I Thessalonians 3:10 – “Questions”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁰night and day praying exceedingly into to see your face and to mend the deficiency of your faith.

The NIV does a nice job of smoothing out this verse and translates it, “Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith.”

I have been pondering the last phrase “and supply what is lacking in your faith.”

This is going to be a post where I ask lots of questions and offer few answers. If I live long enough and learn enough, I might someday read this post and be able to answer my own questions, but for now, I’ll just ask them – with the hope they might stir someone else’s mind to ponder the same things.

“What is lacking in your faith.” First of all, you probably couldn’t even say this to a group today. People say they aren’t perfect, that they need to grow, but try telling them their faith is lacking –then watch the fangs and claws come out. “Lacking!?”

Yes. Lacking.

But that’s the easy part. We can all agree, of course, no one is perfect. Everyone still needs to grow.

But I suspect there is something we do not understand about this whole subject.

We say we all need to grow, we’re all just learning. But what about all the verses that distinguish between the “mature” and “immature?” If we’re all “just growing,” all just working our way through the growth process, why are some called “mature” – as if there is in fact some sort of level that can be attained (and apparently some do).  Here are some verses that call out such a distinction:

Heb 5:12-14 – “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, 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.”

Eph 4:13-15 – “… until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

Phil 3:15 -- All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things.

James 1:4 -- Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

So, based on verses like these, there apparently are believers who can be said to have attained some level of spiritual growth where they can be described as “mature,” while there are others who may in fact be “growing” but haven’t attained that “level.” Someone may object at this point, “Well, duh. Everybody knows some believers are ‘mature’ and others aren’t.” But what does that even mean? How do we decide someone is “mature?” How does one know when they’ve reached “it?” And – if we acknowledge “it,” then we are acknowledging it’s not true, “We’re all just growing.”  I would suggest that there is in fact a difference between the “growth” that needs to go on in a new or young believer’s life, and that which is needed for someone who has attained to whatever this “mature” category means.

I honestly don’t have the slightest clue what I’m talking about, but I wonder if it comes back to my lifelong pondering of linear versus fractal logic. Perhaps the reason we struggle with this idea is because we are seeing growth as a linear thing – I grow in this, then that, then this, then that – when in reality it is about a pattern. Of course, what we are shooting for is in fact a pattern – it is the likeness of Christ – as it says in Eph 4:13, attaining to “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” We can add to this Rom 8:29, “For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son …” Jesus is the pattern.

Now why is it significant we’re talking about a pattern rather than just a string of advancements? When we are first saved, obviously our lives have little that looks like the pattern of Jesus’ life. Everything that is not like Him, that doesn’t fit the pattern, needs to go. That is particularly the challenge of a younger believer. But even if it is true that some people significantly attain to the pattern, become significantly “like Christ,” I would maintain they still need to “grow,” only now it’s a matter of developing the pattern. What I mean is, with a pattern, you can always make more of it and you can make it bigger, and it’s still the same pattern – so at that point, a person could be described as “mature,” meaning their life really is significantly “like Christ” but they still can be continuing to “grow” – to express Christlikeness in more and bigger ways. But again, that “growth” is something different from the younger believer who is primarily weeding out all those areas of their life where they are significantly not “like Christ.”

So all the way back to our passage in I Thessalonians, when Paul speaks of “supplying what is lacking in your faith,” could it be that he has in mind the younger believers’ problem – that there are still major areas of the Thessalonians’ lives that don’t fit the pattern of Christ, that Paul being torn away early from them was painfully aware of their need for “maturity?” Given the idea of maturity being a pattern, the idea of their faith “lacking” would fit well for the Thessalonians. They were “young” believers. Perhaps with “mature” believers the problem isn’t so much “lacking” as just needing more of the same? Paul will go on in 4:9,10 to commend their love, then say, “Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.” They had attained a part of the pattern – now the charge is to make more of it.

Hmmmmmm. Lots of questions. Few answers. I feel like I’m scratching all around something I should understand but still don’t. In theological terms, I’m suggesting our doctrine of progressive sanctification is perhaps itself deficient. It contains no acknowledgment of a distinct difference between “mature” and “immature,” what that even means, and how a proper understanding would then affect how we address different people’s “growth.”

Just to throw in a dog bone, I also wonder if we don’t have trouble seeing any of this precisely because no one is “mature?” At least what I have seen in American evangelical Christianity, I think our Wesleyan Arminianism has so infected our faith that no one becomes mature. Our Arminian error means we have all substituted “busy-ness” for real spirituality. People who are busy “serving the Lord” are hailed as “mature” when in fact their lives are very often marred by a great deal of pride and selfishness. The Martha’s of faith get exalted, but where are the Mary’s who’ve made it their passion to “sit at His feet” and drink deeply of His heart? How can anyone become “like” Him if we are all so busy “serving” Him, we have no time to know Him?

I believe there was a time when people were “mature.” As I read the writings and lives of people who lived before the scourge of Wesleyanism infected the church, I read of people who really did “know their God.” I can read their commentaries and derive great benefit, can actually learn deep and significant truths about God and about life. Then, after about 1800, for the most part Christian writing became almost unbearably shallow. The 1800’s still had their Charles Spurgeon and their J.C. Ryle, but those men were even acknowledged as “the last of the Puritans.” In other words – something had changed. The “faith” of the church became something other than that which was true during that period of 1500 to 1800. And I am suggesting the change was not good.

I should add that I am at times heartened by the music many young people are writing today. Much of it is still the same old Arminian clichés but still there are many writing like people who do in fact sit at Jesus’ feet and drink of His heart. I hear young people singing thoughts I’ve just learned to think in the last few years of my 50-something life. I also hope maybe it’s just American Christianity that is so infected, that perhaps I’m only seeing my “corner” of the world. Maybe there are entire people groups of faith out there whose sincere goal is to know God and to fill their own hearts with Jesus. But again, I’m suggesting that, here in America, it might be hard to answer these questions about spiritual maturity precisely because no one is.

Well, better wrap this up. Lots of thoughts. Lots of questions. Some ideas.

I love to study the Bible. I love exactly times like this, where it is obvious there is something I don’t understand. That means there is something the Lord will teach me (eventually) that will rock my world, and, as Jesus said, “When you know the truth, the truth shall set you free!”

May there be more Mary’s in this world!