Biblical Examples of Maturity (18:6)

When Saul of Tarsus (Paul) was a grown-up man and the religious leader of his people, he came to realize that in his legalistic theology he was still a little child. He had assumed he was doing God a favor when he helped stone Stephen to death (Acts 7:58 – 8:1). But when he learned the truth about God, he began to grow up and put away childish things. He wrote: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor 13:11, RSV). In the context of 1 Corinthians 13, maturity is defined as love. We’ll come back to that in the Question and Answer section at the end of this chapter.

Now there is a time in life when it’s appropriate to be a child, to believe what we are told, and even to do what we are told. But while we are still children, since the enemy of God and man is abroad in the land, we need much protection. We need God’s emergency measures to help us believe and do what is right (see Chapter Eleven). God has been willing to give them to us and we thank Him for them. But in the last days, there will be no protection. Satan will twist all of God’s emergency measures to support his own position, and to put God in a very bad light. In those days, we will really need to be grown-up.

Job was grown-up. But consider the ways in which Satan sought to break him down and undermine his trust in God. God said in Job 1 and 2, for important great controversy reasons, “Satan, you may do anything you like to this man, except take his life. He will not let Me down.” Satan set out to destroy Job. He destroyed his family. He destroyed his estate. He destroyed his reputation. He destroyed his health. Then he set out to undermine Job’s theology, his picture of God. Three or four friends came to help him. But those friends did not know God very well, although they thought they did. In fact, the God they worshiped was arbitrary, exacting, vengeful, unforgiving, and severe. If only those friends had known the Larger View, the Great Controversy, what we now know from Job, chapters 1 and 2. Think how they could have helped and blessed poor Job. Instead, Job said, “Miserable comforters are you all” (Job 16:2). They were only making things worse. Perhaps the greatest distress that came to Job came from the bad theology of his well-meaning, but mistaken friends. Caring theologians, who did not know God but had a very legal view of things, caused Job great distress. But he would not be deceived, even by them.