You need to grow up, Paul tells the Ephesian believers. Now, they were grown up - fully-formed adults who’d taken the familiar paths through family life, work life, community life, including that big decision to deviate from the practice of the religion of their birth, to follow Christ. But nevertheless, to this audience of responsible adults, Paul said, you need to grow up. You need to come ‘to maturity [in the faith], to the measure of the full stature of Christ’.

Now if I said to you, ’you need to grow up’ - how would you take it? For you are grown up. Let me approach the question in another way: by asking you, when did you become an adult?

A talk for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, 1 August 2021.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks.