Why did Paul care about spiritual maturity and why, for that matter, should we?
At first glance, this question seems too trivial to need an answer. We care because we want to become the people we were made to be, right? To develop our gifts, and to put them to work in the world.
But for Christians, that doesn’t quite settle the issue. Christians look forward to a greater moment of spiritual transformation, ‘when Christ appears,’ and ‘we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3.2). And if that’s the end game, why doesn’t God just bypass the toilsome process of sanctification and beam us up to experience that ultimate existential transformation immediately?
