Babies or Adults?

1 Corinthians 3:1-9

¹ But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. ² I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, ³ for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? ⁴ For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? ⁵ What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶ I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷ So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸ He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. ⁹ For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

One of the themes that runs throughout Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is Christian maturity. Their divisions, strife, and licentious living caused Paul to recognize that the church in Corinth was not maturing in the faith, but instead wallowing in spiritual infancy. We may so closely resemble these characteristics that his words to Corinth may indeed slap us as well. Hopefully, that slap wakes us up rather than making us angry.

Modern theologian and Bible scholar, D.A. Carson has this to say about Paul’s reflections upon the Corinthians.

Not for them solid knowledge of Scripture; not for them mature theological reflection; not for them growing and perceptive Christian thought. They want nothing more than another round of choruses and a “simple message”—something that won’t challenge them to think, to examine their lives, to make choices, and to grow in their knowledge and adoration of the living God.

D.A. Carson. The Cross and Christian Ministry, ©1993. page 72. Baker Books.

I was arranging the items on our welcome center at church yesterday morning. One of the things we give away are copies of a daily devotional guide that contains a short paragraph you can read in less than 30 seconds. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many people use this as their only time with Lord each day. I know – so incredibly judgmental of me. I’ll own it. And while those little booklets are wildly popular, it makes me sad to think that people are giving God those 30 seconds, then forgetting or ignoring Him the rest of the day. I pray those 30 seconds are leading to more but I fear for many they are not. In our culture, I don’t think that the immaturity problem revolves around strife as much as it does around apathy / complacency. If God gets 30 seconds of my day – that’s good enough. For me that is the definition of spiritual infancy and Paul finds that to be a distressing situation.

Faith in Jesus Christ can never be a static thing. You are either growing or fading. Standing still is not an option, for the faith is dynamic. All of us can point to time when our faith wasn’t booming forward, but instead on the decline. In those times, I pray the voice of the Holy Spirit comes through loud and clear, calling us into the deeper places of the faith, where our relationship with God blooms and develops into something more. I pray for maturity, both for myself and for those in my life who study and learn with me. No one wants to wear diapers all of their life and we need to cast off those spiritual diapers as well and enjoy spiritual maturity along with our fellow believers.