Trying on parents’ wardrobes is a perennial rite of passage for young
children. Dad’s blazers hang like trench coats on little boys as they easily step
into his cavernous clodhoppers. Baggy dresses are all the more stunning on
little girls when accessorized with waist-length necklaces, and bracelets
dangle ever so elegantly from bent elbows. High heels scuffle along behind
little feet in toe boxes, and nothing accentuates quite like lipstick applied
with crayon-like precision. Dressing up like grown-ups is timeless for
children.
But what if we were content with remaining small and pretending to be big? What if we continued to wear the make-believe clothes of adulthood but somehow refused to mature into the fullness of its stature? What once was considered cute would now be cause for concern, wouldn’t it?
The apostle Paul wrote, “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”1 When Jesus enfolds us in larger-than-life robes, we feel secure. Yet it is also God’s plan, His expectation, that we “mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”2 We are called to grow up into the clothes of our dress-up.
How? It begins with love, and it looks like unity. “Speaking the truth in love,” Paul encouraged, "we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”3 As we live in “the most excellent way”4 of love, we will “put childish ways behind [us]”5 and unite as one, even as each of us is transformed into the image of Christ.
Father, thank you for your most excellent way of love. Lead me in it today. Transform me, transform your church, that we would embrace your truth and mature together in unity. Protect us from distraction, and grow us up in Christ. In His name, I pray. Amen.
[Read the Scripture for the day in Ephesians 4:11-24.]
1 Galatians 3:27
2 Ephesians 4:13
3 Ephesians 4:15, 16
4 1 Corinthians 12:31
5 1 Corinthians 13:11
But what if we were content with remaining small and pretending to be big? What if we continued to wear the make-believe clothes of adulthood but somehow refused to mature into the fullness of its stature? What once was considered cute would now be cause for concern, wouldn’t it?
The apostle Paul wrote, “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”1 When Jesus enfolds us in larger-than-life robes, we feel secure. Yet it is also God’s plan, His expectation, that we “mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”2 We are called to grow up into the clothes of our dress-up.
How? It begins with love, and it looks like unity. “Speaking the truth in love,” Paul encouraged, "we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”3 As we live in “the most excellent way”4 of love, we will “put childish ways behind [us]”5 and unite as one, even as each of us is transformed into the image of Christ.
Father, thank you for your most excellent way of love. Lead me in it today. Transform me, transform your church, that we would embrace your truth and mature together in unity. Protect us from distraction, and grow us up in Christ. In His name, I pray. Amen.
[Read the Scripture for the day in Ephesians 4:11-24.]
1 Galatians 3:27
2 Ephesians 4:13
3 Ephesians 4:15, 16
4 1 Corinthians 12:31
5 1 Corinthians 13:11
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