Page 118 - Ephesians

How do you measure maturity? How do you measure growth? If I
want to measure how tall my children are, I use a ruler. If I want
to measure temperature, I use a thermometer. If I want to
measure the distance to the stars, I’d use the time it takes light to
travel in a year. It all depends on what you are measuring. How
do you measure Christian maturity? The answer is, look for the
“Fullness of Christ”. That’s “The measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ”. The knowledge of Christ is the measure.
A person is mature depending on how well he knows Jesus.
That’s the point. That’s what maturity is. How well you know the
Lord.

That’s why 4:15 says, “Grow up into all aspects of Him.” Grow
up in Him. The more I know Him, the more I’m mature. I call
attention to this because of the wrong ways people measure
maturity. Some people think a Christian is mature, because he’s
logged in many years. “I’ve been saved for forty years. Back in
1929 I trusted Jesus.” That doesn’t make you mature! You might
still be on the nipple. Being saved a long time, isn’t how you
measure maturity. If you repeat the same year 40 times, you are
like the Israelites marching around Mt Zion with one foot nailed to
the floor.

You don’t measure maturity by how early you get up each
morning, or how many times you’ve read the Bible. You don’t
measure maturity by how active you are in the work of the Lord, or
how much evangelism you do. You might say, “But I have a
special ministry, and I do this and that.” That’s not it. Not
according to this chapter.

A mature person, is one who is drawing from the head. One who
is related to Christ. One who is going forward, in a “heart
knowledge” of God, through the progressive revelation of Christ
in the scriptures. The babe in Christ, according to Isaiah 28, is
one who refuses to rest. That’s the infant. A mature Christian is
not one who is working his way up the ranks of Christian notoriety,
hoping to reach the platform of public ministry. That’s not the
one.