Maturity and the Perfect Man
When we try to understand spiritual maturity along the lines as it relates to the fullness of time, we are awe struck by its’ absolute dependency of the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Christ had to be obedient to death, to be glorified. The whole divine plan of salvation balances on the truth of the resurrection. We are at once inundated with an inconceivable immensity of types and anti-types, of avenues, ways and highways of information that flow to completion in Christ. He is the estuary of all things. When I think of the fullness of time, I imagine a tender sapling planted into the earth shortly after the winter thaw, it is depending hopelessly on the warmth and the blessing of the April showers, to mature and send its roots as deep as possible into the earth, if it is to stand a fighting chance against the scorching heat of summer. It has to push out its flowers in time and under the right conditions that would produce its tiny crop of seeds for the fall harvest. The fullness of time is a hard-and-fast reminder that the Creator has declared all things ready and in place for the completion of salvation.
The growth stages of man’s maturity can be likened to a garden plan. There are many similarities in this comparison. The process of man’s maturity is equated to this tender plant; first, because the very elements of nature it is struggling against are those that are extremely essential to its well-being and maturity. This thought is alive, in St. Paul's address to the Romans, he said, “Love not the world nor the things in the world, if any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him!” As humans the tangible are the resources we draw upon for daily living. These are also the essentials that the plant will need if it is to survive the brutal elements and the powerful forces of nature. It must learn to take what is needed if it is to stand a fighting chance of reaching maturity.
Ephesians 6:12 (KJV). For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
St. Paul uses the development stages of a child as an analogy of the Fullness of time. He writes, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11 (KJV) There is an embellishment of this idea by the apostle found in 1 Corinthians 13:10 (KJV). Here St. Paul writes, “But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
This analogy works well in defining the nature of maturity, primarily because it is progressive in structure, first, because St. Paul framed his thought commencing in its infancy, and then he guides the thinking process of his readers until it reaches its completion in maturity. This analogy is also emblematic, or typical of the whole creation order; starting embryonically, but guided by the intended purpose of the Creator, where it is to have its maturity realized in Christ, who is the creator of all things in heaven and on earth. He is the source of the life and movement of all things and their being. Significantly, just as Jesus had to come in infancy and grow Luke 2:40, every process of grace is a new beginning which must begin embryonically.
In this lesson it is apparent that the apostle is also making rudimentary figurative references to the fundamental difference between the law and grace. Although many of the types in the law are embellishments of earlier introductions. The types that were introduced under law, may have had their beginning elsewhere, but the apostle intends to suggest that they were in part, embryonic because God rehashed their nature and purpose in the Law. The apostle recognized them as detached deformed shadows preceding the images. The recognition of their shadows in the law are intended to track to their beginning to their manifestation. Comparatively they were manifested types in the Cycle of Grace.
The Cycle of Grace is the age of maturity; the time of the perfection of all things. It is that developmental preparedness that awaits the completion of the ruling principles in the cycles of human advancement. All governing factors advancing methodically from their embryonic stages to the level of proficient readiness and culminating in this point in grace: Innocence, conscience, human government, promise and the law, with all their primitive contributions, are ready and await the arrival of the anointed one.
We will only visit the developmental aspect of these controlling factors here as a point of reference, because we have already dealt with them in much greater details in earlier chapters when we tracked the five major governing factors from their inception, through their various stages of development from their cycles or dispensations.