During a particularly stressful time, I spoke critically of someone while in the presence of a new believer. I immediately sensed the Holy Spirit convicting me of my sin. Not only had I gossiped about another child of God, but my actions had set a poor example regarding what it looked like to follow Christ. Grieved by my behavior, I apologized to my friend, stating, “I need more Jesus.” His eyebrows shot up. “More Jesus?” he asked, as if he couldn’t imagine such a thing, and I realized he’d equated outward acts with an inward faith. But my relationship with Christ isn’t measured by how many verses I memorize, Bible passages I share, or truth-filled articles I write. Rather, my spiritual maturity is most evident in how accurately my life resembles my Savior.
Here are 10 signs of Christian maturity:
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Early in my faith journey, I caused a lot of relational tension with how forcefully I spoke truth. My intentions were good; I genuinely wanted others to experience freedom in Christ. But my abrasiveness ultimately pushed them further away.
The problem came from relying on myself rather than the Holy Spirit within. While I knew, intellectually, only God could draw people to His Son, I acted as if their salvation depended on my ability to persuade or debate. I inevitably allowed my pride, fear, and insecurity, rather than Christ, to lead me.
I’ve since learned, to truly convey the love of Christ, I must remain dependent on Him. This means maintaining a posture of surrendered obedience and trusting His leading.
As we mature in Christ and learn to yield more consistently to the Holy Spirit’s influence, He produces within us the godly traits, like gentleness, that we read about in Galatians 5:22-23. And Titus 3:2 tells us “to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone” (NIV).
Often, our culture erroneously associates gentleness with weakness and brashness with strength. But Scripture indicates the opposite. We reveal our weakness and the sin lurking within whenever we lash out and speak with malice and hate. As faith writer Desmond MBantoh puts it, “… being gentle is about self-control, the refusal of using power to harm anyone, the refusal of embracing vengeance, and an unwillingness to cut and slash at others.”
Because gentleness doesn’t come naturally, whenever we behave in this manner, we demonstrate the life-changing power of the gospel and the heart of our Savior.
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Apart from Christ, many people develop what psychologists refer to as “the scarcity mindset.” This is where an individual focuses on needs and perceived limitations, rather than resources. But Scripture tells us we belong to a limitless God of abundance, able to create galaxies from nothing, water from rocks, and to rain down nourishment from the sky.
Therefore, the more we understand the power, purposes, and heart of God, the more able we are to give of ourselves, our time and resources included, as God leads and without fear.
I was ashamed of my testimony for a long time. I wanted to proclaim how miraculously God had transformed my life, but I didn’t want others to know why I’d so desperately needed transforming. I was afraid they’d reject me if they knew who I’d once been and all I’d once done. My fear came from a failure to live deeply anchored in God’s grace.
God helped me grow in this area by increasing my love for others, removing my shame, and centering my focus on the cross. Eventually, my desire to see others walk in Christ’s freedom became greater than my desire to self-protect. I learned to let Christ’s grace define me rather than my past, and recognized He’d paid much too high a price for me to allow anything, insecurity included, to keep me from living for Him.
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The moment we turn to Christ for salvation, God begins to change us to more accurately reflect Him. As 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 states, “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun” (NLT). Our miraculous transformation occurs in our hearts and minds so that our thoughts and desires begin to mirror Christ’s. Living for personal pleasure and gain indicates spiritual immaturity. This also suggests we don’t yet understand our purpose or are living in rebellion.
God’s molding occurs as we progressively yield to Christ, His truth, and His ways as revealed in Scripture. Through this, we begin to discover who we are and what we were created to do. Ephesians 2:10 puts it this way: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things He planned for us long ago” (NLT).
Tim Keller expounded on this beautifully, stating, “You see, when Jesus gave Himself on the Cross, ‘He didn’t say, ‘I’m going to die just so you know I love you.’ He said, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to bleed, for your splendor. I’m going to recreate you into something beautiful.” Into a life-changer and history maker; someone driven by love rather than selfishness; generosity, rather than greed. One who speaks life and hope into our dark and hurting world.
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When a person knows they’re approaching death, they choose their words with care to ensure everything they want to say gets said. Knowing this adds significance to Jesus’ prayer shortly before His death. After encouraging the disciples to remain connected with Him (John 15), He said to His Father, “I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in Me through their message. I pray that they will be one, just as You and I are one—as You are in Me, Father, and I am in You. And may they be in Us so that the world will believe You sent Me” (John 17:20-21, NLT).
Jesus understood the challenges His body of believers would face. Through His death and resurrection, He wasn’t uniting a group of individuals who all thought and spoke alike. He was uniting people from all backgrounds and nations. This is precisely why our unity provides such strong evidence of the gospel (John 13:35).
Apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, our differences divide us and weaken our mission. But when surrendered to Christ, those same differences become beautiful, full-bodied expressions of grace.
Numbers 12 demonstrates God’s heart for our spiritual leaders. This historical account records a time when a brother-sister duo opposed Moses, God’s chosen leader. “‘Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?’ they asked. ‘Hasn’t He also spoken through us?’” (v. 1-2a, NIV).
God heard their grumbling, saw the pride rising up in their hearts, and was not pleased. He immediately called all three of them to the place of worship. Summoning Aaron and Miriam, He affirmed Moses’s call, verbally honored him, then asked his siblings, “Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?” (V. 8).
In other words, “When you rebelled against Moses, My chosen leader, you were rebelling against Me.” That’s not to say we should follow all leaders without question, but we must always check our motives and guard our hearts. Are we reacting from pride? Are we making debatable issues overly consequential and thus potentially harming the congregation? If God clearly reveals the significance of an issue, we then ask, “Is this something God is calling me to become involved in?”
Many times, God already has a plan for dealing with whatever is weakening the church or creating doctrinal confusion. I’ve found that His solutions are always much more effective than ours.
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In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus told a convicting parable of a man who had been released from a huge debt, but showed no mercy to the one who owed money to him. The one in debt begged for patience, but the merciless man refused. Verse 30 tells us, “Instead, he went off and had the man thrown in prison until he could pay the debt.” When the master learned of this, he “called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” (vs. 32-34, NIV).
Jesus told this parable to encourage our self-evaluation. How can we withhold grace from others when God has given such grace to us? To do so implies we either don’t understand God’s grace or why we need it so desperately. While we may not have sinned in the same way or to the same extent as someone else, we’ve all grieved our holy God. He suffered and died a brutal death for our sin. That’s how ugly, how destructive it was, but his crucifixion also demonstrates the depth of His mercy. Our gratitude for all He’s done should well up within us until it spills from us in lavish acts of mercy and grace.
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During our daughter’s teen years, she never exhibited the rebellion said to characterize that developmental phase. When I asked her about this, she said, “I love you and Daddy and want to make you proud.” Her love for us directly affected her behavior and sparked within her a desire to please us.
Similarly, Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commands” (HCSB). As we mature, our desire increases to love Him and His will better. We want to please Him. This longing for godly living will draw us to Scripture in order to learn God’s ways and experience greater closeness with Him. Something beautiful happens as we read God’s holy Word—it sparks within us an increased desire for Him and the righteousness He calls us to. This life-giving and progressive cycle plays a huge role in what Scripture refers to as sanctification, which, put simply, means growing more like Christ.
Jesus has such a heart for reconciliation—between God and man and between humans and one another. Colossians 1:19-20 tells us that Christ came to reconcile all things, or to restore all things to their intended, harmonious state. To bring health and healing to our broken and often dysfunctional relationships. Once you and I have entrusted our lives to Christ, Scripture says God gives us the ministry of reconciliation. This means as the Holy Spirit gains influence within us, we’ll find ourselves longing for true peace, which biblically means things as they should be.
We begin to view our world through Christ’s perspective, begin to recognize brokenness for what it is, and feel compelled to bring God’s light into every darkened area. Driven by courageous love, we’re embolden to hold hard, yet loving conversations and to persevere until hope and life thrives where hurt and distrust once grew.
In short, our Christian maturity is revealed not in how many church services we attend or how high we raise our hands during worship. Our maturity is most evident in how well we resemble our Savior, the One who gave His life so that we might live ours—as He intends.
Sources:
What Does the Bible Say about Gentleness?
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