“Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you.”
“Therefore let us, as many as are mature”
Paul did not let anything deter or deflect him from the upward call orientation (v.14): “I will not allow anything or anyone to deter me from my goal.” To be deterred is as bad as to be deflected. To be deterred is to be held back. To be deflected is to divert to a tangent. Either way, we miss the mark of the upward call. These are the devil’s booby traps. He tries to “sucker” us into some bargain other than the upward call. The devil has a way to make a mountain out of a molehill to warp our perspective. If that does not work, he will hold us back to run on a treadmill of no headway.
“Therefore” indicates an inference from the preceding paragraph. Those who no longer keep skeletons in the closet and have gone on to become Christ-centered should reorient their lives. This is a challenge to those who are “mature.” The call is towards an attitude to the upward call. This appeal is to those whose life ambition is to live their lives with an upward call orientation. The entreaty is towards an attitude of Christ-centeredness.
A mark of maturity is the desire to continue with Christ. Most of us live in the backwoods of a dynamic relationship with Christ. We do not live near the exalted palace of our position in Christ. The challenge here is to appropriate positional truth to experience. Positional truth is our status quo before God in Christ. We hold the same status that Jesus enjoys before the Father.
PRINCIPLE:
It takes an attitude to live a life of the upward call.
APPLICATION:
Is Jesus sweeter today than the day before? Are you deeper in love with the Lord this year than last year?
