Only Jesus: Growing Up | Colossians 2:1-7
How mature are you? A lot of that is answered by how mature you want to be. Our culture glorifies youth and wants to postpone maturity. NYT: The Death of Adulthood in American Culture: “No body grows up anymore, but everyone gets older.” Everyone wants to look young, feel young and act young. There is an obsession with youth culture and to reverse the effects of aging. Maturity sounds boring and something that you want to avoid. No one wants to be old; no one wants to turn into their parents or grandparents. The result is that we are living in a tragedy of immaturity and the extension of the adolescence. Adolescence is no longer from age 10-18 but now age 10-25. The committed “gamer” is not a teenager but a 35-year-old man who lives with his parents. We have the coddling of the American mind (Haidt): some colleges are getting rid of failing grades so that students can have better self-esteem. There is now a failure to launch: people who should be maturing into adulthood have little to no ambition, low work ethics, no idea about the direction of their lives, are narcissists, trouble managing stress and inability to take responsibility. Maturity is a good thing: it means that you have grown up. It helps you avoid embarrassment and unnecessary suffering for being immature. Maturity is the difference between respect and regret, making an impact or wasting your life. As bad as immaturity is in our culture, it is worse when it is in the church. Unfortunately, a lot of people have been hurt by immaturity inside the church. This is why all throughout the New Testament, the writers are pleading for believers to grow up.
Spiritual maturity is a big theme in Colossians. Paul is writing to a young church to encourage them to continue to trust in the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus. “Colossians is more of a vaccination than an antibiotic.” Colossae, like other Roman towns, had a buffet of religious pluralism, so they were tempted to want to go with the flow of the culture around them. Paul is calling these Colossians to spiritual maturity that doesn’t go with the flow of the culture. In 2:1-7, Paul gets to the heart of the letter teaching about the struggle for and the secret to spiritual maturity.