The Bible compares growing in our spiritual life to growing physically. Just as we grew from babyhood to adulthood, in the same we we must grow spiritually from spiritual babyhood to spiritual maturity. This is a process that every Christian must go through.
Babies
When a baby is born into the world, there is a lot of joy. People think the baby is very cute. They want to spend time with the baby and take care of it. The baby is helpless. He can’t feed himself, dress himself, or take care of himself in other basic ways. He is ignorant of many things and makes many mistakes. But people are patient with the baby because they know that this is how babies are.
When we heard the gospel and believed it, we were born again. Our dead spirits were made alive, and the Holy Spirit came inside of us. At this time there was a lot of joy in heaven. Maybe other Christians were happy too. We probably made some mistakes in those early days. We were spiritual babies. We didn’t understand basic things about the Bible. We didn’t really know how to talk about God with others. We sometimes ate wrong things that made us sick (false teachings or worldly wisdom). We needed a lot of patient guidance from those who were more spiritually mature.
Milestones
After a few months, a healthy baby will start hitting milestones. He will roll over and start crawling. Then he will start walking. He begins eating solid food. Eventually he will talk. All of these changes are remarkable and happen quickly. The baby is changing a lot in these days.
After being born again, a healthy Christian will hit spiritual milestones. He will understand and implement the spiritual foundations of Christ in his life (Hebrews 5:12-6:1-3). He will be baptized in water and baptized in the Holy Spirit. He will begin to study and understand the Bible. He will connect to a Biblical church. During this time the changes in his spiritual life will be drastic. He might change so much spiritually that he becomes almost a different person.
Growing to Maturity
After the baby hits the basic milestones, he might be 5 years old. He is still not mature. He still has a long way to go. He’s not a baby anymore, but he is far from adulthood. He has to keep growing until he is about 21 years old and becomes an adult.
It is similar for us spiritually. Being born again and hitting a few spiritual milestones is not the end of our spiritual life. It might have brought a lot of changes to us, but this is only the beginning of our spiritual journey. We don’t just get our ticket punched to heaven and then we can sit back and relax because we’ve made it. We’ve got to keep growing.
Our goal is to become spiritually mature. Jesus commanded us to “be as perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” We’re not there yet. The word “perfect” means “mature” in Greek. We need to keep growing spiritually until we reach this very high level of spiritual maturity.
Paul was a mighty apostle. He planted many churches, wrote a lot of the New Testament, and had powerful revelations of God. Yet he never reached this place of full maturity. He was still pressing toward it knowing that he had to grow (Phil. 3:15). If Paul was still growing spiritually until the end of his life, how much more do we need to keep growing spiritually?
God wants all of us to reach maturity (Col. 1:28). This means he wants all of us to keep growing.
Physically, we grow until we’re about 21. Then we are physically mature and we stop growing.
Spiritually, the process of growth will last our entire lives. As long as we’re on this earth, we must keep growing spiritually. This process of growth will only end when either Christ returns, or until we die and go to heaven.
Healthy Habits
Physical growth happens as we engage in healthy habits. We must eat healthy food, get enough sleep, and get some exercise regularly in order to grow.
When we were young our parents probably guided us to have healthy habits and make good choices:
“Eat your vegetables.”
“Don’t eat so many donuts and Doritos.”
“Go play outside and get some fresh air.”
“Don’t watch TV all day.”
“Stop playing so many video games.”
If a 10 year old is left only to himself, he probably won’t make good choices. He needs his parents to guide him.
We need spiritual guidance so that we don’t stay spiritually immature. We need the body of Christ and input from older brothers and sisters in Christ (Eph. 4:11-16). As we listen to them they will help us develop healthy habits so we can grow.
Just as we need to form good physical habits in order to grow physically, we must develop good spiritual habits in order to grow spiritually.
We can’t just rely on our feelings. “I just don’t feel like eating my vegetables, I feel like eating cake.” “I don’t feel like exercising, I just feel like playing video games.” If a child just follows his feelings, then he won’t mature. He will get sick.
It’s the same spiritually. We must not just follow our feelings spiritually. Our feelings will not help us mature. If we are waiting for feelings before we do what we need to do spiritually, we will remain immature. We are exalting ourselves over God. We are serving ourselves and choosing what feels good to us rather choosing God and what he wants.
In order to grow spiritually, we need healthy habits.
We need to read the Bible regularly. Jesus said that we won’t live by natural food, but by spiritual food (Matthew 4:4). If we don’t read the Bible, we will not grow.
We need to pray consistently.
We must obey God.
We should share the gospel with others.
We need to go to church each week. We need input from other members of the body of Christ. We need to pray for each other and minister to each other. The early church met at least once a week on Sunday, and we need to follow their example.
We need commit to developing healthy spiritual habits in order to grow. We must not just follow our feelings regarding these things, but we must force ourselves to do what is right. As we do, the Holy Spirit will help us. The Christian life is not about following our feelings and doing what feels good. It is about obeying God and doing what he has told us to do. God wants us to grow. He wants us to not be babies anymore, but to grow into spiritual maturity.
This process of spiritual growth will go on our entire lives. We need to dedicate ourselves to this and be diligent so that we can stand on this earth as strong men and women of God, fulfilling our divine purpose, and not crawling around on the floor like babies.
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