Maturing as Christians

The message given on October 31, 2021 in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are 1 Corinthians 3:1-11.

            I’m sure some of us have heard that line of Paul’s before, about having to give people milk instead of solid food because they were not ready for solid food yet.  But the thing is, we don’t really look at the context of it enough to understand what Paul is saying.

            So many times, I’ve heard people explain this as Paul saying that people don’t know enough to get solid food yet.  He has to keep going back to the basics, because people just cannot or will not learn enough about Jesus for him to move on to more detailed, specific things about faith.

            But as you can see when you read this in context, that’s not what Paul’s saying at all.  The reason Paul has to keep giving people milk instead of solid food is not because they don’t understand enough about God or about Jesus or about anything else.  The problem is not that people don’t understand.  The problem is that people are not putting what they understand into practice in their lives.

            Paul says, “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.  Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly.”

            You are still worldly.  That has nothing to do with what people understand.  It has to do with how people live.  The people Paul is talking to, the people of Corinth, are not ready to live their lives the way Jesus wants them to live.  They’d rather keep living their lives the way they have been.  The way everyone else does.  The way the world wants them to live.

            But even recognizing that, we still tend to misunderstand this passage.  Because when you think of people living like everyone else does, living the way the rest of the world lives, being “worldly”, what do you think of?

            We tend to think of people putting too much emphasis on the things of the world, right?  Focusing too much on making money, or on having fancy cars and houses, or going on expensive trips, things like that.  Or, maybe spending your time on nothing but worldly pleasures, eating fancy meals, having too much to drink, that sort of thing.  Or, maybe we think of various types of sexual immorality.  But those and other things tend to be what we think of when we think of people being “worldly”

            But none of that is what Paul is talking about here.  Not that he approved of that, but it’s not what he’s talking about.  Listen to what he says.  “You are still worldly.  For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?  Are you not acting like mere humans?  For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere human beings?”

            Jealousy and quarreling.  Acting like mere humans.  Following mere humans, rather than following God.  That’s what Paul is talking about when he says people are being “worldly”.  And that’s what’s keeping people from being ready for the solid food of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

            Paul wrote that, of course, to the people of Corinth, and he wrote it almost two thousand years ago.  But I suspect that Paul would apply those same standards to you and me, today.  If we are subject to jealousy and quarreling, if we are following mere humans, if we are acting like mere humans, we, too, are still worldly.  And we, too, are not ready for the solid food of the gospel.

            I wonder how the people of Corinth reacted to that.  For that matter, I wonder how we react to it today.

            When I hear this, there’s a part of me that resists it.  I hear Paul talking about us acting as mere humans, and I think, well, of course I’m acting like a mere human.  I am a mere human.  That’s what God created me to be--a human being.  So naturally I’m going to act like one.  What else am I supposed to act like?  

            And maybe that sounds like a reasonable argument.  But it’s not.  What Paul is saying is that, if we follow Christ, if we’ve accepted Jesus Christ as the Savior, we are no longer mere humans.  We are new people.  We are saved people.  We are God’s people.  

Paul talks about that over and over in his letters.  When we accept Jesus, we are dead to sin.  Sin no longer has control over us.  When we accept Christ, we have new life.  

            And that new life needs to be different, needs to be better, than our old life.  When we accept Christ, our entire way of thinking needs to change.  We need to get rid of things like jealousy and envy.  We need to stop arguing and quarreling.  Our thoughts need to be on a higher level, a holier level.  We need to stop thinking the way mere humans think and stop feeling the way mere humans feel.  Instead, we need to think the way Christ thinks and feel the way Christ feels.  We need to acquire the heart and mind of Christ.

            That’s exactly what Paul says in the verses right before what we read today.  He says, “We...speak a message of wisdom, but not the wisdom of this age...No, we declare God’s wisdom.”  “We speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit.”  “The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for...we have the mind of Christ.”

            Now, I want to make one thing clear.  When we talk about needing to acquire the heart and mind of Christ, we are not saying we need to earn our way into heaven.  Paul is quite clear on the fact that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior, and not by the things we do.  Paul does not say, “Because you are worldly, because you are still acting like mere humans, you are not saved and are going to hell.”  That’s not the point.

            What Paul is saying is that, because you are worldly, because you are still acting like mere humans, you are not truly following Christ.  What Paul is saying, really, is that people are trying to have it both ways.  We want the salvation that comes from faith in Jesus, but we don’t really want to live the way followers of Jesus are supposed to live.  That’s why Paul says he can only give us milk and not solid food--he’s saying we’re like children.  We want to do what we want to do, but we want our Father to be there for us and take care of us and clean up our messes when we get into trouble.  And then once we’re out of trouble, we want to do what we want to do again.  But we still want the Father to take care of us when we get into a mess again.

            Paul is telling us that, to truly follow Christ, we need to grow up.  We need to mature.  We need to live our lives in a way that’s different from the way the rest of the world lives.  We need to live lives that are better.  As Paul says, we are co-workers in God’s service.  Our lives need to show that.  And our lives won’t show that if we continue to surrender to things like jealousy and envy and arguing and quarrelling.

            Now, in saying that we need to live our lives in a way that’s better than the way the rest of the world lives, Paul is not suggesting that we should become arrogant.  He is not suggesting that we should become self-righteous.  Absolutely not.  Jesus reserved some of his harshest words for people who were self-righteous and arrogant.  Paul says that anything he has been able to do has been through the grace God has given him.  And anything we are able to do is through the grace God gives us.  We cannot take credit for any of the things we do.  That credit goes to God.

            Saying that we will no longer act like “mere humans” is not saying that we are superior to others.  It’s saying, again, that we are new people.  That we are saved people.  And that, with the grace God gives us, we are going to live like the new, saved people we are.

            And in growing up, in becoming mature, we also need to take on some responsibility.  Because Jesus told us we do have responsibility--responsibility for sharing the gospel and doing what we can to bring people to Christ.  Jesus laid the foundation for each of us.  But it is up to us, as followers of Christ, to build on that foundation.  And through the grace God has given us, we can do that.  We can build on that foundation.  But we can only do that if we stop acting like “mere humans” and instead live like people who truly do have the heart and mind of Christ.

            The pull of the world is strong.  It’s easy for us to stay “worldly”.  It’s easy for us to continue to act like “mere humans”.  It’s easy to remain immature Christians.  That’s the easy way--but it’s not the way that Jesus told us to live.  It’s time for us to grow up.  It’s time for us to mature.  It’s time for us to take on the responsibility of living lives that are different.  Living lives of service to God.  Building on that foundation that Jesus himself laid for us.

            Growing up and maturing as Christians is not easy.  But by doing that, we can lead people to Jesus Christ.  We can help them have salvation and eternal life.  And there is nothing greater we can ever do in our lives on earth than that.