Paul employs the word “perfect” to refer to those maturing in their [...]]]> “Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained” (Phil. 3:15f.).

Paul employs the word “perfect” to refer to those maturing in their faith.  Mature Christians partake of a kindred attitude. God defines the mature Christians’ shared attitude in His letter to the Philippians by announcing that Christians:

• Press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (3:14)
• Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead (3:13)
• Count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus (3:8)
• Do all things without grumbling or disputing (2:15)
• Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself (2:5-7)

In essence, Christians adopt Jesus’ and Paul’s lifestyles and mindsets.  The saints’ attitudes are in harmony with the Son and the apostles.  

Maturing Christians are always in training.  Though they are fit, they are also being made more fit for an eternity enshrouded in God.  Maturing Christians are investors, not spenders, of their time on earth, for they are givers rather than takers, giving first of themselves to their Lord Christ.  They invest in the everlasting, not the ephemeral.  

God is nauseous with Christians who should be spiritually mature but are not.  Instead, they act like “babes in Christ… still fleshly” (I Cor. 3:1, 3).  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews expresses God’s disgust, saying, “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.  Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.  Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity” (Heb. 5:12, 14, 6:1).

How mature “in the Lord” are you?  Have you abdicated spiritual infancy or are you still a babe?  When did you leave the comfort of your infantile Christianity in order to be stretched in your more mature Christian walk?  Describe your stretching.

God says, “Do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be babes, but in your thinking be mature” (I Cor. 14:20).  You should be striving to be “a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).  

You are maturing in your faith when you “keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.”  Never fall back in your Christian carriage.  Conduct yourself at all times in a manner worthy of Christ’s gospel (Phil. 1:27).