By Gustav Krös
15/08/2025
When I was a child, I dreamt about being an adult, and I believe that is the reality for all children. I dreamt about the day when I would own a vehicle (hopefully a 4×4), I dreamt about my own home and about travelling the world. Now that I have children of my own, I enjoy listening to their dreams of adulthood: what type of 4×4 or sportscar they would like to own, where in the world they would like to stay, and what career path they would like to follow.
Yes, most of our dreams as children are quite selfish and are primarily about the things we want, but that is the reality of being a child, since maturity is still to be attained along the way.
In the New Testament, Paul also likens new believers to children and encourages them to grow in their newfound faith to become mature believers. That should be our desire as disciples of Jesus: to grow and mature to become more like Him. But unfortunately, it is not that easy, as we see Paul writing to the Church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2:
Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still 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.
It is a sad reality that many Christians in the world today are just like the church in Corinth in the sense that it does not seem like they have a desire to grow in maturity. Very much like children, they maintain a selfish state of mind from the perspective that if they have assurance of salvation, why bother to do more?
The writer of Hebrews had to address a similar issue, as we read in Hebrews 5:12-14:
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.
The reality is that, as children dream about adulthood, so we, as newborn believers, should dream about our maturity in Christ. We should look to the mature believers in our congregations and communities and learn from them as we strive to become more like Jesus. It is supposed to become our new life goal to grow in maturity, and the beauty of it is the fact that we are called to do it together as a Body.
Paul writes about this reality in Ephesians 4:11-16:
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his 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 people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
We therefore see that we are all called to work together towards maturity as one body. Each one of us has a unique calling within our congregation or community, and our responsibility is to bring fulfilment to our unique roles by doing it to the best of our abilities. Within this process, each member in the Body complements the others, and this leads to the equipping and growth of the other members in the Body, so that the Body can grow in maturity.
As members of the Body, we are thus called to not be selfish and purely focus on our own growth, but we are called to humble ourselves and serve one another by fulfilling our responsibility to the best of our ability. When each member functions like this in collaboration with the other parts of the Body, then maturity will be an automatic result, and everyone grows in maturity together.
The reality is that you can only grow to a certain level of maturity on your own, but we were created to function as a body, and by collaborating with the rest of the Body and working in humility with them, you will grow in maturity that’s not attainable by yourself.
In relation to this, we should thus each ask ourselves two questions:
Firstly, is the pursuit of spiritual maturity important to me?
Secondly, if the answer is yes, then we should ask ourselves whether we have found our place of service within our local congregation or community of Believers.
Because true maturity is only attained in service to the rest of the Body.
Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” — Mark 9:35
