Family Helps Each Other Grow

Some questions we ask sound like questions, but they’re not really questions. They’re more like statements with a question mark at the end. We’ve already supplied an answer, we want affirmation.

“This shirt looks good, right?”

“The sauce needs more salt, right?”

We all want people close enough to know us, as long as knowing us doesn’t permit them to challenge us. As a family, we belong to each other, and we make room for the good, but what happens when I make enough room in my life for someone to tell me something I don’t want to hear?

Now, affirmation is good, we need it, but if the only people I allow close to me are people who never challenge me, I haven’t created community. I’ve created insulation. We all like having people in our lives who have our back, we are less excited about people who tell us the truth.

Support feels good, formation doesn’t always feel good. But when somebody actually tells me something I don’t want to hear, I stop evaluating what they said and start evaluating them.

To grow, you need humility because I can be surrounded by people and still be completely unteachable. So, the question isn’t simply, “Do I have people in my life?” The real question is:

Being teachable means admitting that my perspective is limited. That’s why being teachable requires humility. So what happens when Jesus wants to grow you and uses other people to do it?

Formation Has A Destination
In school, we’re taught to ask who, what, when, where, and why to understand something. In Ephesians, before Paul tells us how we grow, he gives a framework for understanding what Jesus is doing in His church.

Ephesians 4
11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 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.

Different people, gifts, and roles. Their job is to equip God’s people for ministry until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature…

Maturity
Maturity is one of those things everybody assumes they have. So what does it mean?

Mature Christians look like Jesus, not know more about Jesus, look like Him. There’s a difference. You can know everything about Jesus and still not look much like Him. Now, knowing Jesus matters, but that knowledge has a destination.

Moved By Winds And Waves
Ephesians 4
14 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.

Paul says maturity matters, so don’t be a baby. He describes infancy as instability, not unintelligence. Essentially, whatever is strongest around me moves me. We are constantly being moved in our world, we can’t control wind or waves.

The Church desperately needs Christians who know how to stand. People who can hear something without immediately being led by it, disagree without immediately attacking, be challenged without immediately becoming defensive, or discover they’re wrong without falling apart – that’s maturity.

Truth In Love
So what’s the alternative to being tossed around?

Ephesians 4
15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

Paul puts together two things we tend to separate: truth and love.

• Truth Without Love – Truth isn’t a bad thing, it’s needed for growth, but without love, it can be used as a weapon. It’s saying, “I don’t care how this makes you feel. You need to hear it.”
• Love Without Truth – Sometimes what’s loving is saying what would be easier not to say. It’s saying, “I care too much about how this makes you feel to ever say it.”

Paul says it’s both – truth and love.

A hammer and a scalpel are different. Both can cut. Both can hurt. But one is meant to heal.

The goal is growth.

You Grow, We Grow
Ephesians 4
16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Paul’s picture of a mature Christian is impossible to imagine on your own. It’s a body. The body grows as each part does its work.

When we learn to speak truth with love instead of using truth as a weapon, we become more like Jesus. And when you grow, we grow. But importantly, is this something you do? Paul says, From him… I’m not holding the church together. Jesus is.

Jesus isn’t simply trying to make me more informed, He’s making me more like Himself. And He does that through other people. So the question we need to sit with is this:

Being teachable doesn’t mean everybody is right. Teachability is being humble enough to consider that I may have something to learn. The way we move through the world looks remarkably like Jesus. Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus humbled himself.

Now, Jesus didn’t humble Himself because He was wrong. Jesus humbled Himself because humility is not an admission that you’re wrong. Humility is a willingness to submit yourself. And if Jesus, the One who actually was right, could take the posture of humility… how much more should we?

The practice we need to take with us always is:

We don’t just need more Christ-awareness. We need Christ-likeness. Paul says when that happens – when each part does its work – the whole body grows.

That’s what family does.