Presenting Everyone Mature in Christ

Paul said to the Colossian church, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” It starts and ends with Christ because He is Lord. He is all. Christ is preeminent. The goal of our ministry and indeed our very lives, is to know Him and grow in Him to maturity. That was Paul’s passion, that every church and every member of every church would be “mature in Christ.” He wanted nothing less than to present to Christ fully-grown, mature, spiritually vibrant Christians, who are members of growing, maturing, and spiritually vibrant churches. That meant he did not separate evangelism from discipleship, as some tend to do. He worked with all of his strength to see converts become disciple-makers. If that was Paul’s goal, spiritually mature believers, by what work did Paul labor to accomplish this? 
  
Three means of grace: proclamation, warning, and teaching. Christ is Lord of all, so it is Him we proclaim. Christ is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and the gospel we proclaim is Jesus and Him crucified. You say, “Well, I am not good at doing that.” George Whitefield said, “Other men may preach the gospel better than I, but no man can preach a better gospel.” We proclaim Christ even if it is with a lisping, stammering tongue, as William Cowper wrote in his famous hymn, “There is a Fountain.” The last verse says, “When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave, then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save!” 
  
We proclaim Christ, and we also warn everyone. This is the task of admonishing and correcting, which followers of Christ must do as well. There is certainly a right way to do this, for example, making sure we don’t have a 2x4 sticking out of our eye as we try to help a brother get a speck of dust out of his. Jesus taught us that one. That’s why Paul added “with all wisdom” as a qualifier for each of these means of grace: proclaiming, warning, and teaching must be done with all wisdom. If we lovingly confront a brother or sister who is walking in sin, we are to do so with great humility. Coming from a low place, not from on high. If you try to help a brother in the right way, might you still end up being scoffed at, scolded, or rebuffed? Yes, and Paul was no stranger to that. He said to the Galatians, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” It will happen sometimes. But because we love our brother or sister, we do not shrink back from warning them, for their sake and for the sake of the Gospel. 
 
With what resource do we proclaim and warn? Paul gives it to us: “in Him is hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The truth is in Christ. Paul says he is telling them that so that “no one may delude you with plausible arguments.” As believers, we must always be on guard against persuasive teachings that sound wise and spiritual but ultimately draw us away from Christ. Any teaching that makes you doubt the wisdom and glory and love and sufficiency of Christ is deception. The best defense against deception is a deep knowledge of Christ, in whom is all wisdom and knowledge.  
  
We proclaim, we warn, and finally, we teach. We know what that means. That’s our mission as a church, to invest in every person that we may present every person in the church mature in Christ. That’s what we gather for, on Sundays. The goal of the church should never be to put on a good show, but to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Because we leave church to go do “the work of ministry.” We walk out the church doors as missionaries. We leave the gathering as ambassadors for Christ the King, who sends us to the lost and to brothers and sisters in Christ who need to be encouraged and taught.