The Implications of Christ's Plan for His Church - Part 2

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This week as I was anticipating our looking together at a passage that encourages us to grow, I was reminded that all living things grow. That is a basic fact of life itself. The question is what exactly is growth? The World Book Encyclopedia defines growth this way. It's "an increase in the number or size of a living thing's cells." Every human being begins life as a single cell. That cell takes in materials and changes them into what it needs to grow.

So, that single cell grows from within, but eventually that cell will multiply and divide to form other cells. And that process of building, multiplying and dividing is what we call growth. The encyclopedia goes on to say this, "As the cells grow, they also change in character. Some grow into the tissues that form skin, others into muscle tissues. Still others form body organs such as the heart, the lungs and the liver." It's really an incredible process of what happens in the midst of that growth.

The most intensive time of growth in human development doesn't come, as some of us think from watching our teenagers eat, during puberty, but rather the most intensive time of human growth comes during the last two months before birth.

If we were to sort of rewind back to about two months after conception, we would find the baby fully formed, but only about an inch and a half in length. At seven months (fast forwarding now to seven months after conception) the child has grown to about two pounds and about fifteen inches on average. But from the seventh month through months eight and nine, in those two months, the child will grow on average about fifty percent taller to reach somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one inches, and in those two months will more than triple in weight from the two pounds, on average, at seven months to the six to eight pounds, on average, at birth two months later.

Now thankfully, we don't continue to grow at that rate; although, sometimes we may feel that way. But until full adulthood, which varies from eighteen to thirty years old (by the way I mean physical adulthood), every healthy human continues to grow.

And as Paul reminds us this morning, where there is spiritual life, there will be continuing spiritual growth as well. I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians 4. For those of you who are visiting with us, let me tell you that you find us about two years in to a wonderful journey through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus. It has been a great time of study as we've seen in the first 3 chapters what God has done in His great eternal plan. And now we're discovering what He expects from us in the second half of this great letter.

Chapter 4 in the second half of the book begins: "walk worthy of your calling." And the very first way we can walk worthy of our calling is by preserving the unity that God has created in the church. One means for preserving that unity, we've learned, is when the church lives out Christ's plan for His church. In the brief passage in the middle of chapter 4, Paul actually explains Christ's plan for His church and tells us the ultimate goal for His church. And last week, we began to discover from verses 14 - 16 the practical implications of Christ's plan for His church, the practical implications.

Let me read these three verses for you. Chapter 4, beginning in verse 14,

As a result [that is as a result of Christ's plan], we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

In those three verses are the practical implications of Christ's plan for His church. When the plan works, these things will happen. In verses 14 and 15, we're discovering the, the implications for us as individuals, as individual Christians. And in verse 16, we will discover the implications for us corporately, the entire church.

Last week, we started to consider the individual implications of Christ's plan for His church. They're found in verses 14 and 15. Let me just briefly review the implications we discovered from these two verses last week.

Number one: the first individual implication of Christ's plan for His church is that every Christian begins the Christian life as a spiritual infant. Paul, notice in verse 14, begins by saying we should no longer be children. The clear implication of that is that we all come into the faith as spiritual babies, as spiritual infants. That's why the language of being born again. We enter into spiritual life as newborns.

The second implication that we discovered last week is that: every immature Christian shares two primary characteristics with children. That's why he uses this picture. We share two primary characteristics with children.

Number one, we are personally unstable. Look at verse 14. Stop being "… children, tossed here and there by waves…." We are personally unstable. And secondly, we are easily deceived. Verse 14 says, "and carried about by every wind of doctrine", every new teaching.

The third implication of Christ's plan on us as individuals that we saw last week was that: Satan works to take advantage of our immaturity. Satan works to take advantage of our immaturity. Look at the rest of verse 14. Where do those winds of teaching come from? "… by the trickery of men, by craftiness [literally] in [the] … schemes of error." Satan is promoting schemes of error, and he does it, as we saw last time, from those who come in from the outside, and as Paul warned, even from within the church. There are false teachers everywhere, and Satan does that in order to take advantage of our immaturity when we are easily swept away by every wind of teaching.

There's a fourth implication for us as individuals and this is new territory that we did not cover last week, but individual implication for each of us based on Christ's plan. Here's number four: We can only grow up spiritually by means of the truth mixed with love. We can only grow up spiritually by means of the truth mixed with love. As I pointed out to you last week, this whole passage, verses 14 - 16, can really be put into the form of a command. Verse 14 genuinely could be saying "stop being children" and verse 15, "but grow up". Or verse 14 could say "let us no longer be children" (verse 15), "but rather, let us grow up". That's the idea.

The bottom line is Paul is saying we were born into the new spiritual life as infants, but we must grow out of that spiritual immaturity. We must grow into the mature man of verse 13 or into moral likeness to Jesus Christ at the very end of verse 13. Grow up.

You know, if you're a Christian, if you truly are in Christ, this is true of you. You want to be like Jesus Christ. In fact, I would go so far as to say this. The truest sign that you are genuinely a Christian believer (that you are not merely sort of a social Christian), is that there is within your heart a genuine desire at the core of your being to be like Jesus Christ in your character, in who you are morally. I'm not talking about the desire to be rid of a certain sin. There are a lot of unbelievers who desire to be rid of certain sins because they're embarrassing or troublesome or enslaving. I'm talking about a genuine desire at the core of your being to resemble Jesus Christ. That's a test of whether or not we're in Christ. And if you're a genuine Christian, you want that. God's made you to want that. He began with the goal. You remember in Romans 8, "He predestined us [to what? He predetermined our destiny] to be conformed to the image of His Son." And He puts within our hearts that longing and desire to be that.

The question is how? How does it happen? What is the catalyst that promotes and enables spiritual growth toward likeness to Jesus Christ? Well, trace the logic of Paul's thought here in this passage. Look back up in verses 11 and 12. His point in verses 11 and 12 is that Christ gave gifted men to the church in order to equip the saints to do the work of service. And he did all of that, verse 14, in order that [remember that first part of verse 14 can actually literally be translated "in order that"] we should no longer be children, … but … [should] grow up. In other words, Christ's entire plan for the church, the reason He put things together the way He put them together, is in order that we would grow up.

Now verse 15 begins with a participial phrase. Notice verse 15, "but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up…." The English phrase "speaking the truth" actually translates one Greek word, one very unusual Greek verb. And the NAS translators sort of struggle with what to do with this, and they didn't know exactly what to do with it. You'll notice that in the NAS, if you have the New American Standard translation, next to the word "speaking" is a marginal note. And if you look over in the margin, they gave us a couple of more options – "holding to the truth" is one of them or "being truthful". So, there are three different options they saw.

Now what's the problem? Why is there confusion? Because the Greek word is not easily translatable into English. In fact, let me literally translate it for you. This is what it says in the Greek text, "truthing in love, we should grow up." Truthing in love, we should grow up. When it boils down to it, there are really two possibilities of what that could mean. Obviously, we wouldn't translate it that way because it makes no sense, but there are two possibilities of what "truthing", "but truthing, grow up" might mean. It might mean, as the New American Standard translators have chosen, "speaking the truth" – "but speaking the truth, grow up".

If that is the correct translation, make sure you understand that is not referring to one Christian being honest with another Christian. It's not saying, "Oh by the way, be honest and grow up." Instead, it's saying the leaders of the church must speak the truth to you. As the leaders of the church speak the truth to you, grow up. The contrast then would be between listening to the truth taught by the church's leaders and listening to every wind of doctrine back in verse 14. You can either listen to one, or you can listen to the other. Listen to the truth the leaders of the church teach. That's one possibility.

The second possibility beyond speaking the truth is "holding to the truth", holding to the truth. The idea would be that in order to grow, we must know the truth; we must understand the truth; we must confess the truth; we must embrace the truth of Scripture. The contrast then would be between embracing the truth of sound teaching from the church's leaders or being blown around by every false teaching and every wind of doctrine.

Now, I personally prefer the second option – "holding to the truth". But in the end, it doesn't really matter because they both essentially are saying the same thing. They're saying you must come through the teaching of gifted men to understand the truth, to hold to that truth, and, holding to that truth, grow up. Peter O'Brien in his commentary puts it like this,

The apostle is not exhorting his readers to truthfulness in general or speaking honestly with one another (however appropriate or important this may be). Rather, he wants all of them to be members of a confessing church with the content of their confession being the word of truth.

Lloyd-Jones says it a little differently. He says,

Instead of being weathervanes [that's an interesting picture, isn't it - the wind blowing it, whichever direction the wind's blowing. Instead of being weathervanes turning around in every direction and believing everything], we are to hold to something definite, even the truth. Instead of believing one thing one day and then something different another day, we must be stable and hold on to the truth as it's made known in the Scriptures. [So, we are to hold on to the truth that we are taught from the Scriptures.]

What is the relationship then between the participle "truthing in love" and the main verb of that part of the sentence "we are to grow up"? "But truthing in love, we are to grow up." But holding on to the truth, we are to grow up. What's the relationship of those to each other? The participle tells us how to grow. Hold on to the truth because that is the primary means God uses to grow us up spiritually. We all understand that God is the One who causes our spiritual growth, right? I mean, you have no inherent capacity to grow spiritually. God has to do it. Ultimately, you can't just wake up one morning and decide to grow any more than you can wake up one morning and decide to grow physically. God is the One who causes our spiritual growth.

There are so many places in the Scripture where that's made clear. Two of them stand out in my mind. One of them is when Jesus is praying the night before His crucifixion in that High Priestly Prayer of John 17, a passage we'll come back to several times this morning. He's praying, and He says, "[Father], sanctify them [that is, my disciples] by the truth; Your word is truth." Notice what Jesus is doing. He's praying that God would do something to His disciples, that He would make them holy, that He would cause them to grow. The other passage is 1 Corinthians 3, you remember, where Paul says,

I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

Folks, God is always the cause behind our spiritual growth. And God could, if He decided, cause us to grow by acting directly on our souls without any involvement from us. We could just be minding our own business, walking along one day, and God decides, "Boom, it's his turn. He's going to grow." God could do that. He's God. He can do whatever He wants, but that isn't what God has decided to do. The Scripture makes it clear that God has sovereignly determined to use means in our spiritual growth.

For example, the same thing happens in the physical world in so many ways, but let me give you an example. All of us who are Christians would agree that God is the One who ultimately causes physical growth. We talked about that little child growing in the womb of its mother. When an infant grows in its mother's womb from that tiny little size at the very beginning to its birth weight and size, we understand that God and God alone has acted to make that happen. Nothing in God's world happens without His doing, but at the same time, we understand that God only produces that growth through means.

Specifically, what must happen? What means does God use to make that child grow within its mother's womb? Well, the mother has to get sufficient nutrition and sleep and exercise and all of the parts of her body that God has made, those parts have to function properly to produce the nutrients and things that that child needs. But the mother doesn't cause the growth. She can do all that she's supposed to do, and the child may not grow.

In the same way, God produces spiritual growth, but He has sovereignly determined not to produce that spiritual growth apart from our legitimate use of means. And in verse 15, Paul identifies the primary means God uses to produce our spiritual growth. It is the truth. "Holding to the truth, we are to grow up." That is the means God uses.

Now, that shouldn't be a surprise to us after we've studied this passage because the importance of truth in our spiritual development has already been hinted at in this passage, hasn't it? I mean, look back in verse 11. Most of the gifted men that Christ gave to His church had to do with the truth. The apostles and prophets revealed the truth, instructed us in the truth. The pastor-teachers are primarily about teaching the truth. In verse 12, Christ's plan called for the leaders to equip the people of the church, and the primary tool that the leaders have is teaching the truth. Verse 14, immaturity is connected to not knowing the truth. So, God uses the means of truth to produce spiritual growth in us. It's hinted at in all of this passage. In verse 15, he just comes out and says it explicitly. Truth is the means behind spiritual growth.

Now, the word "means" is a key word and very important. Truth is the means of spiritual growth, not the cause of our spiritual growth. God is the cause of our spiritual growth. The truth by itself has no more power to change your heart than light has power to give a blind person the capacity to see. The truth has to be used by the Spirit of God, but it is the means He uses.

Now, what is this truth, this transforming truth? You know, I think it's easy for Christians to get captivated by books they read or some radio preacher they hear, some television preacher, and think that there's some secret truth. That's what he must mean: if I can get that secret truth. Here's the spiritual secret. Folks, there's no secret. The truth is not some wonderful secret teaching, some key truth that suddenly catapults you to some high new level of spiritual life. What is the truth then that makes us grow?

Well, Jesus defines it for us in John 17 in that High Priestly Prayer. He says, "Sanctify them [Father] by the truth [by means of the truth and then He says this]; Your word is truth." The truth that makes us grow, the truth that makes us holy, that grows us into the image of Christ isn't some isolated passage somewhere. It's all of the words of God. It's everything in this book. "Sanctify them by means of the truth; Your word is truth." So, when I use the word "truth", I mean the entire teaching of Scripture, the entirety of the Word of God.

I wish I could get inside your head this morning and help you see how important this is. There is no truth you will ever hear that is more important to your spiritual growth and development than this truth: that the Word of God is the means God uses to bring spiritual growth into your life. It's so important that I'm going to take just a few minutes and belabor the point. I want to show you some passages that build this idea because it is foundational to your Christian life and development.

Turn back with me and there's so many passages, but I'm just going to give you a few key ones. Turn back to Psalm 19. Psalm 19, as you know, is a celebration by David of God's revelation in creation and God's revelation in His Word - the first half, creation, the second half is revelation in His Word. Verse 7 of Psalm 19 begins to describe in different terms, in different adjectives, the Word of God. But what I want you to notice is , the first part of verse 7, again at the end of the second part of verse 7 and then twice in verse 8, there are four benefits of the Word of God in our lives, four things the Word of God produces in us, four products of the Word of God.

Look at verse 7, "It restores the soul." The Hebrew expression there is the Word of God actually takes and restores the entire person. It restores, it renovates, it restores the entire person.

Verse 7 says, "It makes wise the simple." Those who lack spiritual discernment into the ways and will of God, the Word of God will make you wise in that.

Verse 8, "It rejoices the heart." The Word of God produces comprehensive joy in the life of the Christian, the life of the believer.

And verse 8 adds, "enlightening the eyes". That's illumination. The Word of God will open up your eyes to understand spiritually, to grasp the ways and will of God, the character of God, the person of God. It will open up your eyes to see spiritual reality the way it is.

This is what the Word of God does. It produces spiritual growth by those means: restoring the soul, making us wise to God's way, producing comprehensive joy in our hearts, by opening up our eyes to see spiritual realities the way God sees them.

Turn over to chapter 119. Here the Word of God is celebrated in the longest chapter in our Bibles verse after verse after verse, but I just want to point out a couple of verses here that make this point very clearly. Psalm 119:9 (very familiar verse), but notice what it says, "How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word." How can a young man stay on the path that honors God and reflects His character? By keeping his path in line with the Scripture. Spiritual growth occurs through the Word of God.

Verse 11, "Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I might not sin against You." That doesn't just mean memorizing. Obviously, memorizing is a good start. It means treasuring that that you've memorized, making the Word of God your treasure and thinking about it and meditating on it. And when that happens, verse 11 says it will keep you from sin. That is, it will encourage your growth spiritually. You will grow in holiness as a result through the Scripture.

Psalm 119:104: here's how it happens. "From Your precepts I get understanding (I get discernment of You, God, and Your ways); Therefore I hate every false way." As I see what you love, I begin to love what You love, and I begin to hate what You hate. And all of that comes to us from the Scripture.

There are so many other places in the Psalms where that's true, but let's fast forward to the ministry of our Lord. Jesus makes this same point in John's gospel - the priority and importance of the Word of God in our spiritual life. In John 15, you remember, this is part of the upper room discourse. They've just celebrated the Lord's Supper together. He's soon to go out to the Garden of Gethsemane. And in that upper room discourse, He uses the image of Himself as the vine. Verse 1 of John 15,

[His Father is the vinedresser, and we are the branches]. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away [there's a false profession, a false believer]; … [but every true branch] every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. [Verse 3 is the key.] You are already clean [that is, you are already pruned like a branch how?] because of the word which I have spoken to you." [Jesus said you are pruned spiritually to bear fruit and to grow by the word which I have spoken to you.]

I've referred to it several times, but turn to John 17 - John 17:17. Jesus prays to His Father, and He says, "[Father], Sanctify them [make them progressively holy, more like Me] in the truth [or literally, by means of the truth]; Your word is truth." Father, You can make them like Me. You can make them holy by means of the truth that I am talking about – Your word. Your word will accomplish that, Jesus says, as He prays to His Father. He says it again in verse 19, "For their sakes I ... [set Myself apart to what I'm about to do, the cross], that they themselves also may be sanctified … [or made holy by means of the truth]."

Turn over to the book of Acts. You see this same message in the ministry of the apostle Paul. In Acts 20 as he talks to the Ephesian elders, a passage we looked at last week, he makes this very same point. He says my ministry with you was all about the word. Look at verse 20, "… I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you [from the Scripture] publicly and [privately] from house to house…." Verse 27, not only the gospel, but "… I didn't shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God." I taught you the Bible.

Why is that important? Well remember, starting in verse 28, Paul warns them about false teachers. And on the heels of that false teaching, he explains how we can protect ourselves against false teaching. Look at verse 32, "… now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace [that's another expression for the Scripture, the word which tells us about His grace to us in Christ], [the Scripture] … is able [notice] to build you up and [it's able] to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified." The Scripture will build you up spiritually. It will work your spiritual growth, and it will ensure that that inheritance you've been promised becomes yours because it will build into your life the truth you need to know to persevere.

In 2 Corinthians 3, a favorite passage of many, Paul is talking about the fact that when unbelievers read the Old Testament, they don't get it. A veil, it's like

a veil … [is] over their heart; (verse 15 of 2 Corinthians 3). "but [verse 16] whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away."

They now get it; they understand the Old Testament. And as a result, verse 18, "… we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord [revealed on the pages of the Old Testament], are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit." Whether Old or New, as we gaze at the Scripture, we see the glory of God. The Scripture is the instrument, the means God uses to change us into the very image of Jesus Christ.

In the epistle to the Ephesians, in Ephesians 5:26 in the middle of the context of husbands loving their wives, Paul makes this very insightful comment. Ephesians 5:25,

"Husbands, love your wives, … as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, [and He did that, Christ did] … that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word…."

It describes both the initial part of coming to Christ, the gospel washing us clean as it were, but it's more than that. It's as if every time we are exposed to the Scripture, it's like the fresh water of God's Word washes over our souls with new and fresh life and carries away more of the dirt from our souls.

James, in James 1, the last passage I'll have you turn to. In James 1:21, James is talking about the importance of embracing the truth of Scripture if you're a believer. And he says, "Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness [in other words, don't hold on to any sin, but instead], in humility receive the word …" "Receive" doesn't mean just listen to it. It means embrace it, welcome it. Receive the word, and it says it is the word "implanted" [in other words, the word was implanted in your heart when you came to Christ, the word of the gospel, and it continues to bear fruit]. And he also describes the word as that "… which is able to save your souls."

Listen, if you're here this morning, and you don't know if you're in Christ, you don't really know if your sins are forgiven, the only place you can go to find out how you can be right with God is right here. It is the word which is able to save your soul. That is, it is in this book that you learn how God will rescue you from yourself. It's everything. The word is the means God uses to produce spiritual growth. Do you see that? Everywhere we turn, and those are just a sampling. It's the word.

You might be tempted to ask, "Now wait a minute. Are you saying there aren't other means God uses to promote our spiritual growth? What about spiritual activities we do? What about trials? Are you saying that trials don't produce spiritual growth? Do trials produce spiritual growth?" The answer is: maybe - never apart from the word. For example, trials are only useful for spiritual growth when they are properly mixed with an understanding of and faith in the Word of God.

Let me give you an example. God forbid, a close family member dies – a spouse, a child, a brother, a sister, a parent. As a Christian, you're now faced with that trial. How are you going to respond? Well, some Christians (when faced with that, in response to that trial) will choose anger and bitterness at God. Other Christians will choose (in that trial, the same trial) to allow the Spirit of God to renew their minds so that that death creates in them a greater desire for heaven, a greater and deeper confidence in God's goodness and His providence.

Now, how can this same trial produce those two different results? The difference is in interpreting that trial through the Word of God. The one who responds in faith responds by interpreting that trial through the lens of the Bible, through the lens of the Word of God. And the one who doesn't is responding in a fleshly way. So, ultimately then, trials are only useful for our spiritual growth if they are informed by and directed by the Word of God.

Take another example. What about prayer? You say doesn't prayer promote our spiritual growth? Well, the answer is: maybe, not if your prayers are not biblical prayers. There are millions of unbelievers who pray every day. That doesn't aid their spiritual growth and development. There are Christians who think prayer is simply a way to get things from God. That doesn't benefit them. You remember what James said? He said, "You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss, so that you might consume it on your lusts." That doesn't benefit you at all. Prayer is only an effective tool of spiritual growth when that prayer is instructed by and directed by the Word of God. And it's true with all the other parts of our spiritual life.

R.L. Dabney, the great American theologian, was right when he said, "The word is the means in all other means. Where the word is not, there is no holiness." So, here's the bottom line. If you want to grow spiritually, understand this. It will always and only be through the truth of God's Word. Now we can get that word and should get that word privately and individually, through our own individual study and reading. That's a priority for us as Christians. But the focus of this paragraph in Ephesians 4 is the truth of God's Word that comes from the gifted men Christ has given His church to equip the saints. So, we could put it all together like this [excuse me]. We could say this: God's primary tool in our spiritual growth is the truth of His Word taught and explained by the gifted men Christ has given His church. That's what Paul is saying.

Now immediately, there are several applications that just sort of jump out at me. It means we must make the corporate worship a priority because if that's part of the way God grows us, it becomes imperative that this be a priority in our lives. It means we must come to grips with the devastating effects of removing the Word of God or lowering the priority of the Word of God in the weekly gathering of the church. There are many churches that are pulling the Word of God out of the corporate worship, out of the time the church gathers.

That is devastating because the only way those people can grow spiritually is [how?] through the Word of God, through knowing and understanding the Bible. We must never downplay the importance and priority of teaching the word in our thinking. Listen, the teaching of the Bible is not less important than the other aspects of worship. It is more important because it informs and directs them. And we must make the Bible a priority in our own personal lives. Truth is absolutely vital in our spiritual growth.

But Paul doesn't stop there. Look back at Ephesians 4. He says, "but speaking the truth (or holding on to the truth) in love, we are to grow up." We are not to have the knowledge of the truth that is detached from life. Rather, we're to have a knowledge of the truth that is married to a genuine love for God and for others. Lloyd-Jones writes,

The truth of which the apostle writes must never be approached with the intellect only. If my heart is not moved by the truth, if I do not feel it and its power, my spirit is wrong. Truth must produce passion and in a truly Christian profession, there is emotion and feeling. A truth which is only held in the intellect becomes hard and arid and dry.

That's why there are churches where their knowledge of the Bible is firm and strong, but you go in and people refer to it as the, the "frozen chosen" because they lack love. The truth must be mixed with love. We must hold the truth in love.

We learned in the first three chapters about God's love for us, didn't we? Verse after verse, the apostle just pours out the knowledge on us of the love of God and all that He's done for us. Well, guess what? Knowing and understanding that love that God has for us causes us to love. And in the second half of this letter, time and again, we're reminded of that. Look for example at 5:1.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; [God loves you as children, so] … walk in love, just as Christ also [has] loved you and gave Himself up for us….

And we're to love other people. Because we have known God's love, we're to love other people, he's saying. And he ends the letter, notice the last verse of Ephesians, by saying, "Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an incorruptible love." So, God's love for us creates in us a love for other people and a love for God. We must meditate on the love God has shown us in the first three chapters so that we can grow in our love of others and of Him in the second three chapters in the last half of the book.

So then, the primary two fact, factors that influence our spiritual growth are an increase in our knowledge of the truth and an increase in our love of God and others. That's how we're to grow: holding on to the truth that we learned in Scripture and loving God and others more deeply. And where there is a mixture of those two things, there will always be active spiritual growth.

Now Paul continues to explain this God-caused, Word-produced spiritual growth in verse 15, "… we are to grow up in all aspects …" [that is, with, with reference to all things, in every part of our spiritual life – in faith, in knowledge, in unity, in love, in every part. Verse 15 ends we are to grow up in every part of our spiritual life …] "… into Him who is the head, even Christ."

What does it mean to grow up into Christ? It means we are to grow until our entire life has its center and expression in Jesus Christ. Grow up into Christ in every part of life until Christ becomes the center of everything. And that will only happen by knowing the truth, understanding the truth, confessing the truth, believing the truth, obeying the truth of God's Word. That's what this fourth and final implication of Christ's plan for His church means. It means we can only grow up spiritually by means of the truth mixed with love.

Sadly, there are a lot of Christians who aren't growing up. There are a lot of Christians who are starving. This week, I read some about starvation. Starvation is when any living thing dies from a lack of food essential to life. The basic cause of starvation is when more energy is spent than food is taken in. Now how long a person can survive without food depends on how much fat they have stored in their bodies. That's a very personal thing, and I'm not going there, but most people, most people can only survive about sixty to seventy days without food.

Prolonged starvation causes permanent organ damage and eventually death. And here's how it happens. As you deprive your body of what it needs, particularly on a severe scale, the body begins to cannibalize itself. Once it has exhausted all the stored fat, it actually begins to burn and consume, to break down the muscles and other tissues, in order to keep the vital systems functioning like your nervous system, like your heart muscle. The stomach begins to atrophy.

And oddly enough, since the perception of hunger that you have is controlled by the percentage of your stomach that's empty, starvation victims begin to actually lose their appetite for food. They're often too weak to sense thirst, and so, many starvation victims become severely dehydrated. Every movement becomes painful because of the atrophy of the muscles as they break down and because the skin is so dry from dehydration that with movement, it literally cracks in the movement.

Diseases become much more commonplace. In fact, one of the common side effects of starvation is a fungi begins to develop in the throat and esophagus so that swallowing becomes extremely painful. Extreme fatigue and apathy become more and more obvious. They just are like walking dead. Most of the time though, we talk about people starving to death - most of the time people don't starve to death. People who are starving usually end up dying from some disease they catch that is opportunistic because of their weakened immune systems. The human body must have food to maintain health. It can't survive more than seventy days without it.

Folks, in the same way, your spiritual life cannot survive without the life-giving food of God's Word. And unless you are eating well spiritually, you will not grow spiritually. And without spiritual food, over time you will lose your spiritual energy, you will become apathetic and tragically, you will even begin to lose your appetite for the Word of God which is the very food you need. That's why Peter writes, "like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow in respect to salvation." The Word of God is the primary means of spiritual life and health and growth. R.C. Ryle, the great Anglican, writes,

"Many admire growth and grace in others and wish that they themselves were like them [you ever do that? You ever look at somebody and say,] "Boy, I wish I were spiritually strong like that person"), but they seem to suppose [he says] that those who grow are what they are by some special gift or grant from God and that as this gift is not bestowed on them, they must be content to sit still." [He goes on:] "Growth in grace however is bound up in the use of means within the reach of all believers. And as a general rule, growing souls are what they are because they use these means."

Beloved, grow up by holding on to the truth of God's Word mixed with a love for God and a love for others.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for the amazing gift that it is to us.

Forgive us for taking it lightly. Forgive us for treating it as though it were superfluous to our Christian life and development.

Father, help us to see that if we're starving, if we're in a state of malnutrition spiritually, it's because we have neglected the means You have given us for spiritual growth and health.

Father, I pray that You would cement this truth deep within our hearts. May we never forget that our spiritual growth is directly tied to how well we know and understand and embrace and confess and obey the truth of Your Word. Father, cause us to grow as we use the means You've given us.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.