Lesson 18 – Maturity in Faith
Read Ephesians 4:1-16 - https://www.bible.com/bible/59/eph.4.esv
Our last purpose for the gifts God gives to each of us believers is maturity in Him. It is the nature of children to believe everything they see and hear. God does not want us, His children, to be like this. But He also doesn’t want us to be cynical and untrusting as children can become when they discover someone has been telling them things that are not true. Maturity in our daily lives comes with time and experience, and leads us to develop discernment. God also wants us to grow to maturity in Him. He wants us to be discerning in what we hear, read, and accept as truth.
The Apostle Paul commended the believers from Berea, in Acts 17, because they searched the Scriptures to see if what he was teaching them was really true. An amazing note here, Paul apparently never wrote a letter of correction or doctrine to the believers of Berea because they knew how to examine issues for themselves, against the measuring stick of Scripture, to see if it was accurate.
This is what God wants us to do with our gifts as well, to be willing to be measured for accuracy by the Scriptures, and to also hold other believers accountable to that same measuring standard. God does not want us to be deceived by the enemy’s ploys. Indeed, Jesus says in Matthew 10:16 that He wants us to be “wise as serpents, and innocent as doves.”
The second part of maturity that God wants us to achieve is the ability to speak the truth in love – verse 15 of our Ephesians 4 passage. Someone asked me just this week, what is love? For a true picture of what real God-love looks like, we have to go to 1 Corinthians 13. Look at the list of things to describe love beginning in verse 4:
Love is patient
Love is kind
Love doesn’t envy
Love doesn’t boast
Love isn’t arrogant
Love isn’t rude
Love doesn’t seek its own
Love isn’t irritable
Love isn’t resentful
Love doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing
Love rejoices in the truth
Love bears all things
Love believes all things
Love hopes all things
Love endures all things
Love never ends
That’s a tall measuring stick to measure ourselves by. Does speaking the truth in love mean that I must always say what is true, even when the truth will hurt someone? If we speak, we must speak the truth. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do, however, is not say anything. The key is, if we let God speak through us, He will always speak what is in His nature – He is love, and He is truth.
*God wants us to grow to maturity in _____
*Jesus says in Matthew 10:16 that He wants us to be “wise as _____, and innocent as _____.”
*When God speaks through us, He speaks in _____ and in _____