Related to the theme of grasping and receiving discussed in the last post is the theme of maturity. James Jordan has discussed this idea at length in a number of his works, but I think it is worth dwelling on. It seems to me that one of the central themes of the Bible with regards to man is maturity. God’s intention is to grow us up into maturity. Without going through a full catalogue of why I think this is so, I think a few things are worth mentioning.

First, the Bible as a unified story presents man as moving, through a long and circuitous route due to sin, from a garden-sanctuary to a garden-city-sanctuary. In Genesis we have a garden that needs to be worked by the man and brought, under his sinless dominion with a view to spreading this cultivation and glorification downstream, to the rest of the world. No doubt this plan is complicated by sin, but even in Abraham we see the plan going forward in Genesis 12 with God’s promise to bless the nations through Abraham’s seed.

Skipping forward then, we have in Revelation the picture of fulfillment and it is a great Garden that, through cultivation and sinless dominion, has been transformed into a Garden-City. Like the original garden it remains a sanctuary where God dwells with man, but it has been matured.

I believe that this perspective is immensely helpful in the practical, day to day, out-workings of our faith. For one thing it necessitates an optimistic eschatology. If God is maturing his work it stands to reason that we, as His people play a part in that. We are among those who are bringing about the Garden-City. This means that what we do matters. How we treat the environment, God’s very good creation, matters. To be a Christian and not be an environmentalist is to be a hypocrite. The environment is God’s good creation and it groans under man’s mistreatment. The world longs for man to be reconciled to God so that we can see clearly the ways in which we are destroying what God has made.

This also means that there will be plenty to do in the new heavens and new earth. We will have eternity to learn how man may live in harmony with the earth. In some sense the hippies were right. Man must learn to coexist with nature. This doesn’t mean we embrace pantheism and worship the earth, but it means we treat it like a Rembrandt. We don’t exploit it for gain with no thought to the consequences. To be sure God gave the world to man to have dominion over it, but the dominion we are to have is like the dominion a father has over his son, not like the dominion a despot has over his subjects. The new heavens and the new earth will give us eternity to learn how better to use the earth God has created without abusing it, but we are called to begin the task now.

A further implication of the theme of maturity is that it prevents us from focussing exclusively on conversion. As a young man raised in a dispensational church I struggled constantly with the question of ‘What now?’ I had been saved, prayed the sinners prayer and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Consequently I sought meaning in pseudo-salvation experiences wherein I constantly re-dedicated my life to Christ, and resolved to redouble my efforts to give everything to him and dedicate every waking moment to witnessing.

But ultimately I was unsatisfied. I knew that this could not be all God had for me. What I later came to realize was that I was hanging out in the shallow end. God had a path for me to walk, a path that would lead to greater maturity. Unfortunately I couldn’t see that ‘getting saved’ was merely the first step. No wonder I was frustrated. I was attempting to constantly relive my birth.

Paradoxically, this is the danger of the modern trend in Reformed churches to focus almost exclusivelly on salvation by grace alone. It isn’t that salvation by grace alone is unbliblical, but that it isn’t the end of the story. We are saved unto something. Salvation, in the New Testament is often symbolized as a birth. Similarly Baptism, as the sign of Salvation, is pictured as a new birth, and indeed is often administered near the time of birth. But we all know that newborns are not yet what they are intended to be. Indeed, that is why we lament especially over the death of a young person. They have not matured. They have not experienced all that life offers, nor have they been given the opportunity to contribute fully to the world.

My point is that salvation by faith is a true and Biblical doctrine, but it is the beginning of the story. We are saved unto good works that God has prepared in advance for us. God has work for us to do. As he matures us we participate in his work of maturing the cosmos to the point that they are ready for the return of Christ. God is preparing us to be Kings and Queens like our first parents even as he is preparing this world to once again be a fit place for us to rule.

Finally, these twin themes of grasping vs receiving and maturity lead to a better and more biblical appreciation of the image of God in all men than any other perspective I am aware of. When we begin to realize that all men and women, although made in the image and likeness of God, are fundamentally immature and in need of the maturing that God brings about so that they can receive what they naturally tend to grasp at we can better understand sin. What I mean is that, the natural man, made in the image of God generally seeks things that are good. The problem is not what he seeks but how he seeks it. The natural man grasps at good things because, in the depths of his being he knows good and evil. However, as one who has not been transformed by the work of the Spirit, and thus as one who has not accepted the path of maturation laid out by the Creator he grasps at these things rather than receiving them at the proper time and in the proper way.

What do I mean? Consider the sins that are common to mankind. Lust. Man grasps after sex. Sex is good. God invented it. Indeed, when rightly enjoyed it is the highest form of human affection and communion. However, when grasped after in immaturity it is a violation, an intrusion and a defilement. When sought with a member of the same sex it is a perversion and a disgrace. Consider further, the desire for wealth. Wealth is a gift of God. Often it is a sign of blessing, but when it is grasped after by the immature man it is a source of pain and strife. Consider alcohol. Alcohol is a good gift from God capable of brining refreshment, joy and rest; but when it is indulged in in immaturity it brings violence, pain and shame. These are just a few obvious examples but I hope they illustrate the way that maturity, as a primary theme of Scripture accounts fully for the image of God in all men. Men and women naturally seek what is good, however, because of the immaturity of their hearts they often seek it in the wrong ways.

This also serves to provide a level of modesty to the stark difference between unbelievers and believers. While we must maintain the distinction, it is important for us to realize that even as believers there is a maturing process. We should not be surprised to find among immature believers behaviors that are similar to the world. Consider Corinth. This does not mean that we should accept these behaviors, indeed it is only Christians who have access to the maturity of faith that leads us away from sin, but it helps us to understand that there is a degree of common ground. Unbelievers are humans, made in the image of God who stand in various degrees of immaturity. Christian also stand in various degrees of immaturity. The difference is that Christian have been placed on a path and received the Holy Spirit so that they might be led to maturity. Thus, there obligation is to continue down that road and thereby display to the world the maturity, which is accompanied by joy, that comes through following Christ. It is as the world sees our maturity, and thus our ability to live well in the world that God created for maturing people, that they will begin to see the “relevance” of the gospel. In many ways it stands to our shame that the world views evangelicalism as a collective of immature people who live in a fantasy realm and don’t take the problems of living in a very broken world seriously.