“…until we all come into…the knowledge of the Son of God, into a complete man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…”

— Ephesians 4:13

Sanctification is just a technical term coming from the Latin that means spiritual growth—that God did not birth us to be merely babies. We are to grow and become little children and older children and then mature adults.

We are the army of Jesus Christ. We sing, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but can you imagine a kindergarten full of little children putting their toy rifles on their shoulders and marching off to war singing “Onward Christian Soldiers”? We would say, “Aren’t they cute? Certainly nobody is going to get hurt by that army. That’s for sure.”

So I would ask you: If you have been born of Christ, have you grown in Christ? You know, it’s interesting, you will hear a lot of people say, “I’m a born-again Christian.” Now that certainly has a wonderful truth to it. It’s saying that we have experienced that life-transforming act where God changes us, and we have a new birth.

But what would you think about a person that you met who is fifty or sixty years old and every time you talked to him, he told about what a wonderful birth he had had—that his mother didn’t have a whole lot of pain. It all worked out well, and you keep seeing him and he keeps telling you about when he was born, as if that is the last thing that ever happened to him. God wants us to grow in Christ unto maturity.

Lord Jesus, we repent of our spiritual laziness. We repent of taking the things of You so lightly, while seriously engaged in other pursuits. Give us strength for today, Lord, that we may begin to develop great spiritual maturity…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
AGE GRACEFULLY IN CHRIST.