Lesson 3–5: The Goal—Spiritual Maturity

p. 163Romans 12:1–2 Philippians 2:3–11

Spiritual maturity is the point at which we begin to live the normal Christian life. By the time we reach maturity, we are able to maintain the filling of the Spirit for prolonged periods of time. Because of this, we are ready to start using—to the full—the resources that God makes available to us. At maturity, we recognize how awesome are the responsibilities and opportunities God has given us, and the question we face is this: “Am I going to be faithful in using what God has provided to accomplish the task He has given me to do?” If we say yes, we will begin to see what sacrifice is really all about.

“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” (Rom. 12:1)

With the word “therefore,” Paul brings everything he has taught so far in this epistle to the point of practical application. He wants us to put shoes on our theology. He is saying that somewhere along the line, our theology has to relate to our lives.

Oiktirmos means more than “mercy.” While it does refer to the compassion that arises from a recognition of someone’s need, it also always implies a provision to satisfy the need. God has compassion on us because He recognizes our need, and He holds out to us resources, provision, wealth—the riches of His grace.

“p. 164Present,” is paristemi, from histemi, meaning “to stand or set,” and para, “beside.” It means to make something available. The word is used in Luke 2:22 for the presentation of the baby Jesus at the Temple. Joseph and Mary were, in effect, making Him available to God. In Romans 6:13, we are urged to make the members of our bodies available to God as weapons of righteousness.

The issue in the Christian life is never our ability; God has resources to take care of that. The issue is our availability. God has chosen to give us free will. As unbelievers, we had the right to believe in Jesus Christ or to reject Him. As believers, we have the right to utilize the provisions of God’s grace or to squander them.

Paul is telling his readers that it is the purpose of God that we present our physical bodies as a living sacrifice or offering. This would have been shocking to the people to whom this was written in A.D. 65. To the Greco-Roman mind, the body was something to be despised; only the mind mattered. But Paul wants them to understand that the body is important because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and He wants it to be an instrument God can use in accomplishing His plan.

According to Hebrews 10:5–10, at the time of His physical birth, Jesus said essentially this to the Father, “You would not accept animal sacrifice and offerings as a cleansing of sin for the human race, but a body You have prepared for Me ... I have come to do Your will.” The second Person of the Trinity entered the human race to offer His body as a sacrifice for sin. In the Person of Jesus Christ, undiminished deity and perfect, sinless humanity were welded together forever. Now, God carries on—through the spiritual body of Christ—the work He began in the incarnation. We are instruments to accomplish the will of God on Earth.

In the Old Testament, all sacrifices had to be killed. But Paul says our sacrifice is to be “living and holy.” The plan of God is that every believer be in full-time, 24-hour-a-day, Christian service. “Holy” means “set apart” or “sanctified” and refers to the filling of the Holy Spirit. When we have no unconfessed sins in our life and are filled by means of the Spirit, we are acceptable to God. As believers, we are positionally righteous and sanctified always. We are practically righteous and sanctified only when we are walking in the Spirit.

p. 165This is our “spiritual service of worship.” “Spiritual service” comes from two words, logikos, meaning “logical, reasonable, sensible,” and latreia, a word used for priestly service, but referring in ancient Greek to the work of a common day-laborer. It is logical and reasonable that God would require 24-hour-a-day service from His servants. Christianity is a full-time job, and working at it full time is our act of worship.

Think about what this means. When you pull on your grubbies to go to work in the morning, you ought to be going to worship. If you work in an office, you ought to say, “I have to go to the office from nine to five to worship.” If you are a carpenter, the logical place for you to worship is out there where you are every day sawing boards and slamming nails. If you slop hogs for a living, you ought to have an attitude that says, “I carry in my physical body the Spirit of God. I am the sanctuary and because I carry Him with me, every single thing I do is important to Him, and I will make it an act of worship.”

The first indication that we are arriving at spiritual maturity is that we worship every day, wherever we are. What does it take to have that attitude? It takes focus. We have to be able to concentrate, to fix our minds on reality, and not be sucked in to the lies all around us.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12:1–2) “Be conformed to” is suschematizo. Schema is outward appearance. Paul uses a present, passive, imperative here. The imperative is a command; the present tense tells us not to keep on being conformed. The passive voice tells us that we receive this action because we live here in this world. The world is constantly putting pressure on us, and the pressures cause us to conform. Paul says do not allow yourself to be pressed into a mold. Outward conformity is the problem here.

The word translated “world” is not “world” at all. It is the Greek aion, “age.” It refers to the trends of human history. Paul is saying, “Do not allow yourself to be molded by the trends of society. Do not allow yourself outwardly to take on the appearance of the world—the age in which you live.”

p. 166Instead, we are to be transformed, metamorphoo. Meta means “to change;” morphoo means “form.” It refers to a transformation or a change that is inner and involves essence. Paul is telling us to be changed on the inside. As we are transformed, the changes that begin on the inside will work their way out and will affect what we look like on the outside. This passage is calling for a little bit of spiritual non-conformity. It is a challenge to us as believers to go against the tide, to stand on our own, based on our own understanding and knowledge of the Word of God.

This is exactly what Paul means when he tells us in Philippians 2:12 to “work out our own salvation.” The principle is this: Everything of the world—the cosmic system—works from the outside in, trying to change the inner man by making the outer man look or talk or act in certain “acceptable” ways. But God’s plan is different. It works from the center to the outside. Everything God does in our lives starts inside with our attitude, our thinking, and works its way outward. The change God wants will take place first in the hidden recesses of our essence, our spirit and our soul, and then will transform what is on the outside. Christian growth will be seen last of all in what we do.

Just how is it that we are to be transformed? “By the renewing of your mind.” “Renewing” is anakainoo. Ana means “again and again.” Kainos means “new in quality.” The renewing of the mind means the constant improvement of the quality of our minds through the repetition of the teaching of the Word of God. Isaiah 28:10 tells us that God’s plan is “order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line, a little here, a little there.” We put promise upon promise, precept upon precept, and we advance step-by-step by the renewing of our minds.

God’s plan is not to change people by requiring them to wear certain clothes or talk certain ways. The plan is to have the Word taught, and wherever the Word is received, it will change the recipient from the inside out. When someone changes his activity by his own free will, as a response to the Word of God, there is genuine growth. That is the only kind of growth that counts. God’s plan starts at salvation when we become new creatures by regeneration because of union with Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Then we move to Romans 12:2, to the “renewing of the mind.” The result p. 167will be that we will eventually fulfill Romans 6:4, walking in newness of life. If we renew the mind through consistent, long-term study of the Word of God, we will find experiential “newness of life.” Our life will have quality because our thinking has quality.

The purpose of this growth, Paul says in Romans 12:2, is to “prove” something. Dokimazo is an athletic word that means “to prove through testing.” God has tests—trials, pressures, adversity, and even prosperity—planned for every life. When are we going to present our body a living sacrifice? Every time we face a test. And what are we going to prove? What is called here the “good and acceptable and perfect” will of God. “Perfect,” teleios, is a word that is used in the Bible for maturity. It means “to be complete, to be without lack.” Every time we are tested, we have the chance to prove, by facing pressure and overcoming, that the will of God works in life.

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus ...” (Phil. 2:5)

“Have this attitude” is the present, active, imperative of the verb phroneo, which means “to think.” This is a command to keep on thinking like Jesus Christ thought. The active voice tells us that we choose whether to do this or not. First Corinthians 2:16 says that the Bible is “the mind of Christ.” If we ever hope to think like Christ, we have to know and understand how He thought. This only comes through consistent study and application of the Word in conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit. Being conformed to Christ begins with thinking.

Apart from study of the Word, we cannot know how or what to think, because the mind of Christ is totally opposed to all human perception and human logic. Paul illustrates this in the verses just before and just after his command to have the mind of Christ.

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Phil. 2:3–4)

The Lord Jesus Christ treated every member of the human race as more important than Himself, and He was God in the flesh. He p. 168made people know that they were valuable by the way He treated them. His whole life was spent looking out for the interests of others. Mark tells us that Jesus “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and all the Gospel accounts bear witness to the fact that He served every day of His life on Earth.

What a radical change it would make in society if we thought that way. Think what it would mean in your life and mine if 24 hours a day we were offering our bodies as a living sacrifice to God in this way. What if we offered the encouragement, the consolation, the affection, the compassion of Christ to everyone we came in contact with today? What if we put other people and their needs before ourselves? What if our attitude was that other people’s concerns are just as important as ours; their problems are just as pressing; their feelings matter as much?

If we had that attitude, then every day would be a day of true worship because we would be living every hour as a sacrifice to God, experiencing the very life of the Person of Jesus Christ. But it can only happen one way: The mind has to gorge on the Word of God, the soul has to be saturated with the Word of God. As we feast on the Word day-after-day, the transformation slowly takes place, and it causes us to think and act like Jesus Christ thought and acted.

“Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:6–11)