This is A Better Bible Study Podcast. This is the fourteenth Bible study in the series ‘The Gospel and Spiritual Growth’. In this episode we will begin to look at what the Bible says about growing up spiritually.

We are a group of friends from different congregations of the Church of Christ in different cities. We meet online via Skype to have an in-depth adult Bible study. Bible study is important in our  growth process as Christians. We wish to share with you a study that we found to be a blessing and hope  that you find it useful in your own journey to spiritual growth.

Difference between Bible study and academic classes

In academic classes, after exams, most of the lessons are simply forgotten. The discipline and rules that apply to academic study do however apply to Bible classes. A disciplined academic approach towards study helps us learn the things we need to know for our high school or college classes. However, the information we learn in Bible study is in a different category of information.

In Bible study, we learn things that impact us spiritually  not just in our mind. There is a lot of important information that we need and we gain from studying the Bible. This information impacts us intellectually, logically, notionally and reasonably. The knowledge we gain from study helps us to make proper calls and interpretations. Although we need this, the scripture tells us that we gain more than information from the study of God’s Word.  Studying the scriptures is an interactive process between us and God. It is God talking to us. It changes us. With God’s help we can grow spiritually. This is the kind of growth regarding our salvation. It is the maturation of the human character.

Engaging the scriptures results to spiritual growth. These are the words of Peter on the matter:

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• Peter 2:2 “… long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation,â€
  

The approach of this Bible study may be academic. This is because we need to be disciplined in the way that we comprehend and analyze information and determine whether something is biblical or not. However, the substance of the message is the complex multifaceted. It is the power which God uses to change us beginning with the word about Christ. This change begins in us a progression or cycle in our ability to understand more deeply from what we read in the scriptures.

When we study the Bible, we are not simply building our knowledge. We are seeking knowledge that goes beyond knowledge. The scriptures provide that.  This is a very important point to remember when we talk about spiritual growth- the growth process that begins with the Gospel.

It is important because many Christians today falsely believe that if they do everything right, then that will suffice. This is arrested development. They spend their lives proving that they are doing things correctly and they probably are. However, they are not able to go further than this and there is much, much further to go. It should become clear from our Bible study that what God wants us to do is to grow. We need mature out of the identity that we have now and grow into a Christ-like identity.

Understanding God’s reality

            The Bible teaches us that our body is transient. Every physical attribute we have will disappear when we die. The Bible furthermore tells us that these things are but shadows of reality. They are not real. However, we don’t live our lives as if we believe this. We don’t usually  think in those terms,  even if the Bible says it is so. Some don’t believe. Some are willing to believe but are not able to understand or do not want to understand. God’s reality is spiritual.  John says in John 4:24.

John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

This is reality according to the word of God. The world we live in is transient. It is temporary and will be destroyed. It is going to be gone. It isn’t real. What is real is the spiritual.

God sent us these revelations. We need to input this information into our minds. We need to wrestle with the fact that we need to change. If we are to seek righteousness, this is something we need to understand. These are substantial divine realities. Through Bible study we can understand more. We can understand the direction that we should follow in order to increase in faith and to draw nearer to God. We need to realize that we are participating in a process, a growth processes.

Growth Process

 

In becoming more Christ like, we should understand that we are participating in a process. It is important to understand the idea of the “processâ€. Most associate it with cycles. A lot of the things we understand about growth are cyclical. An example of a cycle is “A leads to B and B leads to C and more C helps to have more A. With more A, then there is more B and then more C, and so on.â€

When we see cycles, it reminds us the importance of having beginning elements of the cycles. God gives us something to start with. We have to understand the fundamentals. Let us take for example the Gospel. We say that faith is essential to us. As a starting point, faith comes from hearing. We need to have that point that we are willing to accept and entertain the invisible, the eternal and what the world would call impossible.

Hearing comes then by means of the word about Christ. This means that the Gospel encourages hearing. It stimulates hearing.

So faith comes from hearing and hearing by word about Christ. The word of Christ has a continuous presence. The word about Christ, the gospel, pushes something that people have. The word initiates more faith. To us humans, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We are stimulated by the word of Christ to the point that we can have enough faith to become Christian and to obey the Gospel.

If we allow God to perpetuate spiritual development, He will do that. But we can stifle that growth by taking wrong directions. The epistles in the New Testament offer cautions against going to wrong directions. Today, we have the New Testament that will guide us. We will see that God communicates through the Word. God wants us to engage with the word. The word of God grows us in a specific way. We become Christians. The word develops more hearing and more faith.

From the scriptures we understand that faith is also insightful. It helps us see through the clouds that hide reality. We see things differently because of greater faith.

What results is that a Christian sees that others are more important than he is. The scripture tells us that this is a good thing. When we see others as more important than ourselves, this is what 1 Corinthians 13 describes as love.

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• Corinthians 13:4 “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogantâ€
  

This can be seen as a circle. Study produces more faith. More faith produce more “agape†love. Love produces more works as we subordinate ourselves. If a Christian loves someone, he will have the impulse to do loving things at his own expense. Love produce works. He wants this work to accomplish something and this leads to hope. Hope leads to prayer and prayer leads to more study.

There are several places in the New Testament where we can see this cycle.  We need to understand that God wants us to grow. He wants us to move from where we are toward being like Christ. It is fallacy when we are taught that we are okay the way we are.

Matthew 5:48  “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.â€

Ephesians  4:15 “…but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.â€

There are a number of passages in the scriptures that indicates God wants us to grow until there is no more time to grow. Continual growth may be intimidating to some people. This may be why some people don’t dwell on it. It doesn’t matter. They can’t make these things happen or not happen . God will make this happen as long as we don’t stop participating in his plan of salvation. He will enlighten us. He will help us to grow. We just need to keep ourselves from going off-plan.

Judaizing teachers (of the biblical era and of today) use fear to scare their members into obedience. They claim that the Christian must do everything “right†in order to be saved.  Fear is used to motivate doing good acts. This is condemned in the New Testament. The difference between Christians and Jews is not that we have different sets of rules.  As Christians, we are expected to grow spiritually whereas they were expected to do everything right.

The New Testament church focuses on precision in the study of the Bible. If we are doing that then we must to be true to our conclusions. And one irrefutable conclusion is that we have to grow. God grows us. This growth is cyclical and thus we don’t expect perfection at any one moment. We are hopeful that, through this growth process, we will come to please God more and more each day. Again, we can only please God through becoming more and more like his son not by trying to obey laws as if Christianity was just Judaism 2.0.

Ephesians 3:13 “ Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.

14       For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,

15       from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

16       that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,

17       so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

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• may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
  

19       and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.â€

Ephesian 1:16 “Do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers;

17       that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.

18       I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

19       and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.

Eph 4:17 – 19 “17  So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,

18       being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;

19       and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

There are a number of these passages spread throughout the Bible. Look at 2 Peter 1:18. Read James 1-4.  They are everywhere in the scriptures.  It is impossible to escape the conclusion that God wants us to grow up through a process. If we focus on this fact alone, we can avoid being misguided with arguments and theories that takes us away from the main point – that God wants us to grow.