From Spiritual Infancy to Maturity

Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009 Posted: 12:10:05AM HKT

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:1 NIV)

Surely we need a baptism of clear seeing if we are to escape the fate of Israel (and of every other religious body in history that forsook God). If not the greatest need, then surely one of the greatest is for the appearance of Christian leaders with prophetic vision. We desperately need seers who can see through the mist. Unless they come soon, it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come, we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy. But the cross is always the harbinger of the resurrection.
Mere evangelism is not our present need. Evangelism does no more than extend religion, of whatever kind it may be. It gains acceptance for religion among larger numbers of people without giving much thought to the quality of that religion. The tragedy is that present-day evangelism accepts the degenerate form of Christianity now current as the very religion of the apostles and busies itself with making converts to it with no questions asked. And all the time we are moving farther and farther from the New Testament pattern.

We must have a new reformation. There must come a violent break with that irresponsible, amusement-mad, paganized pseudo-religion which passes today for the faith of Christ and which is being spread all over the world by unspiritual men employing unscriptural methods to achieve their ends.

When the Roman church apostatized, God brought about the Reformation. When the Reformation declined, God raised up the Moravians and the Wesleys. When these movements began to die, God raised up fundamentalism and the "deeper life" groups.

Now that these have almost without exception sold out to the world--what next?


Prayer
O God, open my eyes that I may see clearly what is of You and what is not, that I may grow into maturity. In Jesus' name.

Thought
Have we made the church a gigantic nursery full of spiritual infants, some of whom are well into their senior years? May God raise up those who can lead us out of infancy into maturity!

Used with Permission

A W Tozer