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\\u2026to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 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. 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. (Ephesians 4:12-14)

What does growing up to maturity require of us? \\xa0Nothing we weren\\u2019t firstly given!

Eugene Peterson, across his various writings, is fond of drawing the parallels between growing up in the Christian life and growing up as a human. \\xa0Paul seems to appreciate the analogy as well. \\xa0As humans, all of us start in infancy, and for infants, everything is purely a gift. \\xa0Did they choose to be born or do anything to accomplish it? \\xa0No. \\xa0This life and birth are given to them. \\xa0As are food, shelter, clothing, cleaning, nurture, and relationship. \\xa0Each of us, when born, are merely the receiver of gifts. \\xa0This is where our life begins. \\xa0Months and even years of receiving gifts precede any intelligible response from us through language and appropriate action. \\xa0All of these things must be learned, and they are learned through the gifts we receive. \\xa0We are smiled at before we learn to smile. \\xa0We are spoken into before we learn to respond with speech. \\xa0We are recipients before we learn to be helpers or givers. \\xa0

So it is in the Christian life. \\xa0To grow up from defenceless infancy into \\u201cthe fullness of Christ\\u201d requires an inordinate amount of gifts to be poured into our lives. \\xa0Thankfully\\u2014Christ, the one who ascended to fill the whole universe with his rule and reign, has just such an infinite stockpile of gifts to give. \\xa0He pours his speech\\u2014his word and his life on earth as the Word\\u2014into our lives. \\xa0He also pours his Spirit into us with a diversity of gifts, all of which are necessary to the growing up of the community of faith from infancy into a mature body of Christ. \\xa0

While growing up from infancy does transform us from defenceless to defended\\u2014it does not transform us from dependant to independent. \\xa0Independence may be a cultural value of North America in the 21st century\\u2014but it has little value in the Christian life. \\xa0Growing from infancy transforms us from dependence to \\u201cinterdependence,\\u201d a dependence on God and one another that comes even as we ourselves are depended upon. \\xa0Just like living stones built into a spiritual house that each rest on and support one another\\u2014so each gift and each individual person is necessary to the support, growth, and flourishing of all the others. \\xa0In fact, this interdependence is the mature body\\u2019s strength and protection against the wind and waves of a tumultuous world and the immature scheming of others.

At this point, Eugene Peterson draws our attention back to verse 1 of this chapter, where Paul exhorts us to \\u201clive a life worthy of the calling you have received.\\u201d \\xa0\\u201cWorthy\\u201d is a word picture in the Greek that envisions an ancient weighing scale with two baskets suspended on either end of a beam and a fulcrum in the middle. \\xa0Set in one basket of the weighing scale is the calling to which we have been called by God. \\xa0In the other basket is the way we live that calling in our daily lives. \\xa0To live worthily implies a congruence, a balance between the calling and the living. \\xa0

Gifts are the means by which Christ equips his people to develop such a mature and worthy balance between his call and our living. \\xa0But it does require that we take up those gifts and use them lovingly and responsibly in service of one another. \\xa0The calling gives us the direction, the gift enables, and the living use of these gifts toward this calling is how we practice the adult life of maturity in Christ. \\xa0

What again was that calling? \\xa0\\u201c\\u2026you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all\\u201d (4:4b-6). \\xa0We are called together to be the one, mature, interdependent body of Christ, united in our diversity. \\xa0It is a work we cannot do alone. \\xa0But in Christ, this is also the fullness of what we already are. \\xa0It is his gift, and our goal. \\xa0A work that necessarily draws us together with all the saints.

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Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)