Some Advice: Spiritual Maturity

 

Sadao Watanabe: The Twelve Disciples (197x)

When pondering what it means to be spiritually mature, and how such maturity might be achieved, it’s important to consider the purpose of spiritual maturity.

Israel was established by a covenant with God to be a nation of priests to the world (Exodus 19:5-6). The Law consecrated Israel as a people apart from all the rest. Anyone who joined themself to Israel would become bound by the covenant. Caleb, a descendent of Abraham through Midian, thus becomes reckoned as a descendent of Judah. Aliens who lived “in the Land” (i.e. under the jurisdiction of Israel) were not bound by the Law (apart from four specific injunctions enumerated in Acts 15:19-20) but were only bound by the so-called Noahide Laws common to all nations. [Contrary to popular belief, the Sabbath was considered the one law most definitive of Israel―not circumcision, which was observed by all other descendants of Abraham such as the Edomites, the Midianites, and the Ishmaelites.]

Jesus has now reconciled the world to himself, thereby accomplishing the priestly ministry for which Israel was established, and we who are in Jesus constitute a spiritual nation of priests charged with extending his ministry to the ends of the Earth (Luke 24:45-48). Just as Israel served as a long-term repository of the accumulated knowledge of God, the twelve apostles (like the twelve tribes) served as a repository of the knowledge of what Jesus said and did during his public ministry (Acts 1:21-26). The apostles were more a collective repository of the knowledge of Jesus than individual repositories of this knowledge, and only after a general consensus had taken root among the twelve over a period of two decades do we see them begin to venture away from Jerusalem in various directions.

One might wonder about the purpose of sending the apostles out in pairs to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God. The first disciples joined themselves to Jesus after he returned from fasting in the wilderness following his baptism (John 1:29-51). They traveled with him to Galilee and back to Judea for Passover, after which they spent several weeks announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God and baptizing people in the Jordan. They then returned to their homes in Galilee until Jesus recalled them to follow him as he preached the Kingdom of God throughout Galilee from early June through late August. This message (the Sermon on the Mount) is what he then sent them out to preach (from September to March) so that it would be indelibly impressed upon their hearts.

Even as millenia separate us from the earliest disciples, we do well to meditate on their witness so that we ourselves might be transformed by the renewal of our minds to serve as living repositories of the gospel and living testimony of its power, which is primarily a matter of following Jesus as he reveals himself to us through the testimony of the apostles by the power of his Spirit (Romans 12:1-2; Hebrews 4:12). Hearing words of life that come from God will make those whom the Spirit draws desire more; and as each is gradually transformed, so each will manifest the will of God just as surely as water flows downward without any predetermined plan. Those who wish to see the face of God will ponder the scriptures; those who see others in need will help; those who worry will pray; and those who burn inside will speak.

By contrast, practicing spiritual disciplines to mold ourselves into the image of Jesus often becomes a burdensome trap that actually hinders spiritual growth. How many people even understand the meaning of fasting? Fasting as an exercise in mastery over oneself is a far cry from experiencing death (and purging) as a prelude to rebirth; mastery is indeed the very opposite of surrender. All this to say that drawing others along with us is different from leadership per se, and maturity is not something that we can accomplish mechanically but is something that the Spirit accomplishes as we surrender to the testimony of scripture. Stated this way, leadership is involves being a good follower. 

Scripture thus enjoins that elders (i.e. pastors) be chosen from among those who have followed for many years and who are known by their fruits. The lives of such men recommend them to the congregation as men worthy to follow, but they are chosen not by the congregation but by existing elders. Moreover, there should be a plurality of elders who serve the congregation in submission to one another―scripture does not envision anything like a lead or unitary pastor, but that is nonetheless the model we follow because we clearly do not regard scripture as a suitable authority on such matters. We are also warned that young men are not ideal candidates for elder, but that is our common practice. One thing on which we do concur with scripture is that deacons are to be put forward by the congregation as trusted men.

Beyond this, we each have gifts of various sorts that manifest themselves on their own over time, and these make up the muscles and sinews of the congregation to accomplish the works of God in our corner of the world. There’s necessary correspondence between giftedness and leadership, but something like a distribution of labor usually develops on its own. This is the milieu in which families merge to a greater or lesser extent to everyone’s general benefit in a healthy congregation. The point is that we need to think of spiritual growth as something organic that we accomplish together as opposed to something more formal that we accomplish individually.

Some Advice: Studying Scripture

Michel Keck Romans 12.2 (2021)

General advice about studying Scripture:

Those who submit to Scripture to be transformed by the Holy Spirit will gradually come to clearly understand every passage of scripture without recourse to commentaries, which at best tend to state the obvious while ignoring thorny details and at worst lead people astray. Some obscure passages of Scripture may require painstaking background investigation to unravel, but the explanation will usually only underscore what that person has already come to understand. The additional insight is nevertheless valuable as a non-falsifiable confirmation and may even fine tune one's perspective.

By contrast, those who seek to master Scripture will never understand what it teaches because God will not be mastered by anyone. Such people will not only miss the big picture but will also stumble over obscure passages that tempt them down fruitless paths of inquiry. As a counter-intuitive corollary to this point, one should avoid trying to read orthodox doctrine into scripture because a different (also orthodox) doctrine may be the actual subtext of the passage under consideration and because no doctrine should be considered orthodox that can only be defended by force.

The main focus should be to follow the argument developed in a given passage of Scripture on its own terms with no preconditions. For example, the opening chapters of Genesis should be read (however much suspension of disbelief is required) as literally as possible. Otherwise, the logic of events will be impossible to follow. One will need to develop a habit of profound trust in God that things somehow work themselves out, but that does not mean that things happened exactly as described because: (a) all of Scripture is a kind of genealogy, and (b) Semitic genealogies are notorious for "placeholders" of an invariably ideological nature.

Study Scripture for what it will yield for you in the long run (10-20 years) rather than for something with an expiration date of a few days. One approach undergirds spiritual maturity and the other guarantees life-long spiritual immaturity. One corollary to this point is that pastors should concentrate of studying Scripture for its own sake (i.e. for their own sake) independently of sermon preparation, and sermon preparation should rely on understandings of Scripture that are already part of the pastor's life. Otherwise, well... 

Bonus advice about studying Scripture:

Consult monographs or articles by scholars in the relevant fields of language, anthropology, or history before relying on any second-hand information from Bible scholars. "Abba" does not mean "Daddy;" it is the Aramaic word for "Father" and is used as an honorary greeting denoting closeness and respect for benefactors. Hebrew vocabulary is not more nuanced than English; it simply has fewer words, which of necessity accommodate multiple related but distinct meanings. The Corinth of Paul's day was a Roman colony built on the ruins of the Greek city razed by Rome in 146 BCE, and the social and political nature of this city (capitol of the Roman province of Achaia) was entirely unlike that of the original city: homosexuality was punishable by death and adultery by exile. Many such examples of widely accepted but flawed understandings abound.