Spiritual maturity (Part 3): towards finishing well

Thanks for dropping by, dear reader. I hope that the previous two entries on spiritual maturity has whetted your appetite for a deeper exploration and reflection on God's Word, as much as they have for me. 

Anyway...

Two things about spiritual maturity so far:

#1 ~ Spiritual maturity is growing up in Christ to be one who holds fast to his identity in Christ, is grounded in God's Word and seeks to continue growing in Christlikeness.

#2 ~ Spiritual maturity is about walking by the Holy Spirit - shedding the old self and growing into the new self that bears Spirit fruit. Allowing the new self to grow on us too. It has beautiful skin!

An artist's impression: Pic source

Permit me to bring you a third aspect of spiritual maturity today:

#3 ~ Spiritual maturity leads towards finishing well in life on earth.

In other words, a spiritually mature person looks forward to a good death and beyond - because he lives a good life in the present. Spiritual maturity is the means of living the good life to the fullest.

And what is a good life?

A life to be celebrated and lived to the fullest. God's blessing and gift no doubt. A blessed life.

But when we describe a person as "blessed", what are we normally referring to?

We would hardly associate pain and suffering - terminal diseases, poverty, lack, death and losses - with "blessed". For some, singlehood. Or single parenthood. Or working at a tough job that doesn't pay well. No, these take away our ability to enjoy life or a good reputation in the society. Life has to be enjoyable in order to qualify as "blessed", no? We admire (or envy) those who are financially independent, those who do early retirements, those who married romantic lovers and those who get to travel to exotic places around the world. Blessed people, yes. After all, every good gift comes from God.

Pic source

Many of us have taken "a good life" to simply mean an enjoyable or easy life. (And for the hopeless romantic... the romantic life.)

Money is supposedly one of the most essential ingredients to a "good life". Well, I'm not going to trivialise the good of money. We all need money. Money does make the world go round to a certain extent. It puts food on our tables and a roofs over our heads. It enables my best friend to cheer me up by treating me to meals once in a while (bless her kind heart). It enables missionaries to fly to the ends of the world and meet needs. It is the means of formal education in most places. Our doctors (their families), for instance, invested loads of money in med school, in order to diagnose and treat our diseases well. As I type this, I am also agonising over the expenses that Ben and I had to fork out to fix Caleb (my car) after the accident. We drained our savings, literally. Don't think we can take any more money-spending emergencies this month ~ God forbid. But will having money necessarily make a good life that leads one to look forward to a good death? A lot of financially rich people I know do not look forward to good deaths. Death, for many, is a taboo. Unless you are suicidal, terminally ill or buying a life insurance, you won't want to think much about it. Especially if you are happy where you are in life. 

While I think that a "good life" is not necessarily one that is enjoyable and easy-peasy... I am not joining the chorus of the ascetics who believe that living a "good life" necessitates denying oneself of all pleasures and possessions either. Life does not need to be hard in order to be good. It is OK to be happy. God Himself is seen to be happy in many parts of the Bible - for example, during the Creation. He saw that His creations were good - He was happy with them! God also often showed concern when His people were not happy. He gave the best gifts that surpassed human expectations and made hearts glad. He enabled fruitfulness and prosperity. He authored feasts. Jesus turned water into wine at Cana so that a wedding celebration would not end before its time.

The Wedding At Cana. A woodcut illustration by Juluis Schnorr von Carolsfeld, copied from "Das Buch der Bucher in Bildern." (Wigand, 1908). Pic source

So be happy when you can! Celebrate whenever possible.
Be thankful when you are blessed with great stuff to enjoy and share. 
But don't assume that life cannot be good when you are not happy with the way things are.

Realistically speaking... life (at least for the most of us) will not be enjoyable and easy all the time. 

Why not? Because we live in a world marred by sin. The law of sin and death rendered humanity incapable of glorifying God because they could no longer fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law. Humanity in Adam fell under God’s condemnation, resulting in the inescapability of death as well as the suffering that followed the increasing moral and social depravities in our world. Those in Christ suffer with the rest of the world. We are not exempt from illness, poverty, lack, death, losses and other trials. We are also persecuted for our faith. 

But thanks be to Christ, we may suffer differently. Very differently indeed.

What makes the difference? God's Holy Spirit now indwells us. 

The Spirit empowers us to yet glorify God in our mortal bodies.... confirms our Christian identity as God's sons and Christ's fellow-heirs of glory.... and intercedes for us (cf. Rom 8:1-30). The Spirit also assures and reassures us of God's love (Rom 8:31-39), evidenced through Christ's death for our sins (Rom 5:5,8). He keeps us convicted that God loves us. And so, we begin to see, by faith, potential for goodness in every trial. We look forward to the end of difficult seasons and anticipate God's glory. We hope. We express such hope in our lifestyles - our actions, words, decisions and choices. As we walk by the Spirit - and mature spiritually - we will be able to hope more and more. Ultimately, as the Spirit works in us to transform us into Christlikeness (Phil 2:13), we unite with Christ to hope for His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. 

A good life is ultimately a life brimming with Christian hope. Bodily death is yet inescapable, but bodily death has ceased to be an end in itself. It is in God's good time... a finishing line for the earthly phase of our eternal life in Christ. A good death indeed.

Spiritual maturity leads us to keep our faiths, hope... and finish hoping.

We live the good life and then die well.