Faith and Personal Growth

Growing to Perfection
by Charles Whitaker
Forerunner, February 1994
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  * Parable of the Talents (Part One)
  * Perfection...Piece by Piece
  * Choosing the New Man (Part One)
  * The Pentecost Witness
J. B. Phillips' translation of I John 3:1-2 shows striking perception:
Consider the incredible love that the Father has shown us in allowing us to be called "children of God" and that is not just what we are called, but what we are. This explains why the world will no more recognize us than it recognized Christ. Here and now, my dear friends, we are God's children.
We are God's children now, not in metaphor, but in fact. A big part of childhood is growth.
God views His children's growth in the same way that we view the growth of our own children. We view the mental and physical growth of our young people as expected and essential. We expect Mary to grow taller, Johnny stronger. We know that if both are to lead normal adult lives, it is essential that they develop greater and greater mental abilities. We view as deeply tragic the cases of non-growth we witness from time to time, children who fail to mature mentally or physically because of disease or poor nutrition.
God looks at the spiritual growth of His children in the same light. He expects it so much that He has established it as a basic doctrine of His church: "go on to perfection" (Hebrews 6:1). He knows that growth, the ongoing process toward sanctification, is essential to our spiritual well-being. He also understands the tragic, even eternal, consequences our failure to grow can bring.
So important to God is our spiritual growth that He has taken steps to ensure that we understand its nature. This He has done by designing our physical lives so that we experience growth twice, once as children maturing to adulthood, and again as we help our children go through the same process.
Physical and mental growth are pictures of spiritual growth. What can we... [continues]

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