us to heaven to be with Him the very moment we become a believer. And certainly one reason God chooses not to do that is that His plan for our maturity includes this process of becoming like Christ more and more each day as we live out our life here on this earth.
• We mature in community with other believers
...so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity...
What is really interesting about this passage is that Paul’s focus here is clearly on the maturity of Christ’s body, the church, rather than on the maturity of individual believers. Obviously there is a sense in which the maturity of the body is a result of the maturity of individual believers, but as he has done throughout his letter, Paul once again stresses the importance of community.
If you think about our physical bodies, there is obviously a problem if one part of our body grows faster or slower than the rest of our body. There also a sense in which our bodies can only function as well as our weakest parts. For instance, if I have a weak heart, it is going to limit how well the rest of my body can function, too.
The same thing is true in the church. Christ’s body is only going to be as strong as its weakest parts. That’s one of the reasons that I decided at the beginning of the year to preach through Ephesians verse-by-verse. I was really convicted by God that I needed to do all I can to help all of us grow together in our faith, because we are only as strong as our weakest member.
The idea of growing mature in community with others is in stark contrast to how Paul described the current state of his readers:
...Then we will no longer be infants...
Not only were they spiritual infants, but they were all individuals. No wonder they were so unstable and so easily deceived. Jesus has given us His body, the church, in order to protect us from those perils.
• We hold unswervingly to the Word of God
...in the faith...
As we’ve seen earlier in his letter, when Paul uses the phrase “the faith”, he is usually referring to a body of belief, or to what we would call doctrine. As we saw last week, the primary function of the apostles and prophets was to establish, as they were led by the Holy Spirit, the authoritative Word of God, which is our basis for our doctrine.
One of the great benefits of studying the Book of Ephesians in such depth over this last 9-1/2 months is that we have dealt with almost every essential doctrine in Scripture. In fact, in our Tuesday morning men’s Bible study, we have often talked about the fact that even if the only Scripture we had was Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we would still have enough to understand the basic doctrines of the Bible and have practical guidance on how to live out those doctrines in our day-to-day lives.
The antidote to being tossed back and forth and blown here and there by every wind of teaching is to hold unswervingly to the Bible as the source of our beliefs and, like the Bereans, to test everything we read and hear against the Bible. I hope that you do that each week when I preach. You should never take anything I say as the truth until you have first tested it against the truth of the Scriptures.
• We develop our relationship with Jesus
...the knowledge of the Son of God...
As you would probably expect, the word Paul uses here for “knowledge” is a word that means to know through experience. That is consistent with what Paul had previously prayed on behalf of his readers:
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
Ephesians 1:17 (NIV)
The most important thing we do as we gather together as a body of believers each week is to develop our relationship with Jesus. Everything we do – the music, the Scripture readings, prayer, the “In the Bag”” message for the children, the sermon and our fellowship – is done for the purpose of pointing us toward Jesus Christ so that He might reveal Himself to us and then responding to that revelation.
But one hour on Sunday morning is certainly not enough to develop a relationship. That’s why we encourage you to grow your relationship with Jesus every day by spending time in His Word and communing with him through prayer.
• We minister
... to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up...
This brings us in a full circle to where we began last week. Paul makes it absolutely clear that God’s people are to carry out the work of ministry because that results in building up the body of Christ. Ultimately what builds up the body of Christ, both numerically and spiritually, is God’s people ministering in the lives of others. As important as it is to have solid doctrine, what really matters is putting that doctrine into practice by meeting the needs of others.
I don’t want our Christianity to be a mile wide and an inch deep. So let’s all join together in this process of maturing in our faith, so that we can become more like Christ each day. Let’s hold firmly to the word of God, focus our attention on our relationship with Jesus and put our faith to work by being ministers of the gospel. Then perhaps we can do as Artemus Ward suggested and turn on faith on its side so that it might amount to something significant.
