True story. My parents had a friend who had made several bad life choices, and things were not looking up; but he had figured out a sure-fire solution to change that. Back in the day, if you were not a good speller, you were sunk. There was only one course of action: If you didn’t know how to spell a word, you had to look it up in the dictionary. But to many, that only added insult to injury: If you didn’t know how to spell it, how could you find it in a dictionary? Our friend had a solution. He created a dictionary of misspelled words. He figured out every possible way a word could be misspelled, wrote those words down phonetically and then put them in his own dictionary. It took years to put it together, but he figured it would sell like hätˌkākes. Unfortunately, right before he submitted his dictionary to a publisher, the electronic spell checker hit the market; and overnight, all his work became obsolete. How do you spell, “oops”?   

How do you spell spiritual maturity? That’s a good question and one that needs special attention.  See, most of us understand that our calling in life is to grow in Christ, but most of us struggle to know exactly what that ought to look like. As a result, we are in the same sort of problem my parents’ friend was in: How can I grow in my discipleship when I don’t know how to define it? And this is not a minor issue. Discipleship is at the heart of our commitment to Christ. C.S. Lewis makes this point and does so bluntly. He wrote: “If the Church is not making disciples, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer was even more brutal: “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” But there’s the rub: how can we be fully formed disciples of Jesus when we don’t know how to “spell” what that looks like? So, let me ask you: How would you spell spiritual maturity?

Maybe you’re a Sermon on the Mount sort of person. That’s a great approach. Maybe Matthew 7:21 sums up spiritual maturity for you: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” I couldn’t agree more. Doing God’s will is a great summary, but let me ask you one question: What are you going to do to become spiritually mature based on this? What’s your plan? If you’re like me, doing God’s will is a great summary, but I have no idea how to put it into practice in a way that is doable, let alone well-organized so that, when I wake up each morning, I know what I am going to do to grow. Doing God’s will is a great statement, but it is too big and too broad to be helpful. So maybe we ought to consider Jesus’ statement in Matthew 7:24: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” This is a great summary. All we need to do is put Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount into practice and we are there. There’s great truth here, but I wonder if it also might be just a tad too large (and maybe a tad too difficult with its “if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out” and “turn the other cheek”). How about Jesus’ summary at the end of chapter 5 (48). There, he says: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I think we will all agree, that is the perfect definition of spiritual maturity, but I also think that, while that is a great ending point, it is not a great place to start. Loving everybody we meet perfectly sounds like life in heaven and not so much my life on earth.

Maybe we would be better served by looking outside the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe we should just go with how Jesus defines discipleship. He says in Luke 9:23: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” I love that, but is it the goal at the end or is it the method all of us must use to get to the end? And isn’t it too heavily weighted on the reactive side of life, instead of being proactive? I love it, but I am not so sure it works for our purpose.

Maybe Paul has a solution. He states his goal for spiritual maturity in Philippians 3 (10-11): “To know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” Now, that is a great definition; but even after thinking about for a while, I’m still not sure what I am to do. Quick, as you are reading this, demonstrate the power of Jesus’ resurrection? My guess is that after you’ve gone through something extremely difficult, you discover that the only way you made it through was by the power of Jesus’ resurrection, but you rarely see it beforehand.  And that makes it hard to use as discipleship guide.

Maybe James’ definition is a little more concrete and applicable. James writes (James 1:27): “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” That’s nice. It’s crisp and clean and focused. It even has three straightforward objectives to work on. We are to offer our lives to God. We are to look after orphans and widows in their distress. We are to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world. But is this too narrow?

Or maybe should we turn to the apostle John who says in 1 John 5:2-3: “This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands.” I like that. It is succinct and powerful. Love God, love others and keep his commands. What do you think? Is this how we spell spiritual maturity? 

Here’s my problem: There are all sorts of definitions and descriptions of what spiritual maturity looks like in the Bible! Everyone seems to spell it a little differently; and while each spelling is great and true and powerful, they all seem too big and nebulous. That’s why some people try to narrow things down and posit a simple concept as being at the heart of spiritual maturity. For instance, some people believe that one thing is social justice. Others think it must be engaging worship. Others argue it is love. Others believe it is prayer. And still others argue that spiritual maturity is best defined by what we don’t do (back in the day, we used to say it this way: “Good Christians don’t smoke, drink or chew or go out with girls who do,” but there are many other ways that people say what good Christians don’t do). But no matter how we look at it, it always comes down to this: Everyone has a different definition of what spiritual maturity ought to look like! 

So what do we do? How should we define spiritual maturity? Scot McKnight posed an answer that, at first glance, I thought had to be wrong; but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. He wrote: “A local church determines what the Christian life looks like for the people in that church.” How do we define spiritual maturity? We define it in a way that reflects us in this particular time and geographical setting. And when each church defines spiritual maturity in their own context, then when we come together, our individual definitions will join together and produce a perfect symphony of a comprehensive understanding of spiritual maturity.

We have now changed the conversation: What is River’s Edge’s definition of what spiritual maturity looks like? I would like to suggest that we use our eight core values as our definition. They are succinct, doable, meaningful and biblical. And they are distinctly us. These eight values drive us as we pursue what it means to follow Jesus in our day and time. And what are these eight values? This we believe:

  1. We believe we need to be driven by grace.  
  2. We believe we need to love one another.  
  3. We believe that lost people matter to God.  
  4. We believe that we are called to grow.  
  5. We believe that we grow as we give ourselves away.  
  6. We believe that we are called to be authentic.  
  7. We believe we are called to be relevant.  
  8. We believe we are called to pray.  

We now have a plan for our discipleship. We now have the tools to spell “spiritual maturity.” Now, all we need to do is to begin the process. And that we will do that next week. But realize this: If we fail in this, we will be forced to spell “oops” for a long, long time.