As every parent of a 2-year-old knows, language acquisition follows a certain pattern. 

Most of the time, “no!” is the first word mastered. 

“Mine!” is usually the second. 

And the first phrase tends to be: “I do it myself!” 

Parental authority provokes reflexive refusal, reflexive possessiveness, and reflexive autonomy, right from the beginning. 😊

Here’s the truth: the perfect Father, our Father in Heaven, hears “no!” “mine!” and “I do it myself!” from His children (us) much of the time, too. 

Amazingly, even though His authority is absolute and perfect in all its aspects, our Father in Heaven hears us out and gives us space to “grow up”. God not only doesn’t lose patience with us, God supports us in our toddler-temper processing, too. Like good human parents with headstrong rug rats, God enthusiastically cheerleads even our most clumsy, feeble efforts and positions Himself to catch us when we trip ourselves up.

 The wonderful news is that our days of immaturity don’t have to last forever. “Growing up into Christ” really can happen. Not, sadly, in the automatic way that a healthy toddler becomes a child becomes a teenager becomes an adult, but in a more intentional (and through a more optional / voluntary) series of decisions. 

This growing up is both the primary task of discipleship and the life-work of the church. This growing up has to occur if we are to live as the limbs of Christ’s Body – responsive to the logic of Christ’s headship. But the hope inherent in the growth dynamic is powerfully sustaining: God sees and loves us as we are; God enables us to grow up into what we could never be without His animating Spirit within us.

What growing up looks like

This unique, Spirit-animated growing up happens spectacularly in Peter, who went from cowardice to courage so complete that even in his martyrdom he sought Christ’s glory. As both disciple and as “the Rock” on which Christ’s church is built, Peter’s example can edify and encourage us. Similarly, those chapters of church history when the church is recognizably Christ’s Body – stooping to serve the sick, the hungry, and the lost; loving the “least of these” well; humbly offering the gospel to all – the Spirit-animated “growing up” manifest in those chapters is ever the engine behind Christ-glorifying Kingdom movements!

Step by Step

Recognizing and un-learning the “no!” “mine!” and “I do it myself!” impulses in our own heads begins our maturation process as individuals. Next, we put ourselves deliberately under God’s authority and strive to seek God’s will, over and before our own. 

In the church, members’ collective maturation combines with members’ ongoing support and encouragement of one another. This combination keeps the Body working under Christ’s headship and “growing up” in Christ together, as a congregation. For individuals and for the church, belonging to Christ and living under Christ’s headship is the whole point. Growing up in Christ, as Christ’s Body and members of Christ’s church, is the ultimate source of miraculous power, transcendent purpose, and pure joy – for each and for all of us. 

One step forward, two steps…

In the same way that children often need to relearn lessons multiple times as they grow up, Christian maturation is rarely a linear process. Even as we are learning to depend on Christ for everything – forgiveness, redemption, righteousness, fruitfulness, purpose, power, peace, everything – we can still operate as if we were independent, because Christ will not abridge our freedom to choose.

The same is true of the Church. As the Body of Christ, the church is self-evidently under the headship of Christ. The church exists only to serve Christ, only to glorify Christ, only to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. But while Christ is the Head of the Church, even here Christ’s headship is not coercive. Christ restrains his authority to preserve the freedom of His beloved. 

Freedom to choose

Therefore, the church, like every individual human, operates in the astonishing place of privileged freedom to choose – or reject – the One who is the head. The church, as a Body whose limbs / members are individual believers, is exponentially free. Each church member has to make up his / her mind, daily, as to who is in charge of their heads; Christ’s headship over the church must be re-chosen, over and over again, by the members whose membership constitute the Body.

Synopsis and synthesis… for sustaining hope

The church, Christ’s Body, beloved by the Lord (as is every person), has the freedom to choose (as does every person) because of the Lord’s love. 

The church – like Peter, like each of us – has just two options: God, or self. 

The church resides, for now, in a fallen world, with flawed, fickle, frail people as its constituents – people prone to misuse that freedom in every conceivable way. People prone to take the wrong option, multiple times a day! (Aren’t we? Let’s just be honest!)

Therefore, the substantive hope in which we root our growth is not in our perfectly growing up (thank God!). Rather, our hope is in our already perfect Savior, who offers us ongoing grace in the growing up and even in the growing pains and pruning process!

HOPE – it’s real!

Friends, in the end, we have to land on HOPE… because our Lord, our Head, the One whose Body is our church home, promises us hope.

Peter, our church-rock and forerunner in Christian journeying and maturation, exhorts us, ^“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. ¹⁴ Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.” (1 Peter 1:13 – 14) 

The author of Hebrews summarizes succinctly, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we possess, for he who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23) 

King David, forebear to the Messiah, sang of hope, “But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love;” (Psalm 33:18), and “I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.” (Psalm 130:5) 

Perhaps the most hope-filled image of all comes from the prophet Isaiah, who wrote so passionately and persuasively of the Messiah, centuries before Christ’s birth. Regarding hope, Isaiah said, “Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Yes, growing up is HARD. 

But the hope we have in Christ is stronger and infinitely more enduring than any “hard” we face as we follow Him. 

Individuals growing up in Christ, like churches growing up in Christ, glorify Christ in their growing… even as they shine Christ’s hope to the world and invite others to come and grow, too.

Perhaps it’s only fitting that we close these thoughts with Jesus’s own words on the matter, as He prayed to the Father for the disciples:

 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20 – 23)

Amen!