Maturing Faith: Of the Mind”

2nd Sunday of Easter

1st John 1:1 – 2:2

When He was asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus responded with two scriptures from the Old Testament – “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” We don’t know everything that Christ meant by those words, but His words suggest that we love God with all we have to muster, and as we develop more capabilities and resources, we love God with those as well.

For the next four weeks, I am going to share with you something of a series of sermons from the book of 1st John. I am entitling the series “Maturing Faith,” and you might surmise from that title that I believe that as Christian believers, we mature in our faith.

Pastoring you as a congregation has been a learning experience for me. Let me provide one rather specific example. I accepted Christ at the age of nine. Most of my friends at that time accepted Christ at nine – oh, a few made that decision when they were eight, and some held on until they were ten or eleven, but most kids made that decision when they were nine. Usually, it was an emotional decision. It was for me. As your pastor, I have had to grow in my understanding of how our children respond in faith to Christ. We don’t apply a lot of emotional pressure on our kiddos, and subsequently, they have tended to make their decision to trust Christ a little later down the path – some making the decision as late as 14 or 15. That used to worry me, and then I began to see that their decision had more of an intellectual base – in other words, their decision was a decision of the mind, as well as of the heart.

We expect that people grow in their faith. Not just in faith expression, but faith capacity, as well. This first sermon in series suggests that we mature in our faith in mental ways – and the implication is that we offer that mental maturity to God as we seek to serve God.

Our scriptures work in harmony this morning. The story of Thomas and his doubts presents clear indication that when confronted with the mental reality that Jesus was alive, Thomas left his doubts behind, and served Christ. I’ll take you one step further – his statement, “My Lord and my God!” indicates more than intellectual ascent – it indicates something of an increased commitment of heart and will. When he came to know, he became more able to serve.

Well, that is only natural. We expect Christians to mature in faith. That’s what Sunday school is all about. We place our children in a position and atmosphere where learning is possible and predictable. We don’t think their learning stops when they reach their teen years, and we believe that adults learn and progress in their abilities to know and serve. From the cradle to the grave – the mantra of Christian education.

When we turn to the 1st John text, we could almost write a seminary text for the Psychology of Education classes. John’s first statement is a statement that outlines the progression that is used in taxonomies – that’s a ten dollar word that speaks to the system whereby we instruct students. In Educational Psychology, we learned that while they are learning, students progress through various levels of learning – i.e., they first discover knowledge, then they comprehend, and finally they make application. At a higher level of learning, they analyze information, then they synthesize that which has been analyzed, and finally they evaluate their progress.

John says that we learned something about Jesus. We learned by we have experienced – with our ears, our eyes, and what we have touched. I shared with some people last week that I love to watch you as you watch our children take hold of the faith. I used as an illustration our Good Friday service, and the fact that the children and I go out to the cross, and they help me change the cloth. There is something impressive about handling the cloth as we take it off and put it on the cross. Last week, when we completed that activity, Travis came over to me, and with tears in his voice, said, “Daddy, why?” I wish I knew all that he was asking, don’t you? I think he was asking why Jesus had to die! At the age of 49, I’m still working on my answer to that one!!

We expect that people move beyond a simple emotional response to the gospel message. Around here, that isn’t always easy – we tend to be a pretty emotional group. But our intent to grow cognitively – mentally – as Christians suggests that we will have, year in and year out, greater resources and capacity with which to serve God.

John makes another observation for us regarding growth in our faith. His first words in the epistle – “we declare to you.” His statement, and several other statements in the same passage suggest that we tell what we know. As we know more, we tell more. Not for the purpose of showing off – goodness, there’s enough of that in this world. No, rather we announce – or maybe “pronounce” that which we have come to know. In other words, our knowledge is not just for personal consumption. I served on staff in Dallas 20 years ago with my friend Ron Kendrick. During that time, our church was significantly involved in studying spiritual gifts, and in that process, Ron and I discovered that we shared a common gift – something of a gift for knowledge. In other words, we had something of a temperament or gift for retaining various points of information about the scriptures and other things related to the Christian life. In that testing time, indications were that I also had something of a gift for teaching – the materials we were studying indicated that that combination – knowledge and teaching – was not an unusual combination. What surprised me was that Ron didn’t think that he had the gift of teaching. This difference manifested itself this way - I would discover something in my study, and I would walk across the office to tell Ron what I had just learned. He would look at me and say, “Yeah, I saw that a couple of days ago.” I would say incredulously, “And you didn’t tell me?”, and he would say, “No, I didn’t need to – remember, I don’t have a gift of teaching.” I never understood how he could keep information to himself. It didn’t make any sense to me.

John would agree – we don’t learn more about Christ so that we can simply know more. We learn that we might serve Christ by serving others. He is basically saying, “Friends, we have something to tell you. It’s not just what we think – it’s what we know – because we experienced it, and we are compelled to tell you about it.” That’s a rough Dunn translation. God revealed something of Godself to us, and we are compelled to tell others what we have come to know and believe. Sharing the gospel isn’t just for a few selected preachers and teachers – sharing what you know about the gospel is your calling as a Christian – we all can tell what we know and have believed – and we must tell.

Well, what is it that we tell? What do we have to say?? John says, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you . . .” “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” You’re kidding, John – you expect me to explain that concept? Light and darkness – truth and righteousness? I don’t vaguely understand God, must less be able to explain Him?” If that were our calling, I’d agree with you. God’s a pretty big subject to try to explain. We stopped too early in our reading. Keep going with me. “If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true.”

That’s more like it. This is more of a comparative statement – a “God is God, and we’re not!!” kind of thing. That level of truth I can get a handle on. My sin is ever before me.

I said something during Lent on my blog. Something to the effect that during Lent, we take a good, honest look at our sin. While our examination is rather intentional during those 40 days, we don’t stop there. We maintain an awareness of our sin throughout the year, and throughout our lives. John gets pretty blunt as this passage goes on – “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Ouch!! That’s brutal!! “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” Ouch!! That’s way harsh!! Yeah, it is. The truth sometimes hurts.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Wednesday night. We were having Prayer Meeting, and we had come to the time in our prayer where we shared our struggles and failings with one another. We had divided into groups of three, and I was in a group with two men. I could tell that they were uncomfortable with the idea of sharing personal sin – so, I thought I would model the role for us. I shared something that I had been struggling with all week, and had not really done all that well. The other guys nodded as though they understood my struggle, and could sympathize. Then I turned to one of the others, and said, “Tell me how you have struggled this week.” He said, “I really don’t have any sin – I don’t struggle with really anything these days.” This verse jumped out at me – “If we say we have no sin . . .”

I know confession is hard. We all struggle, and we struggle with admitting that we struggle. There is value to confession. It is cathartic. It’s cleansing. We get the opportunity to start over – again. Progress in Christian faith doesn’t do away with our sin. To the contrary, I am made more aware of my failings as I grow in Christlikeness. John goes on to say that Christ’s purpose in our lives works to help us to avoid sin. At the same time, Jesus knows that we will continue to fail, and as we do so, He remains faithful to stand in the gap with us.

“Pastor, why would John link this idea of growing in knowledge and maturity with a discussion of our sin?” It’s a good question. I have an answer – I don’t know if it’s a good answer – but I have an answer. It comes from my own experience. I have come to learn things about my sin, and in the process, I’ve learned things about Jesus. I started out thinking that I had no sin – that I didn’t need Jesus. At the age of nine, I came to realize that I was a sinner, and that I desperately needed Jesus. As I have grown, I have gone through more metamorphosis – at times I have tried to ignore my sin, at times I’ve tried to conquer it, and at times I have been overwhelmed by it. There have been times when I thought “What’s the use?” and there have been other times when I have been overwhelmed by the patience and redemptive power of Christ.

Maturity – most of us think of maturity as arriving at a time in our lives when we don’t vacillate so much – we aren’t like the toddler who falls and then stands up again. We are more like the agile teenager who has much greater control over their physical abilities. As a maturing Christian, I struggle less and less with the “struggle of sin” – the reality that I sin, and that Jesus has redeemed me from that sin.

As we grow in breadth and depth of knowledge about our faith, we come to realize all the more our need for Christ. As our knowledge expands, as our faith stretches, somehow things become more and more clear, and for most of us, more and more simple.

While I was still in seminary, the church I served had a choir special at Christmas time. We sang some old gospel hymns, and there was a new song which sounded like it ought to be an old gospel song. We asked an older gentleman in the choir to sing the song. The words rang true for his life, and I think, for ours today.


Since I started for the Savior,
Since my life He controls,
Since I gave my heart to Jesus,
The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.

The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.
The more that I love Him, more love He bestows.
Each day is like heaven, my heart overflows,
The longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows.

Richard W. Dunn, PhD.