The Truth About Spiritual Maturity
by Phil Beach Jr.

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The spiritual life and nature which we possess as children of God come from His very person. Thus all who are beholding Him by the Spirit are assimilating unto expression the very character of Christ Himself; His life becomes ours! To this purpose have we been called. To this purpose does our Father in heaven work. To this purpose does the Son of God intercede. To this purpose does the Spirit come to dwell with us. For this the glorious Godhead, in perfect harmony and unity, is working.

All of this is being done so that in the final revelation at the end there will be an unveiling of the unspeakable majesty and glory of His Person through His re-deemed church. These are they who perfectly bear the image of the only begotten Son of God, to whom alone belongs all praise for ever and ever. Amen!

Now in light of this marvelous union to which we are called in Christ, let us look into the true meaning of spiritual maturity and discover what it is as well as what it positively is not!

The principle upon which God initiates and brings spiritual increase to work in us is trust in the finished work of Christ and all that God has made Him unto us. We, of our own selves, are not able to bring anything to God that will add to our stature or provide a basis of merit. Everything is in Christ, secured through His fin-ished work on Calvary.

Surely we can see that the Galatian error against which Paul violently remon-strated was rooted in a departure from this very dynamic. Although they began their Christian life by the new birth through the simple hearing of faith, they were later bewitched into thinking that they could reach spiritual maturity on a different basis. How wrong they were!

They sought to obtain spiritual maturity through self-effort instead of continued trust and dependence upon the working of God's mighty power in them! It was against this subtle but ruinous error that Paul protested, demanding that faith being energised by God's love, producing the character of Christ in the believer was the only true basis for Christian maturity (Galatians 3:1-9; 5:4-6, 16, 22-25). May God help us to see!

Spiritual Maturity: Expressing The Fulness Qf Christ

Maturity in Christ can only be thought of as an increase in the measure of what is of Christ as to His life, fulness, and character being expressed through the church. Whenever spiritual growth and maturity in Christ are equated with a mere increase in knowledge of scriptural facts and information or the accumulation of years in Christian service there is great danger of falling into deception. The key thought here is what is of Christ.

The Word of the Lord came to Isaiah the prophet who proclaimed that all our own righteousness (which equals all in us that is not out from His very life) is as filthy rags in God's eyes (64:6). Whenever we lose sight of the Holy Spirit's chief ministry which is the forming of Christ in His fulness, enabling the church to grow up into full manhood in Christ - and we begin to substitute human potential -the developing of the natural mind and all its intellectual powers, etc. - we have dangerously departed from God's intention for His people. Paul clearly shows us the burden of the Lord in Ephesians 4:12-16. Here we see God's intention in giving gifted ministry to the church: "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (v.13). The Amplified Bible states the middle portion of the verse this way: "...that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood."

This "mature manhood" is a definite, spiritual reality in which the full measure of the complete stature of Christ's nature and character is formed in and expressed by the church! Oh beloved, this is the vast magnitude of the high calling of the church. In actuality, it is a fellowship with the Son of God in which we, His church, are called to participate in His very nature and life.

God's intention was that His Son would be the firstborn, the forerunner of many brethren who would be made after the image of God Himself. Thus we who are made partakers of this life shall also be made to share in the very image of God's Son by virtue of the law of reproduction. This is the significance of Christ becom-ing a man-dying as a man, rising from the dead as a man, and being set down on the right hand of the throne of God as a man. This secures the destiny of the re-deemed church.

We see in the man Jesus all that God intends to reproduce in the church, ex-cepting His exclusive place as God and Head. In His person, He both secures the way and demonstrates it. Now, we who are born again possess that very life!

We can never expect to overcome the voluptuous allurements of the world, nor the diabolical powers of the devil unless we are enabled, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to express this nature of Christ in whom there is no foothold for the devil!

And is this not the true nature of spiritual maturity? "I have written unto you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have over-come the wicked one" (1 John 2:14).

It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we must express what Christ is -becoming the embodiment of His very nature. After all, we are bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh. We are the body of Christ (Ephesians 5:29-32; 1 Corinthians 12:27)! When Christianity becomes merely giving out or accumulating facts about Jesus but lacks the essential living expression of Christ's character and nature through a living union with Him, the leaven of religious apostasy is lurking!

Lifeless Religion: Utterly Rejected By God

God does not make our old life acceptable through Jesus. No! God gives us an en-tirely new life. Christ demands that the old life be reckoned as crucified - set aside forever - and then only accepts the expression and enabling which come from that new life which is "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).


This is why it is so perilous when the spiritual condition of the church degener-ates from one of a living, spiritual measure of Christ's life to one of dead profession. At this point, the condemnation of the church in Sardis will come upon it. "I know your works, that you have a name that you live, but are dead" (Revelation 3:1). There you have it - a form of godliness, an external appearance of Christ's life, an appearance of maturity - but a total absence of the essence of His life and nature being expressed.

Such a condition in God's eyes merits these words: "You have a name that you are alive unto me, but when I search beyond the outward piety of your works, when I go beyond the external form of what appears to be the presence of godliness, I do not see the life of my Son living in your midst. I do not see His life and nature being expressed in your life. I do not see the living testimony of Jesus. Therefore ‘you are dead!' I reject all your external, outward forms, and religious rituals as nothing more than a form of self-righteousness! Only the righteousness that belongs to my Son, being expressed through you by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, is acceptable to me! You are all wrong! You have fallen from my standard! Repent! Repent or else I will remove your candlestick. I cannot honour your testimony on the basis of your outward form. It must be the testimony of Jesus through the Holy Spirit - His life and nature being expressed through you! Only that life is pleasing to me!"

Away with the life of self! Jesus alone - His life - is all that God can accept.

To conclude what we have said, spiritual maturity is simply the sum total of Christ's stature presently formed in us. I think this is clearly what the Bible teaches! To equate maturity exclusively to experience in Bible doctrine, spiritual gifts, or many years as a Christian is to commit a terrible error. While these may be legiti-mate experiences that we gain, they do not in themselves constitute spiritual matur-ity.

Such Biblical references to maturity as becoming "full grown" in Christ (Colos-sians 1:28, Amplified), growing up "into Him in all things" (Ephesians 4:15), being "led by the Spirit" (Romans 8:14), etc. all refer to an outgrowth of that new life re-producing the stature of Christ's very character - all being governed by the Holy Spirit.

There are many who have much experience in Christian service, have mastered Bible doctrine, are fluent in Greek and Hebrew, have pastored churches, and yet have very little actual spiritual maturity - that maturity which belongs to an ad-vanced measure of Christ's character having been formed in the inner man of the believer (Galatians 4:19; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Beloved, the Holy Spirit is utterly grieved and quite disgusted as He beholds all the attempts being made in the church to substitute the putrid life that belongs to our own nature for that one life which alone is the basis of our victory. Christ ut-terly rejects all that pertains to ourselves in our flesh - even though it be dressed up religion. He can only be pleased with what He sees that corresponds to new life -His life, His righteousness, His holiness - gaining ascendance in us! This is the sum total of true holiness, sanctification, and spiritual maturity.

We must pray that we as the church would be enabled to see the full identity, living association, and vital union of which we are made partakers in Christ. The substance of true Christianity is a vital new birth in which sinners are made partak-ers, sharers together, with Christ of a brand new kind of life which comes out from Him. "In Him was life" (John 1:4).

This is not a life that is or was latent deep in ourselves! No! It is not a mere change of beliefs and practices along with a new zeal to become religious. No! We, God's children, are the fruit of His labour, His spiritual seed. This new life corre-sponds exactly as the matured harvest corresponds to the kernel of wheat, to the image and likeness of Christ Himself - as to His Godlike character and nature. We are now, through the new birth and the heavenly power of regeneration, partakers of the very life that is in the Son!