Gauging Maturity

I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

1 John 2:12-13

The purpose of the church is to bring God's people to maturity. The apostle John has given us a helpful way to gauge various levels of maturity. When he speaks of certain Christians as little children, the fact which characterizes them is that they know their sins are forgiven. Certainly that is the first thing a new Christian learns. Therefore, as long as they are celebrating in that stage of understanding, glorying in the fact that their sins are forgiven, they can be lovingly classified as little children. John doesn't mean, of course, that they are to forsake their initial excitement over having their sins forgiven. On the contrary, they should have a continually increasing awareness of the forgiveness of sin as they go through life. He simply means that a focus on the joy of being forgiven marks the initial stage of the Christian life — not maturity.

Then he says, I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. For a long time, I thought John was referring to God the Father, the One who is from the beginning. But thinking back to the way he opens the letter, I began to realize that this is really a reference to the Son: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of life (1 John 1:1). Here he is obviously referring to the Lord Jesus Himself.

The mark of being a spiritual father, then, is a deep and thorough understanding of the deity and the humanity of Jesus, the fullness of the revelation that has come to us through the Son. It is to have a deep sense of closeness to him, having walked with him through much of life. Out of that closeness comes a clarity of understanding of Jesus' words to such a degree that there is a grasp of the great doctrines which he came to reveal. This level of maturity means to display an understanding and a manifestation of the same character which Jesus displayed, along with the evidence of compassion, tolerance, patience, justice, and forgiveness which only a longterm relationship with the Son of God can produce.

Finally, the young men are characterized as having overcome the evil one, as having reached a stage of maturity where there is an understanding and a practice of the way to resist temptation and distinguish between good and evil. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14). The kind of person who is overcoming the wicked one is able to see evil as evil (even when it looks good!) by the revelation of the Scriptures and by the understanding given by the Spirit.

Lord, I want to attain these goals and display them to the world around me.