Hebrews 6.1 invites and beckons and woos and calls and commands us: “Let us go on to maturity.” The Greek word used here for mature comes from teleios, meaning complete, or perfect. It has the meaning of something that has lived into its design and purpose. The purpose of an acorn is not to remain a nut, but to grow into a mighty oak tree. The purpose of an architectural drawing is not to be used as a piece of art on paper, but rather to lead to a building. Until that building is built and being used, the architectural drawing isn’t complete. The purpose of a grape seed is not to remain a seed, but to grow into a vine, and the purpose of that vine is to make grapes and bear fruit. The grape seed is mature when it’s a vine bearing fruit.
Likewise, the purpose of our conversion and salvation is not primarily to save us from something eternally, as important as that is. No, we are forgiven and saved for a greater purpose. The purpose of our salvation is so that our lives can be conformed and transformed into the very likeness of Jesus Christ, so that we can live like Him, love like Him, heal like Him, act like Him, know the Father like Him, and be used like Him, because He lives in us. His Holy Spirit has taken up residence inside our bodies, so that we can actually be who we are – the Body of Christ in the world. In the world we become His hands, His feet, and His heart. In the world we become His temple, where God lives. In a word, or more accurately, Paul’s words in Ephesians 4, “We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Jesus Christ…to mature to manhood, adulthood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” That is the call.
What does that look like? A simple image helps us get our mind around spiritual growth. It’s the dominant biblical image, is the one that is used first and most often in the writings of the early church, and is the simplest to understand because we’ve all experienced it.
Very simply, the way we grow spiritually has profound parallels to how we grow physically as human beings. The human life cycle helps us to understand the spiritual life cycle. Just as in our physical lives we experience stages and seasons -birth, youth, adulthood, and maturity – so also do experience them in our spiritual lives. The difference is that in our spiritual lives it has nothing to do with our chronological age. Just because you are 55 doesn’t mean that you are mature. It’s possible and frankly not uncommon for someone to be in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and still be a spiritual infant. That is what Hebrews 5:12-14 is about. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
It’s not as common, but still is possible that a person in their 20s can actually be quite an adult spiritually. And, just as there are awkward, disorienting and painful experiences of transitions between the seasons of our lives, like adolescence and our midlife years that happen in our real lives, so also we experience similar things in our spiritual development. It is in these transitions of adolescence and midlife years that spiritually many people end up in the shoals, making a shipwreck of their faith. If we don’t understand what the transitions in the spiritual life cycle are, we will be absolutely unprepared to what happens when God doesn’t deliver the way we expected Him to in our youthful understanding of Him.
This image of the human life cycle applied to the spiritual is all over the New Testament. We see it in Jesus’ teachings, in John’s and Peter’s letters. It’s in almost every one of Paul’s letters, and in Hebrews. Jesus says, “You must be born again.” The message in the rest of the New Testament is to “Keep growing and to keep going on to maturity!”