What Is Maturity?
What is maturity?
My oversimplified definition is this: treating things according to their proper degree of importance; treating things that are important as though they really are important and treating unimportant things as though they are not that important. Conversely, immaturity is treating unimportant things like they are important and treating important things like they are unimportant. This is true even outside of spiritual matters.
When a teenager cries that her “life is over” after not making a certain team, we rightly recognize that as immaturity - treating something relatively unimportant like it is so important that her life is now over. Or if a student neglects their studies, and talks/snickers through lectures, we also recognize that as immaturity because they are treating something relatively important as though it is not important at all.
These are just some of the most obvious examples for illustration purposes, but immaturity can be much more subtle and deceptive. To be mature we must act, think, and value people and things according to their true value.
Philippians & Hebrews
We can see this in Philippians 3 when Paul says “let those of us who are mature think this way” (v15). The “this way” that we are to think is referring to the mindset he has just expounded in which he says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (v8).
“Let those of us who are mature think this way” - prioritizing that which is of greatest worth above all else. Similarly in Hebrews the author calls the church immature and, if you follow his argument, this immaturity comes from “neglecting such a great salvation” - treating something incredibly important as though it is not that important.
Edwards & Augustine
The eighteenth century pastor and theologian, Jonathan Edwards, took this a step farther when he explained that “the ultimate good in life is to treat things according to their true value.” But this begs the question: how do we know the true value of things? Well, first we need to understand maturity is not just about how we act; It’s actually about what we love.
An even older theologian, Augustine, has great insight on this. He defined virtue as “rightly ordered love.” He says that a just and good person “is one who has [rightly] ordered his love, so that he does not love what it is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or love too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more).”
How The Greatest Commandment Creates Maturity
Our love must be in the right order, and it is only in loving God supremely and rightly that everything else begins to fall into the right order. He is the One that gives all people and things value; He is the source of all good and truth and beauty. We must center our lives on Him and He forms us into mature and whole individuals who are not thrown around by the ideas and values of the world or taken captive by sin and selfishness. We are freed by Jesus to live with courage and wisdom, and only in him do you have the capacity to be truly mature.
The beautiful thing is, we do not have to love other important things less in order to love God more. loving God most actually increases our capacity and ability to love other people and things more. Tim Keller says it like this, “learn to love God more, and you will love other things with far more satisfaction. You won’t overprotect them, you won’t over-expect things from them. You won’t be constantly furious with them for not being what you hoped. Don’t stifle passionate love for anything; rather, redirect your greatest love toward God by loving him with your whole heart.”
Jesus loved the Father more than anyone ever has and He is famous for the incredible extent of His love for His people. that is not a coincidence. He loved us best because He loved God most.
Maturity & The Self
If this is true though, that maturity and virtue is loving and treating things according to their true value, then an issue arises. How do we relate to ourselves? If it is true that we are to love and relate to things with their proper degree of importance, and we determine value by how God sees and orders things…well, God sees me as dearly loved and worth dying for! (He does see you that way in case you didn’t know that!) But if I am dearly loved by God and worth dying for, then I should love myself a great deal, and I should give myself a lot of attention; my self should be a priority.
That is true, but it sounds strange to say as a Christ follower. This is because Christ turns upside-down the way we express love and care for our own souls. The way we put ourselves first is by putting ourselves last (Mark 9:35). The way we treat ourselves with the proper degree of importance is by counting others more significant than ourselves (Phil. 2:3). By giving ourselves away to God and to others we will experience the truest, most lasting joy and reward. This is the path to true maturity.