There is one calling that every Christian has without exception,
and that is the calling to maturity. We are born into the household
of God as babes in Christ, but we are not to remain infants. We are
to grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ. The speed with
which we achieve this goal is not determined by our age, but by our
understanding of and obedience to the Word of God. We make a
mistake if we think we must grow slow and waste half of our life
before we get down to business. Some years back it was announced
that St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was moving down Fleet Street
at the rate of one inch every hundred years, and someone remarked
that the church ought to be moving faster than that. They were
right, for the church was not made to be creeping along at a snail’s
pace.
Jesus did not build His church to be nursery of His kingdom.
He did not give His Word to be used as a pacifier. He built His
church to be the army of God, and He gave His Word to be the
Sword of the Spirit that through the church He might penetrate the
very gates of hell with the good news of salvation. Jesus wants
people of maturity, and we dishonor His cause by thinking it is good
to move in slow motion. A pastor in Chicago related a story of how
a man in Wednesday night prayer meeting prayed each time, “Lord,
take away the cobwebs.” Every week he would say the same prayer,
and finally one of the men who followed him in prayer prayed,
“Lord, never mind the cobwebs, kill the spider.” That is what God
wants. He wants people to get to the heart of the matter and not
beat around the bush. The world desperately needs Christians who
will get out of the toy department and get into the accounting
department, and start counting the cost of wasting their lives on the
superficial. Life is serious, and it is big business. It calls for all the
maturity our feeble minds can manage. Peter indicates that there
are three essential steps to Christian maturity that all of us must
take.
I. A SPECIAL DESIRE FOR THE WORD OF GOD.
Diets play a major role in our society, but it has always been
important in the Christian life. Your diet determines your destiny,
and also the shape of your character and life. Without food your
body will starve and become physically weak. Without truth your
mind will starve and become mentally weak. Without God’s Word
your soul will starve and become spiritually weak. God has given
His children a manna to sustain them as they pass through this
worldly wilderness of spiritual waste land. No Christian can be
mature if he does not nourish his soul with the milk and meat of
God’s Word. A healthy Christian will have an appetite for it. His
soul will get hunger pains if he does not feed on it.
Notice that Peter calls the Word pure spiritual milk. There is
milk in other books also, but it is not always pure, for men have
many ideas that they want the Scripture to support, and so they
twist the Word to fit their system of thinking. We are to have
mouths of our mind that drink in the milk of God’s pure message if
we are to grow in maturity. God’s Word is to be the basis on which
we evaluate all the words of men. Peter says if you have tasted that
the Lord is good you will desire more. If I say ground crempter and
mashed guilite it does not stimulate any desire in you. But if I say
prime rib and mashed potatoes it does stimulate desire. It is because
we have all tasted these things and know they are good, and so we
desire to have more. So it is with spiritual things. Only when a
person gets a taste of the goodness of God will they desire to feed on
His Word. The psalmist says, “O taste and see that the Lord is
good.”
Quite often you will see women in the supermarket offering
samples of different kinds of food. The philosophy behind this is
that once people get a taste of a product and find that it is good, they
will want more. This is good philosophy, and it works. It is nothing
new, however, for Peter says this philosophy is a key to Christian
maturity. Our tastes change over time. When I was young I never
cared for salad, but now I consider it a favorite part of the meal.
Books that once held no interest are now my favorites. Parts of the
Bible that I once thought were boring are now among the most
interesting. It is a sign of maturity when we long to taste more of the
goodness of God and His Word.
The mature Christian also wants to make the Gospel attractive
so that others will be willing to taste the goodness of God and in turn
desire more until they come to know Jesus as Savior. What would
you think if the woman giving samples in the supermarket was all
dirty and greasy? What if her electric frying pan was rusty and
there were cobwebs on the cord she was using to fry chucks of
sausage? Would you be surprised if no one bought the product?
Certainly not, for even if her product was excellent, the unattractive
presentation would keep people from tasting it even if it was the best
on the market. If a Christian lives a slipshod shabby life before the
world he ought not to be amazed that people do not respond to the
Gospel and taste to see that the Lord is good. The mature Christian
is an attractive Christian, and he cannot be attractive if he feeds the
old man and starves the new man he is in Christ.
That is why Peter in verse 1 says lay aside the characteristics of
the old life, for you have a new life to feed. We must clean out the
vultures from the cage of our soul if we expect the dove of the Holy
Spirit to dwell there. Even the Roman philosopher Seneca knew the
necessity of purity before thinking of God. He wrote, “The mind
that is impure is not capable of God and Divine things.” If we are
full of the poison of hypocrisy, envy and evil speaking we will not be
able to grow, and that is the whole purpose of desiring the milk of
the Word.
The Bible is not just a reference book. It is to be our daily
menu if we want to be mature. It will put muscles on our faith,
marrow in our hope and blood in our heart of love. Without it faith
becomes flabby, hope empty, and our love grows weak. Peter says
we are living stones, and all that is living must grow or it dies. The
Christians Peter was writing to were babes in Christ, and Peter says
that the only a baby can win this battle is by starving the old man
and feeding the new baby. One of the two natures must die, and the
one you starve will be the one to do so. So he says they are to lay
aside all that feeds the old nature and nourish the baby on the pure
milk of the Word. It is a thrill for parents to see their child grow to
the point where they can feed themselves, and it is a thrill to God to
see His children grow to the point where they can feed themselves on
His Word and clothe themselves with the garments of maturity. The
second step we must have is-
II. A SPECIAL DELIGHT IN THE SON OF GOD.
In spite of all we have said about the importance of the Bible,
Christianity is not just a religion of a book, but of a Person. The
value of the book is that it leads us to Christ. The test of whether or
not the milk of the Word is being digested and helping us to grow is
the place we give to Jesus in our life. This is the greatest sign to our
maturity. How do we know we are growing? If Christ is precious,
then you know you are a growing believer. Peter just states it is fact
that to those who believe He is precious. This is a present fact. He is
precious because He is rare. If you have one stamp or coin of its
kind it is worth a fortune, and of how much more value is the one
Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus?
The biggest step to maturity is when a believer really comes to
see that Jesus is the center, the circumference, and the capstone of
his faith. The danger in the Christian life is not so much unbelief as
it is belief in the secondary. We can make idols out of secondary
ideas and allow them to divide our loyalty to Christ. We dishonor
Christ when we push Him off to the side and make any pet doctrine
the primary object of our thought and concern. We must never
forget that the redemption Jesus accomplished, and the Lordship of
Christ is the foundation of all we believe. Christians become
immature when anything or anyone becomes more precious to them
than Jesus. Many professing Christians quit going to church for all
kinds of reasons. This is because they put some other issue ahead of
Jesus.
It is tragic when Christianity becomes just a religion, for all
religions, including the Christian religion, do not have the power to
save. The only salvation in the world is found in the person of Jesus
Christ, and when He ceases to be the most precious possession we
have Christianity becomes a dead religion. Charles Spurgeon use to
say that you can talk on all kinds of subjects and the Christian can
ignore it, but when you speak of Jesus Christ the Christian has to be
full of interest and wide awake. That is why he found a path from
every text that led to the person of Christ. He preached on this text
often, and even when he was sick, for he said, “If I can say nothing
else I have said it all when I say that Jesus Christ is precious. He is
the gem of exquisite beauty and the jewel of incomparable brilliance.
Precious Lord beyond expression,
Are the beauties all divine,
Glory, honor, praise and blessing,
Be henceforth forever thine.
Jesus is intrinsically precious. Other values are relative, but He
is absolute in all places and times. Gold and diamonds are only
precious in society, but for a man dying of thirst in the desert they
are worthless. A glass of water is of more value at that point then a
bag full of diamonds. They have no intrinsic value, that is they are
not valuable in themselves, but Jesus is of the greatest value at all
times even if one is dying in the desert, for He alone can give eternal
life. When we die and get to heaven we will not need doctrine or any
of the outward things of Christianity. But we will never be without
our need of Jesus. He is the source of our eternal life. It is through
Him that we have life.
The complete story of salvation comes in two volumes. We are
only half Christian and immature until we get both volumes. We
are born into the kingdom of God by faith in Jesus, but then we
must become mature citizens of that kingdom by obedience to Jesus.
Those who do not come to Jesus stumble over the cornerstone and
get crushed, but those who come to Jesus become the New Israel,
and Christ becomes the cornerstone of their new kingdom. Israel
fell because of her disobedience and rejection of the cornerstone, but
to us who believe He is precious, and we want to obey Him in order
to experience His sanctification as well as His salvation.
An experience in the life of Watchman Nee illustrates the point.
He bought a book one day in two volumes, and when he got home he
discovered he had only one. He went back to the bookstore to pick it
up and he said to the clerk, “This has already been paid for. It
belongs to me, but I forgot to take it with me.” So it is in the
Christian life-we often take the salvation in Christ and leave behind
the power to live a mature Christian life. It is already ours, for it is
paid for. All we have to do is go back and pick it up and ask Jesus to
indwell us so that His beauty might be seen in us. When we have a
special desire for the Word of God , and a special delight in the Son
of God, then we will be ready for the third step which is-
III. A SPECIAL DUTY IN THE SERVICE OF GOD.
Several years ago when there was a fear of war a group of
Christians in Benson, Arizona disappeared underground. This part
of the church failed to see its duty by trying to hide from the world.
It gave the world the impression that it is only here to preserve itself.
God has called us and chosen us and commissioned us to be
witnesses in the world. We are not here to defend the kingdom, but
to extend it. The Jews failed because they shut up the light of
revelation and did not let it shine out upon the world. God forbid
that we also fail by hiding our light under a bushel. If Jesus is really
precious how can we help but wanting others to know Him.
The mature Christian senses that his most important duty in
life is to make Jesus known. This is the greatest service anyone can
render to both God and man. It is an immature Christian that
wants to get all wrapped up in himself and never get out in the
world to witness and intercede on behalf of the world. God does not
want us always in church, but out in the world showing forth His
praises. The church is not a building, but it is living stones. It is not
stuck on the corner, but it breaks into pieces and is scattered
through the whole of society. Someone said, “We have too many
saints in stained glass windows and not enough in shoe leather.”
The mature Christian senses that it is his duty to serve God by
witnessing. It is not enough to come to church to worship. He must
let his light shine all through the week. Someone wrote,
Some wish to live within the sound
Of church or chapel bell.
I want to run a rescue shop
Within a yard of hell.
General Booth of the Salvation Army was a man with this
spirit. One time on the cover of his magazine he had a picture of
himself in a boat with men all around the boat drowning. His arm is
stretched out taking the hand of one of those perishing in the water.
His grandson looked at it and said, “Mama, is grandpa trying to
help that man, or is he just shaking his hand?” The question is are
we really trying to help the drowning who are sinking without
Christ, or are just playing religion and shaking their hands? If we
are becoming mature we will recognize that it is our special duty in
the service of God to bear witness to the preciousness of Jesus.
