Nov 30, 2023
…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. (Ephesians 4:12-14)
What does growing up to maturity require of us? Nothing we
weren’t firstly given!
Eugene Peterson, across his various writings, is fond of drawing the parallels between growing up in the Christian life and growing up as a human. Paul seems to appreciate the analogy as well. As humans, all of us start in infancy, and for infants, everything is purely a gift. Did they choose to be born or do anything to accomplish it? No. This life and birth are given to them. As are food, shelter, clothing, cleaning, nurture, and relationship. Each of us, when born, are merely the receiver of gifts. This is where our life begins. Months and even years of receiving gifts precede any intelligible response from us through language and appropriate action. All of these things must be learned, and they are learned through the gifts we receive. We are smiled at before we learn to smile. We are spoken into before we learn to respond with speech. We are recipients before we learn to be helpers or givers.
So it is in the Christian life. To grow up from defenceless infancy into “the fullness of Christ” requires an inordinate amount of gifts to be poured into our lives. Thankfully—Christ, the one who ascended to fill the whole universe with his rule and reign, has just such an infinite stockpile of gifts to give. He pours his speech—his word and his life on earth as the Word—into our lives. He also pours his Spirit into us with a diversity of gifts, all of which are necessary to the growing up of the community of faith from infancy into a mature body of Christ.
While growing up from infancy does transform us from defenceless to defended—it does not transform us from dependant to independent. Independence may be a cultural value of North America in the 21st century—but it has little value in the Christian life. Growing from infancy transforms us from dependence to “interdependence,” a dependence on God and one another that comes even as we ourselves are depended upon. Just like living stones built into a spiritual house that each rest on and support one another—so each gift and each individual person is necessary to the support, growth, and flourishing of all the others. In fact, this interdependence is the mature body’s strength and protection against the wind and waves of a tumultuous world and the immature scheming of others.
At this point, Eugene Peterson draws our attention back to verse 1 of this chapter, where Paul exhorts us to “live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” “Worthy” is a word picture in the Greek that envisions an ancient weighing scale with two baskets suspended on either end of a beam and a fulcrum in the middle. Set in one basket of the weighing scale is the calling to which we have been called by God. In the other basket is the way we live that calling in our daily lives. To live worthily implies a congruence, a balance between the calling and the living.
Gifts are the means by which Christ equips his people to develop such a mature and worthy balance between his call and our living. But it does require that we take up those gifts and use them lovingly and responsibly in service of one another. The calling gives us the direction, the gift enables, and the living use of these gifts toward this calling is how we practice the adult life of maturity in Christ.
What again was that calling? “…you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (4:4b-6). We are called together to be the one, mature, interdependent body of Christ, united in our diversity. It is a work we cannot do alone. But in Christ, this is also the fullness of what we already are. It is his gift, and our goal. A work that necessarily draws us together with all the saints.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)