Practicing Christian Leadership, Mentor's Guide, MG11

2 5 8 /

P R A C T I C I N G C H R I S T I A N L E A D E R S H I P

This devotion deals with the call to grow up to Christian maturity. In a real sense, a believer grows in three senses, or put another way, experiences three dimensions of being saved by Jesus Christ. First and foundationally speaking, a Christian is saved as a result of the sacrifice of Christ, which allows us to think of our salvation in Christ as a past event (Titus 3.4–5; cf. Eph. 2.5–8). In this first sense, we have already been saved from the wrath of God and the punishment we so justly deserved by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. We called on the name of the Lord Jesus (Rom. 10.9–13) and entered into the Kingdom of God by faith (Mark 10.23–27). Simultaneously, we were sealed by the Holy Spirit, and baptized (placed into) the Church as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12.13; Gal. 3.26–28). We are also “being saved” as we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit, who makes us slaves of righteousness through his power and brings release from the power and reign of sin (Gal. 5.16ff.; Rom. 6.6, 12–14, 19). As we yield to the Holy Spirit we continue to grow towards Christian maturity (Eph. 4.13; Col. 1.28). Believers are described, then, by the Apostle Paul as “those who are being saved ” (cf. 2 Cor. 2.15; cf. 1 Cor. 1.18). Moreover, Peter also challenges disciples of Jesus to grow up in their salvation, making their calling and election sure (see 1 Pet. 2.2; 2 Pet.1.4-10, cf. Heb. 6.9). We work out in our lives what God through his Spirit is working within us (Phil. 2.12-13 with Eph. 2.10). In this sense, as babies born anew in Christ, we are now to grow up into Christ into all things a fully mature believers (Eph. 4.9-16), and then become teachers of others (Heb. 5.11-14). Of course, our salvation will only be completely consummated at the Second Coming of our Lord where, in the future, we experience the full “redemption of the body” from our susceptibility to corruption and death to our conformity to the body of the risen Jesus (Phil. 3.20-21), and the entrance of the “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness has its home” (2 Pet. 3.13). To ask believers to “act their age” is an exhortation to maturity, to disdain remaining a spiritual infant, to call believers to attain to the full measure of the stature of Christ which is God’s will for the believer in the midst of his people. Things which are both understandable and excusable for a baby or an infant would be scandalous for a teenager or young adult, let alone a fully grown and mature

2 Page 47 Devotion