Are you spiritually immature?

Mature vs. Immature

How do we know if we are a “mature” Christian verses an “immature” Christian? What is a “babe” in Christ? Can we even know if we are “mature in the Lord”?

And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men? - 1 Corinthians 3:1–3

• If we find that some teaching is just “over our heads,” it may not be the teacher's fault, but our own. Paul seems to show discontentment with the Corinthians’ ability to understand more advanced principles of the faith.

• When Paul says “mere men” what does he mean? Unbelievers! Paul has to talk to these people as if they are unbelievers. There is jealousy and strife among them, there is disunity.

• Paul wanted to talk differently to the Corinthians. In almost every workplace, there’s something called “workplace lingo” which is a set of terms, acronyms, or abbreviations that the co-workers know, but none of the customers understand unless they have also worked in a similar position. They learn that through time and experience. The same is true of Christianity. If I use words like “manuscript, septuagint, propitiation, expiation, pentateuch, eschatology, soteriology” would you be able to understand what I was saying?
• Would you say that you have really been stagnant in your growth in the knowledge of the Lord? Have you noticed that you really haven’t advanced much in your understanding of doctrine? Or worse, do you really care?

Paul says that we should be infants in evil, but mature in our thinking. God wants us to learn His Word. Childlike faith is commanded in regards to our trusting God, not in our thinking about Him.

19however, in the church I desire to speak five words with my mind so that I may instruct others also, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue. 20Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature. 21In the Law it is written, “By men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people, and even so they will not listen to Me,” says the Lord. 22So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers but to those who believe. -  1 Corinthians 14:19–22

• Notice that after Paul says to “be mature” in their thinking, he goes right to the Scriptures. (This point emphasized the need for an interpreter if one was to speak in tongues and that the primary arena for speaking in tongues is in the midst of unbelievers as a sign.) What does that tell us about how a mature believer thinks?

• Do you have a desire to grow in maturity as a believer? Do you have a desire to meditate and study the Scriptures?

The writer says that the Hebrews ought to have been teachers (all of them) but they need to be taught the same things over again. They were babes who needed milk (elementary principles) and were not familiar with God’s Word.

Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God (Acts 7:38), and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2of instruction about washings and laying on of hands (1 Timothy 4:14; 5:22), and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.  - Hebrews 5:11–6:2

• Paul says solid food (advanced teaching) is for the mature who have demonstrated lives of holy living and are able to discern good and evil. What does studying Scripture have to do with being a mature Christian? Does your life reflect a life based on God’s Word?

• How much time do you spend in God’s Word outside of church?

Paul says there are two key signs of a mature Christian.

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. - Ephesians 4:11–16

• The unity of the faith: do you have a deep fellowship with other believers? Fellowship in the context I’m speaking of is a kind of relationship where there is depth. Accountability, truth speaking, prayer and encouragement. Do you have a relationship like that? Do you want a relationship like that?

• Knowledge of the Son of God: Paul is not speaking here of “relational knowledge”, rather of “possessing information.” This is the Greek word “ἐπίγνωσις” [epignosis] and is used in passages like Romans 10:2 or Philippians 1:9.

A sign that one is a mature believer is one who is not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. One who is grounded from time spent in Scripture in true doctrine. Do you know how to tell a false doctrine from a true one? Could you refute a false doctrine with Scripture? (example: Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is/was Michael the Archangel)