Maturity and Full-Assurance

             Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.  (Colossians 4:12)

          Oh, now here’s a prayer request sure to rankle the flesh of some. “Mature?  I’m mature! I’m over 70 (over 40, over 30, over 18)!” I’m the other way. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be when I grow up, but I understand the irritation because among the big contestants for what I want to be is “perfect,” and my failure in that rankles, too.

          Put into proper context, however, the prayer request is just a little different. Epaphras prayed that the Colossians would stand firm in the will of God. This brings Ephesians 6 to mind, where, we’re told to stand firm as soldiers in armor. Here, the standing firm involves maturity and full assurance.

          Maturity is the state of being complete in natural (or spiritual in this case) development. Of course, we can be mature in one area and not another. Some would suggest that unless we are completely mature in every area, we aren’t mature. In some ways that’s true, but if we accept that definition, that means that unless we are complete in our development as a concert violinist, as a quantum physicist, and as a diplomat, we aren’t mature. That all or nothing thinking is silly, of course. But there are areas of immaturity that don’t matter much, and areas of maturity that matter a hundred or thousand times as much. On that basis, I’m going to suggest that maturity is the state of being complete in natural or spiritual development to the extent that we reasonably can be and that it is pertinent. Most of us have a long way to go in this regard even if we leave out all the silliness.

          Assurance involves positive demonstration. To be fully assured requires that we have experienced sufficient positive demonstration to satisfy us of the quality or accuracy of the thing in question. This is connected to maturity because a mature person can be assured of something without the silly and extreme demonstrations demanded by the immature. But again, the level of positive demonstration may be lower than the level of another. What was enough positive demonstration yesterday may be more than enough, or not enough, today. But if we’re mature, we won’t allow our vacillating, immature mental or emotional state to dictate to us. If we face doubts, the mature and assured person will face them honestly and gently, seeking the answer for however long it takes.

          We should also keep in mind that there is a sort of negative assurance. We can grant that we might be wrong, but have found nothing that proves a better possibility. Lacking absolute assurance, we work with the best assurance we can have, not merely the state of agnosticism, in which we claim we cannot know and therefore reject all possibility of knowledge.