Transcription
[Music] He's making this distinction. There's this natural person, the unsaved person, who, though might look wise to the world, they ultimately are foolish because they're rejecting the good news that offers them salvation for their souls.
And then there's the other group, which is called the spiritual group. And these are the saved individuals who, though might look foolish to the world as they trust in a suffering Messiah, these individuals are the ones who are truly wise because they have found the wisdom of God.
And so last time, what we saw then was that he was encouraging the church as these spiritual, saved individuals to take advantage of the deeper things of God available to them through the Spirit. Because what he explains now is, because of the Gospel, the Holy Spirit now indwells us, and he actually knows the mind of God, and he can give us the mind of Christ. But we have to take advantage of these deeper things. So if you want to know more about God and experience God, it's up to you to seek and yield to the Holy Spirit. And so that's where we left off last time.
And now, what we're going to notice at the beginning of chapter 3 is that he's going to add one other category of person. So once again, we had the natural, unsaved person, and we have the spiritual, saved person. Well, now he's going to make a subcategory for the spiritual, saved person. And what we're going to find here is that there are those who are mature, those who are doing what he is just calling them to do, to seek the Spirit's leading and to receive the deeper things of God. But there are also some who are called carnal Christians, and those are the spiritually immature Christians within this congregation. They are not taking advantage of the deeper things of God available to them through the Spirit. And so he's going to spend time now addressing this specific group, calling them ultimately to growth, to keep growing and receive the things that are available to them.
And so you see in the beginning where Paul says in verse one, "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ." And so you see him, he's kind of frustrated here because he was wanting to give them probably even greater information, more revelation available to them. But because they have not grown, they're not ready to receive these deeper mysteries of God that have been revealed through Christ.
And so what I think we see when Paul starts to address this church in this specific part of the text is we are reminded that hard conversations are necessary for church health. I just want to once again draw your attention to verse one of what Paul calls these individuals. He says, "Brethren, first of all." So he's not being disrespectful. He recognizes they're in the family of God. These are his brothers and his sisters. But whenever he's talking to them, he has some harder things, some harsh things to say about them. Because he says they're brothers in Christ, but then he says that they are carnal and spiritual babies.
Now, for those who aren't as familiar, carnal, what that literally means, and some translations might even translate it differently slightly for you, what that means is fleshly. The things of the flesh, right? These temporary, fleeting pleasures, desires that we have in the world, our natural state. Or another translation might say worldly, being of the world. What the world values, once again, going back to the previous chapter, their wisdom, their values, rather than the values of the kingdom and of God and of Christ. And so he says that these individuals, though they have been saved, they were Christians, they were acting like the lost. That's pretty serious. Think about this. What if I came up here one Sunday morning and I looked at all of you and I said, "You all act like you're lost. I don't see a saved person in here." But by the way you're living your life, that's pretty, that's pretty direct, is it not? If I were to say that.
And then what if I went on and said, "You're all babies." That's what Paul is saying here. Sometimes we read over it, we see the language of the brethren and we see these other spiritual terms going on. But he's calling these people fleshly, carnal, spiritual babies. That's what he's telling these people here. And of course, we know that acting like a baby is cute when you're little, right? I know that we have some babies here, and I know that like Callaway right now, he's on that path where he's starting to form some words, but he doesn't have it all together yet, and he thinks he does. And so he just keeps talking, and the words don't really form right sentences, and sometimes it seems like he's speaking a different language. And that's really cute right now. But we know that if it continued to when he's much older, and he was still speaking in different languages and never able to form true sentences, that would be a problem, wouldn't it?
And I've used this illustration before. And he's going to talk a little bit more about specifically their diet between milk and solid food. And the thing is, we know that it's natural for a mother to nurse their infant. But it's disturbing if a mother is nursing her 30-year-old, right? That is disturbing. That's a problem. That's what he's saying is going on in this church. And sometimes we, you know, once again, we sugarcoat sometimes what's going on in our spiritual lives. But he needs to be really clear for us here. And we need to understand what he's saying is that he's not sugarcoating this. He says, "You guys are acting disturbing. You are breaking the heart of your Lord, acting like these lost, spiritual babies."
And so I think it's important that we see that this hard conversation that he's having with these Christians, it's for their good, ultimately. He wants them to be healthy. He wants this church to flourish, to thrive. But you have to be willing to have these hard conversations. And it reminds me how pruning is a good thing, even if it hurts sometimes. We see the metaphor that Jesus uses in John 15:2. It says, "Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." So there are some that don't bear fruit at all, that aren't really of the vine, and so they'll cut them off, take them away. But then there are others who do have some fruit, but they're still struggling a little bit. They have some things that are weighing them down spiritually. And in those areas, it says that the Lord will cut them off, there's the spiritual pruning process, so that we would be able to grow and bear more fruit.
Likewise, in our own lives, there are certain things, certain places in which God is going to prune us. God might take certain people out of your life for a reason so that you may grow and bear fruit. He might take you out of a certain job. He might take you out of a certain region. You may have moved and not planned on moving. You might not have planned on being in this region at this point in time in your life. But the thing is, sometimes God is going to do that so that you could grow and bear fruit. And sometimes, once again, it's not always easy. Sometimes it can be really hard to say goodbye to certain friends or family members, loved ones, co-workers, to leave a job, or to leave a home that you've been in for so many years. All of these things can be very difficult, very hard at times. But the pruning ultimately is for good. It's for health, for growth, and for development.
Likewise, in Hebrews 12:6, it says, "For whom the Lord loves, he chastens." Sometimes because God loves us, he will discipline us. He'll use some harsh language sometimes. He'll convict us. He doesn't condemn us, but he will convict us. That's a work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, is that we sometimes will see the Lord's rebuke. We will see the Lord's discipline. And so this then is a humble reminder for us as believers, is that sometimes harsh truth must be spoken to bring about real change. Some of us are not very comfortable with that, to get out of our comfort zone and to have the hard, difficult conversations where sometimes people are not going to like you at the end of the conversation. There are many people that did not like the Apostle Paul. I can tell you right now, if the Apostle Paul was around us today, there would be so many churches that hated him and never wanted him to come to their church. It's not because Paul was trying to be overly offensive. He wasn't being offensive for offense's sake, but he understood that sometimes for truth to be promoted and for lives to be changed, you have to risk being offensive.
Ephesians 4:15 gives us this frame where it says, "But speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ." And that is how we are to understand this. We're not trying to just be harsh or rude, you know, just for any reason, but rather we are to speak the truth in love. If you're ever just going to say something mean or harsh to someone just because you're angry with them, then that's not speaking the truth in love. Your motivation, your intention, your goal for the individual is that they might grow into the image of Christ. So that means that you would go to them because you were caring about their soul, not caring about yourself or your status. And that was the issue here. They weren't caring about other people. They were caring about self. And so Paul, though he does have a burden for them, he does care about them. And so he's willing to speak the truth in love to them.
And I think what's so powerful about this is, and we know this in our own lives, is that when we have accountability, accountability holds us to a higher standard, does it not? Just think about this for a moment. I'm sure many of us have probably worked a job in our lives where the boss isn't around. But then when the boss, especially if you're newer, the boss gets around, all of a sudden you're doing things exactly to the letter. You're doing exactly what you're supposed to. Maybe you're even going above and beyond. Like there's a piece of trash on the floor, you'll go pick it up because you know the boss is watching. See, accountability, it keeps us to a higher standard. It points us to things that we are doing in our lives that normally we would just pass by. We would allow just to keep going in this area. But whenever somebody else is watching or listening, or maybe they're inserting themselves and addressing it for us, it makes us consider what we are actually doing and saying and thinking. And it actually can promote real change.
So my encouragement is not only that we would be willing to be that person, like Paul, earlier in the book, like Chloe's household, that we would be willing to have hard conversations sometimes because we care about people and that we would speak the truth in love. Both of those things: you speak the truth and in love. But then also, I want to encourage us to be willing to have honest conversations where our own presuppositions are challenged. There are some people potentially even here that they only allow those in their circle. They only really engage in conversations, or at least a meaningful, longer conversation, with people that basically just continue to be yes-men for them. They don't really ever challenge their presuppositions. They don't ever let them know, "Actually, you're wrong on this." And so because of that, they only surround themselves with people that affirm them. And if all you do is surround yourself with people that are affirming you, and you just are placing yourself in an echo chamber, you will definitely, there's no doubt about it, you will find yourself in error. When you allow yourself to only be around one mindset, you're going to find yourself embracing falsehood.
And so we see then the necessity for hard conversations to promote church health, which then leads to the body of this text where we see the ultimate growth then is expected, but not without effort. See, living things are supposed to grow. If we just look in our world, we see that that is the case. When you think about plants, they're meant to grow. When we think about animals, we see that they grow, develop, and mature. Likewise, we see through the stages of our human life, we see how we are to grow. You have those who are infants, we see them moving to toddlers, we see them moving to eventually, you know, kid, pre-teen, teenager, adult, elderly. We see that there are these different stages in our lives. And that's what living things are meant to do. That is how God has created and ordered the world. And so sometimes we understand this and we expect this in all of these other areas of life, our plant life, our animal life, our human life. But sometimes we don't apply it to our Christian life. But if you are a healthy Christian, you should be growing.
Now, it's not always going to be just a perfect, direct line going right up. There might be some little valleys along the way. But ultimately, the progression is upward. Because if you're going with Christ, you're going in that direction. And so what we see here is that healthy Christians must grow. And what that means then is that coasting isn't growth. I just want to camp out on that for just a moment. Sometimes we coast spiritually. We're not necessarily going in rebellion. We're not trying to just give up Christianity, give up the gospel. But we are just kind of coasting in life. We go to church, we do our thing because it's kind of that's just what we do. That's obligation. Or maybe even know what's valuable, but that's about it. You're just kind of just coasting in your spiritual journey. Or maybe you're reading a Bible plan, or maybe you read the verse of the day, or whatever you do, and you read it just because you just have to get it off your checklist, and then you immediately move on. And you don't even, two minutes later, you don't even know what you just read. See, coasting isn't growth.
And that's what I think started to happen within this church. And ultimately, what we start to see is that stagnation and division, which was another huge problem here, that they were dividing within one another, is that these are signs of carnality. If you were coasting, or if you were stagnating, if you were divisive with other believers, that's a sign that you are being of the world. That is a sign that you are being spiritually immature. Now, of course, this isn't the only list. Of course, Paul is looking specifically at these issues of stagnation and of division. But if you look at other passages like Galatians 5:19 to 21, it gives you a whole list of carnality. It says, "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are..." And it just gives us a huge list. Now, just as I list these off, maybe do a little self-evaluation, examination. Are any of these things applying to me in my own spiritual life? Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. Of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
See, you see a lot of these things on this list that Paul is already addressing. And as we continue through this letter, you're going to see that he addresses a lot more of these items on this list. But are we seeing any of these things in our own lives? And if so, that shows that we have some areas in which we need to mature. We need to have some areas that we are expected as saints to grow in.
And what we notice in what Paul then explains is that our spiritual maturity is directly linked to our spiritual diet. He starts to talk about the fact that he cannot feed them solid food, that is meat, because they are still dependent on the milk. You can't give a baby a steak. That would not be good because they are not able to digest it. They don't have teeth to chew it, to break it down. Likewise, he says that their, our spiritual level of maturity is going to be based on and directly linked to what are we taking in? And I don't even just mean theologically for a second. I'm just talking about just in our day-to-day lives. What does your diet look like? What are the things that you are listening to regularly? We have so many that are in our youth right now that are being discipled by TikTok. That is their main teacher in life right now. They slide, they get someone, they say something, and if they like it, then they take it in like a sponge. We have a lot of people that are addicted to social media in this congregation. It might not even be social media, but it could be the news. It could just be entertainment, music, whatever other avenue that you take. What is your diet? What are the regular things that you are taking in? Because ultimately, if you were to assess your diet, your intake, that's going to be directly related to your spiritual maturity.
Now, of course, Paul is talking about the teachings that he's been giving them. And because of their infancy spiritually, as being babies in Christ, it requires that they are being reminded of the basics of the Gospel again. Now, once again, it's a good thing if you're a new convert. If you're a new convert, just came to Christ, you'll want to be regularly being taught the basics, the fundamentals. In fact, if you're wanting to be good in athletics, you have to drill the fundamentals. But of course, we understand that there's more than the basics. There's more than the fundamentals. And there are sadly so many churches and Christians who are lacking that biblical depth. They're staying in the basics. But what we see that the expectation, once again, is that we are supposed to move from milk to meat. That is the goal. So if you have a church or if you are a Christian who is only always on the milk, then that is a problem.
So, you know, let's be specific here. What are we talking about when we're talking about the milk, or the basics, versus the deeper things of God, the solid food? Well, think about it like this. God's love, that's one of the first things that we understand as believers, right? John 3:16 is a passage that many people will quote and memorize. Maybe that may have been the very first verse that you memorized as a believer. "For God so loved the world." That is profound. That is the reason, the motivation for the gospel message. That God loved us and that he sent Jesus. Who is Jesus? He is the Son of God, who came to the earth, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the dead, so that if we would just turn from our sins and trust in Jesus, we would be saved. We would have eternal life, be in the presence of God forever. Those are all powerful, important things. That is the gospel message. That is something that must be proclaimed in our churches every single week. But that's the basics. There is more to the story there.
We have to go beyond just the simple gospel message. Because if I just came and preached you the gospel every week and then we left, it'd be a pretty short sermon. I could be done right now because I just gave you the gospel, the good news of salvation found in Jesus Christ, because of God's love for us as sinners. But we need to go deeper in our faith journey. So what are some of these deeper things? Well, what if I were to ask you, if I had everyone like write down, define for me propitiation? What does that mean? If you've been in Christ for a while, you should know. Explain to me mediation and how that works with Christ as our high priest. Do you know what that means? Could you explain that to someone that had a question about it? Or what about the Trinity? Now, many people whenever I ask that, Christians will say, "Three in one." I'm like, "What are you talking about? Shampoo, three in one shampoo?" If you say three in one, okay, yes, you're getting an aspect of it. That's great. But if I wanted you to articulate and give a little bit more explanation of the Trinity, which is one of the most important doctrines that we find in the New Testament, I know that many Christians when they start to try to explain it, or maybe they'll even try to use an analogy, an illustration, usually it falls into heresy. Most times people want to use like H2O and how, you know, there's it's H2O, but then you have water, you have ice, and you have vapor. So you have three and one. And though, okay, that kind of gives you the three-one picture. If you take it to its logical conclusion, that's a heresy because that's actually describing modalism, where water can turn into ice, water can turn into vapor. The Father cannot turn into the Son. The Son cannot turn into the Holy Spirit. That is modalism. That's one of the earliest heresies in the church. But the thing is, there are many who would use that and think that that is the perfect analogy for the Trinity. So it's important that we understand what we are talking about. We need to go deeper with understanding who God is. Once again, the Trinity is important because that's who we worship. It's who God is, and it's how we should understand and express our worship, our devotion, is for Father, Son, and Spirit. Or the Incarnation, how Jesus is truly God and truly man. Now, we many of us will believe that. But then if you start to try to understand and explain certain texts about where Jesus says, you know, "The Son of Man does not know the day or the hour of when he will return," you'll have all different sorts of answers and explanations of how Jesus can be omniscient and not know something. And you'll hear a lot of people that say a lot of different things, and many of them are really problematic if you're trying to understand Jesus being truly God. He didn't cease being God when he became man. But there's a lot of confusion about the Incarnation and how that works. I'm not saying that we understand all of the mystery that comes with this. I'm not trying to say that we know everything. But there are revelations that have been given to us in God's word that we should know as we continue to walk with the Lord.
Others, examples would be ministry nuances. There are going to be so many ins and outs of ministry and doing life together in churches and doing ministries that we do where it's not always just clear-cut, black and white, what you are to do in this situation because the Bible gives us discernment. The Bible gives us wisdom. And we have to sometimes make a call in which the Bible doesn't always speak on every specific area. It gives us boundaries. It gives us principles to live by. But sometimes we have to have maturity. We need to be deeper in our faith to be able to make wise decisions. Or one final one is social issues. We see the church is very divided on certain things when it comes to social issues in the church. Well, one of those reasons is because you have some that are spiritually immature wanting to weigh in on social media. Everyone has an opinion, regardless of how much you've been in God's word, how much time you've spent with Jesus, you still have just as much of an opinion as the people that have been doing this for years. See, that's the problem. Is we have all of this noise, and we don't have a lot of time just being with the Lord. We should spend way more time with the Lord than we do on social media, or that we do even with other people. We need to spend time with God. We need to seek the deeper things of God. And this is a burden that I have for our churches and for Christians because of this very issue.
And so then, what we see is not only is it expected, but as I mentioned, it's not without effort. So that means that we have a part to play in our growth. Spiritual maturity requires intentionality and effort. You're not going to accidentally grow. If you're thinking, "I can just kind of sit back, relax, Jesus, you do your thing," that's not going to work. If you want to grow, it takes effort. You need to be intentional. Same thing with a workout regimen. You know, you can't just look at the weights or buy all the equipment and just go and say, "Yeah, I'm getting ripped." No, you have to put in the work. You have to work out. You have to be consistent. You have to be disciplined. And so we have to take moments captive for the Lord in our lives if we want to grow.
And so I've seen this has actually been shared on social media by a few, I believe, in the congregation. I just want to share for you 10 examples of ways that just for a Sunday morning worship, that you could capitalize and make the most of your Sunday morning worship. And if you take notes, maybe just write these 10 things down and then ask yourself, how many of them have you done today? Pray before you go. Did you spend time with God before you got to church this morning? Worship on the drive there. Were you listening to a debate or just secular music, or were you spending time worshiping the Lord as you were driving to church this morning? Did you get there early where you're there on time where you could actually be present and not feeling like you're rushed to get into the building, or maybe you've already missed some of the worship or the sermon? Are you getting there on time where you can really be present? Did you invite someone? Are you inviting people to church? I know that many of us want our church to continue to grow, not only spiritually but numerically. It won't happen if you are not inviting people to church. Bring your Bible. One of the first things I say every sermon is, "If you have a Bible." And I hope that you do, because I hope that people would bring their Bibles with them. Now, I'm not saying that you can never use a smartphone. I'm not anti-technology. I even use my laptop a lot of times when I'm studying. But something that you can actively have with you, following along in the word, checking me, because I'm not scripture. Pastors are not Bibles. And I say that very often as well. Are you actually looking at the text, reading it for yourself? And then moving forward, are you taking notes? So many of us when we were in school, we were probably really good note-takers. Like you would make sure that you were ready for the test. Well, you know, we have a greater test that is coming when Christ returns. And I want to make sure that we are all ready, that we are all going to be a blameless bride for the Lord, that we are mature whenever he comes. And I think that requires taking notes. Not, once again, different ways of taking notes. That doesn't mean you have to write down every single thing that I or anyone up here says, but at least that you were thinking through what the material is, and that you are jotting down important things, that you are marking in your Bible. And so that you can not only have it for yourself, but leave a legacy for your children, for the next generation. I love looking at past Bibles and books that I've seen other people that I respect that have written in them. Take notes. Talk to people. Now, it's a little bit harder to get in and out here without someone saying hello or welcoming you, because we're a little bit smaller of a congregation. But there are bigger churches, and I'm not saying that you couldn't do it here, but it would be harder. But where people will come in, run in, right? Whatever, church is about to begin. And as soon as the service is over, they're out of here. Now, I'm not saying you have to spend three hours after church talking to every single person. But you come to fellowship with the body of Christ, to be the body of Christ. There is no solo Christianity. We have to do life together. And so it's important that we are making connections and we are growing in our relationships with one another. You can also sing out loud whenever we worship. Sing to the Lord. We're not singing for one another. We're not singing to, you know, because of what other people might think of us. We're singing to praise the Lord. We come to worship God together. Join a team and serve. That's another thing we've been doing actively lately in our membership classes. One of the last things we do is we say, "Okay, now that you're going to be part of the family, where do you see your gifts manifesting within the body? Where can you actively serve and meet needs in our church?" Are you serving within your congregation? And then finally, apply the message to your week. Whenever I give these reviews at the beginning of my sermons, as we've been looking back, hopefully you should be looking back at your own week as well and seeing, "Yes, I remember that point. I applied that to my life because God's word is living and active and relevant for me." Are you applying these messages and taking them to heart, or are you just hearing something and trying to be encouraged and then going on with your week and completely disregarding it? Apply it to your life.
So these are just multiple examples of ways in which that we can take our Sunday mornings captive. And many of these things, I know that we aren't doing, and we could very well do to make this more impactful, not only for ourselves but for others. Now, if that's just for a Sunday morning, imagine what we could do with all of the other moments in our lives. If we wanted to grow, we could. But of course, as I mentioned, this growth is a process that takes time. I do want to give you some grace here. God is infinitely patient with us. We get mad at people whenever they aren't growing the way that we want them to, on the timetable that we want them to grow. God is patient with you. Growth takes time. But what you can do is take the next step. You can do a little bit better tomorrow than you did today. And that's what he is asking for you. He's asking that you would do more than you are currently doing, that you would continue to grow. And every season is an opportunity for growth. I want to say that again. Whatever season, I can say this for everyone here, universally, you are in a season designed for growth. And you might be like, "No, you have no idea how hard my life has been right now. How difficult life has been. How hard, what dark place I am in." I'm reminded of what James says, that we should count it all joy because even in various trials, God can use these things to cultivate within us patience that ultimately results in us being complete and mature. There's another quote that I've heard before that it says that even storms make roots grow deeper. Even storms can make you grow. It actually loosens the ground. It allows the roots to go deeper because God is working in it. So what we see is that even through hard seasons of life, many times, even or because of those hard seasons, God is actively growing us and maturing us.
So we see growth is expected, but it's not without effort. And then the final thing is that as we seek to grow, mature in Christ, is what we need to recognize that growth is found in following Jesus. True spiritual growth is found in a vital, ongoing relationship with Christ, where he, by the power of the Holy Spirit, empowers us to bear lasting fruit. In John 15:5, it says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing." Do we want to grow? Do we want to bear fruit? We have to abide in Christ. Apart from him, we can do nothing. It says in the text. But if we abide in Christ, we can bear fruit, like we see in Galatians 5:22-23, where it says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." Is that what you want to experience in your life, in your church, in your relationships? It starts with Christ. And that's what the Corinthians, if you notice, that they were missing. Because what were they doing? It says they were following men, and then they were behaving like mere men. They were saying, "I'm of Paul. I'm of Apollos. I'm following these guys, these men." You know what you do? If all you do is exalt men, pastors, political figures, celebrities, if you are following them, you look to them, that is your guide, you're going to live like mere humans. But you are called to so much more. You are called to live spiritual. You are called to live like the kingdom. That is what we are called to. We have a higher calling and a greater identity found in Christ. We are called to follow Jesus, the Lord of Glory. There is nothing better that we can set our sights on, our aim, our standard. Not only is he the source of our growth, he is the standard for growth.
And that we need to recognize that Jesus not only can he save us, but he can sanctify us. So many of us, we believe that Jesus saved us, that he forgave us of our sins with what he did on the cross. But so many of us don't really believe that he can continue to work in us, that he can help us overcome temptation, that he can help us overcome anxiety, that he can actually heal when we are suffering from physical ailments, that he can work in our congregations, that he can work in our homes, in our communities. Do you believe that Jesus can not only save but sanctify? We need to trust and believe that Jesus can do this. And then we need to chase after Christ relentlessly. Two verses in closing. In Luke 9:23, it says, "Then he said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.'" If you want to find true spiritual growth, if you want to abide in Christ, it says that you need to deny yourself, stop looking to self, give up your comforts, your preferences, take up your cross, follow him. And it says daily. This is a daily choice to grow and abide and to chase after Christ. And likewise, John 14:15 says, "If you love me, keep my commandments." See, this is more than just intellectual understanding about who God is, but it's actually living a life where you are obeying him. That is how you grow. You learn and you apply. And what this does is it cultivates in you spiritual maturity. We need to obey the words of Christ. That is how we follow him faithfully. And the more that we grow, the more that we come to know and experience God, and the more we become to look more like Christ. And that's what Paul wants for these Corinthians. He wants them to be united, not divided. He wants them to know and experience God. And he wants them to look like Christ. We should be able to look at one another and see Jesus in one another. In fact, this right here, that line, that is what we were made for. What is your purpose in life? It's to know and experience God and to be made into the image of Christ. And that's what happens when you seek after Christ relentlessly, when you grow, commit yourself to perpetual growth.
So that's my challenge as we close this morning. Is never stop growing. Never stop pursuing Jesus. Because when Christ is your goal, you have an infinite potential for growth. You're never going to reach perfection, so you can keep chasing and keep growing. And if you're ever thinking to yourself, "Well, I feel like I've gotten to the point where I don't need to grow anymore," you have a lot more growing to do. Because unless you are our Lord and Savior, you still have time and room for growth. So let us hear the words of Paul this morning as we see how hard conversations are necessary for church health. We see that growth is expected of every believer, but it is not without effort. And ultimately, that our growth, though we do things, we participate in the process, it ultimately is found in following Jesus relentlessly.