Maturing Saints (1 John 2:12–14) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Maturing in Christ doesn’t always follow maturity in age. It should. At least as Christians age so should their spiritual maturity, not due to age itself but due to faithful attentiveness to growth. Yet lack of attention to growth in grace leave some hanging in spiritual childhood far longer than we might expect.

Every church should be a mixture of those new in the faith learning the practices of growth; those firmly in the spiritual conflict learning how to apply the gospel; and those who haven’t arrived (who has!) but find immeasurable joy in the journey. Each helps the other, as our corporate life proves critical to sharpening one another along the way.

But when this balance of maturity gets out of sync, when those who should be at the point of immeasurable joy in the journey show regular signs of whining, complaining, and inconsistency, then the equilibrium of growth gets shaken. What should be examples of steadiness and joy for those younger in the faith and those struggling for consistency are missing, unsettling them in the process.

When those who should be firmly in the trenches of spiritual warfare toward living in the triumph of Christ can’t get past matters of biblical authority, assurance of salvation, loving one another, and basic obedience, then the church’s unity, worship, and ministry falter. Spiritual maturity—and lack of spiritual maturity—doesn’t just affect the individual. It involves all of us. That’s why John uses the images of little children, fathers, and young men in the plural. Christianity is not an individualistic sport!

We grow together. We struggle together. We experience joy together. We mature together. John shows us the process. You belong to Christ so keep growing and maturing in Him. What does maturing in Christ look like? Let’s think about it together.

1. A starting point

Let’s clear the air. There are no magic formulas for spiritual growth. Despite book titles referring to the secrets, keys that unlock the door, and hidden truths, John makes spiritual maturity quite clear. He does so at this point in his letter for a couple of reasons.

First, he has laid out two critical evidences of those who know the Lord, with more to come: obedience to God’s commands (2:3–6) and loving one another (2:7–11). Any sensitive spirit will feel a twinge of struggle at both evidences. None of us fully obeys or completely loves others. That will happen one day but not on this side. Meanwhile, we evaluate our practice and find it lacking. So we need the encouragement and assurance found in the promises of the gospel.

Second, John hasn’t finished laying out hard-to-handle declarations. The next paragraph discusses that one loving the world does not have the love of the Father in him (2:15–17). That tests everything that we see, hear, touch, and feel. So, again, we need to understand that we’re still works in progress through spiritual maturity. We’ve not arrived regarding the world. John knows that we need the foundation of our Christian lives steadied by remembering that our forgiveness and standing with God rests in Christ alone.

That’s why the identification of “little children” (teknia) in verse 12 and “children” (paidia) in verse 13 has more to do with all of us instead of just a few of us. In that sense, we all start as little children that must never forget the basic foundation of the Christian life: we’re forgiven and accepted through Christ.

(1) We are forgiven.

“I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.” Some truths we forget lead us down dangerous paths. Chief among them remains the forgiveness of our sins. If we think that we’re not forgiven, then we take one of three postures: [a] we fret, worry, and get spiritually paralyzed; [b] we ignore it, hoping that it will go away, while we slip and slide spiritually; or [c] even worse, we attempt to achieve or merit forgiv[...]