So the type of preaching we typically do here at the Asheville Bible Church is expositional preaching. And as a former pastor of mine used to say on occasion, there's good news about expositional preaching and there's bad news to expositional preaching. And that is you have to take what is next in the text. So the last couple of messages that we've had from Colossians chapter 3 has kind of been on the latter side of that. It's kind of been, you know, the bad news taking on what's next, and that is talking about sin. And we just read verses 5 through 11 in dealing with the subject matter of sin. Sin is not something people really like to talk about. They don't want to talk about the wrath of God. But we can't skip over those parts just because they make us uncomfortable. We have to address them head on, and we have. But today's message is a little different. It's intended to emphasize the growth and the maturity of the believer. That was one of the primary concerns that the Apostle Paul had, not only for the Colossian Church, but in all of his writings, is that believers would grow in their faith and grow in Christ. Many of you have been praying for me over the last few weeks as I was getting ready to sit for my SHRM exam. And I will just say I passed on Monday, so I'm grateful for that. Thank you, but thank you more importantly for praying. Truly, God was good in giving these old brain cells the opportunity to make it through that four-hour exam. And so today's message, believe it or not, is somewhat, in some ways, inspired by some of the SHRM material that I had to learn and read through. There's a chapter in one of these four books that deals with what they call corporate social responsibility. And we were actually traveling to Morganton and so I had Donna reading it to me that day and as she read it, it's like, well, wow, there's a spiritual application to this thing. And so that got me thinking, and it's been rolling in my head for a while. And I said, well, I think it's a good fit for where we are in Colossians. And I'm going to kind of take a look at that and see what it can do for us. Just briefly, because I'm not going to preach on human resources today. I don't think you'd want that. But the corporate social responsibility maturity curve, which is what they were talking about, has three components to it. It's compliance, integration, and transformation. And so basically, the compliance piece is a company just does the bare minimum. They comply with whatever law is there. Integration, the company says, you know, this is more important. We're going to integrate it into our products and services and such. And then transformation speaks to the fact that they have made this corporate responsibility a primary strategy within their organization. So it starts at the boardroom and goes all the way through the whole organization. And so after reading through that section, it just really spoke to me that this is a good analogy about the believer's spiritual transformation. So with giving some thanks to SHRM and their little CSR model, I'm going to kind of hijack it this morning. And we're going to call it the Christian Maturity Curve. And so, if I can just say my newly coined Christian maturity curve model, I think there are three progressions that believers go through as they grow and mature in Christ. Those three things are conversion, transformation and restoration. So conversion, I think we all know exactly what that is. That's the point when someone comes to believing faith in Christ. They've repented of their sins, they've trusted Christ for salvation, and their new journey has begun from that miraculous work of grace that has just taken place in their life. Then there's transformation. This is where the believer spends most of their time. We call it, using a theological word, of sanctification. But this is where you're growing in divine grace. As you've come to faith in Christ, it has set you on a new path, a new path of obedience and growth that will last your entire existence on this side of eternity. John Bunyan's allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, is actually an excellent book. If you've never read it, you should. But it's an excellent book that talks about and provides this vivid illustration or example of what the believer's journey could look like. And then the last phase is restoration. This is the final stage or the final place where the believer will fully realize complete, perfect, and total Christ-likeness because they have entered into eternity. They have now seen the Lord face to face. And as I've emphasized in other messages as we work through Colossians, the primary focus of Colossians is the preeminence of Christ over all things. And in his letter, Paul is concerned about believers submitting their lives to Christ fully. Because it shows that they have acknowledged that Christ is preeminent over their lives. And it also displays the glory of Christ. And so my hope this morning is that we'll be able to see the progression of Christian maturity on this curve as a means for measuring spiritual growth. So let's begin. The first phase, as I said, is conversion. And the text passage I'm using here is Acts 16 verses 30 to 31, and before I read that, just really quick, the background there, there's several things, but beginning in verse 25 is when Paul and Silas have been arrested for preaching the gospel. They are now in jail, and they're sitting there in the jail doing what every good Christian does, complain and whine and just get all upset. No, they didn't do that. They were praying and they were singing and praising the Lord. And as a result of that, there was an earthquake. All the doors of the jailhouse were wide open. And the jailer, realizing that this was a bad thing for him and that he was going to lose his life over all these prisoners escaping, he draws his sword and he is about ready to commit suicide. But Paul says, wait a minute, whoa, don't do that. We are all here. Not one prisoner left. And so that's where we're gonna pick up in verse 30 when the jailer brings them out. He says, then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. So we can only begin at the very beginning, right? And that's conversion, at that point in time when an individual is given believing faith to surrender to Christ as Lord and Savior. Now there's a common term that we hear in the church world and it's called born again. This phrase is found in the New Testament four different times. In the Gospel of John, we see it in chapter 3, verses 3 and 7. And we see it twice in 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 3 and 23. In John's Gospel, it's within the context of the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus. And in 1 Peter, it's in the context of living a holy life. So when a person comes to Christ with believing faith, they are now born again. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5.17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, and behold, the new has come. Now in just a little while today, we are going to meet for our monthly fellowship meal, and we're also gonna have a baby shower. We actually have two women in our church that are getting ready to give birth, both Caroline and Sydney. And we are going to have a baby shower for Sydney. And there's a lot of excitement around this. And I would imagine there's a lot of readiness to give birth at this time, too. And I didn't really plan it this way, but celebrating the soon arrival of these new babies is a good illustration of that first part of the progression on the Christian's maturity curve. Because just like a new baby, a new Christian needs to grow and develop. And so that first phase of the Christian maturity curve is that of new birth, it's salvation. The new believer is beginning to walk with the Lord and learning the quote-unquote rules of how to live the Christian life. And in the Acts chapter 16 account, the jailer again asked Paul, what must I do to be saved? But you know, there was nothing that the jailer needed to do to be saved, nor is there anything that you or I need to do to be saved. Because the work of salvation was completed by Christ's work on the cross and his death, burial, and resurrection. So what a person needs is believing faith. And even this is a gift of God to the individual. So Paul and Silas' answer to the jailer, and by extension to us today, is believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Paul wrote in Romans 10.9, believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead and you will be saved. To put it another way, as Ephesians 2.5, we are saved by faith alone and by grace alone. Now a new Christian, it's often on fire and ready to go out and blaze their trail to glory. But there is still a lot they don't know and so they're often like a child who thinks they're smarter than their parents, you know, and they take off and they run ahead and then they realize they ran too far and they're like, oops, I probably should have waited. A new believer needs to be disciplined, or discipled, excuse me, and mentored. which will help guide that new enthusiasm so they'll be able to properly grow in grace and wisdom. With newborn babies, we get progress reports. There are developmental stages and percentiles and pediatric growth charts, and they're designed to determine if the child is on track with their growth as compared to the average. There are means that help parents gauge and guide their children's growth. Maybe put it more simply, do you remember standing in front of the door frame of the garage and your mother or father would put a little pencil mark on the door jamb there and mark your height year over year? And then you have that really tremendous growth spurt and you finally realize you're taller than your parents and you let them know it. That's kind of the same idea here. So as with the growth of a newborn, the discipleship and growth of a new believer is critical. It's in this early stage of life that they're learning to spiritually sit up, to crawl, to walk, and to finally run. Throughout infancy and childhood, it's the role of the parents to encourage and guide their child to learn the things that they need to so they can do so in a safe way. The reality is children want to explore and expand their world. And parents need to be aware and give them the space that they need while at the same time keep them from going where they ought not to go. To set those ground rules and enforce them so the child has that firm foundation to support that growth and expansion. And I would even add here You know, we need to give our children a safe space to fail. That may sound strange, but our children need to be able to fail in a safe space so they can learn from it, but know that there's a safety net underneath them to help guide them and to train them. Proverbs 22.6 tells us, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. So in the same way, mature believers need to mentor and guide new and young believers so they can progress and grow in their faith and understanding of spiritual things. It's the role of the parents, and it's our role as individual members of the body of Christ to set those examples. I don't know how many of you may remember, but in 1990, Bill McCartney, who was then the head football coach of the University of Colorado, he started a men's movement called Promise Keepers. See, as a Christian, Coach McCartney was concerned about young men. He saw the need for them to come to Christ, and not only that, but to become strong Christian young men. So they needed to be mentored. They needed to be discipled. So one of the focuses of promise keepers was to encourage men to pursue a mentoring relationship that included a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy in their lives. Now he acknowledged that this was a difficult process to do. but it is a worthy goal. So the idea was basically this, that a man needs to have a Paul, a mature and seasoned spiritual mentor who is encouraging them and challenging them to grow in faith. But then they also need a Barnabas, someone who is on a similar plane spiritually speaking, so they can walk side by side and they can encourage one another. And if one of them falls, there's somebody there to pick them up. And then they should have a Timothy, which is a younger man who they are mentoring and bringing along. It's a lengthy process. It demands three things at least. Commitment. Trust. And here's a four letter word that people like to run away from. Risk. There's vulnerability in mentoring relationships, and you have to be willing to accept that risk. But it is rewarding. And so this leads us to the second phase of the Christian's maturity curve, which is transformation. growing in divine grace. 2 Peter 3.18 states, Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. So that transition from conversion into transformation or sanctification, it's not a heartbreak. It actually, they overlap. And there's this gradual meshing because the believer's growth in divine grace begins at conversion. When that person is born again, it changes their trajectory of life. Spiritually speaking, a dead person has been raised to new life. And this resurrection has set them on a new path, a path to eternal life. This path, though, has been uniquely designed for each believer. And the purpose of that path is to train, mature, and conform them into the likeness of Christ. This transformation is God's work and he does it through the Holy Spirit who now lives inside of the believer. And the Holy Spirit is continually working to prepare them and prepare us for eternity with Christ. The life of a believer on this side of eternity will continually exist within that tension that we've talked about the last few weeks, that already but not yet tension. Once a person comes to faith in Christ, They are immediately made clean. They're immediately made holy before God. It's our position before Him. But we still live in this thing that we call time. And we have to navigate through our life and this life in this sinful world. We've been given a new nature. We read 2 Corinthians 5.17 earlier. But at the same time, we're still fighting against the original sin and depraved nature that we were born with. This tension is where the maturity process takes place. Again, we call it sanctification. We're in the process of growing in grace. The road to maturity in Christ is unique, as I said, for each believer because we're all different. And the path that we are on has many twists and turns. Some parts of our journey is going to be on a smooth road. Sometimes it's going to be rough. Sometimes that road is going to be flat. Other times it's going to be very steep. Again, think of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. And Christian, who was the main character in this allegory, it talks about his road to the celestial city, also known as heaven, and how that was described. And so all along Christian's path towards the celestial city, he was learning through the experiences of success and failure, through the difficulties of pain, and through rest. The process of growing in grace is just a series of successes and failures, through health and sickness, sometimes through physical limitations that make life difficult. But all these things are being used by Christ to mold and to make us into his likeness and to prepare us for an eternity in heaven with him. Think of the potter who just dumps this lump of clay on his little turntable. And he uses his hands and he molds and molds and molds until he creates this pot or this bowl or whatever he's going to make. And he's satisfied with it. That is what Christ is doing in our lives during this time. Now it's also in this transformational phase where we need to learn to put to death, as we read in verse 5, and put away from verse 8, the sin that is in our lives. Putting away sin in our lives is a hard process. It's difficult. But we have the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. And he is helping us and teaching us and giving us the ability to fight. Last week we sang the hymn, Be Still My Soul. And one of the verses in that hymn really kind of summarize the phase two of the Christian's maturity curve. Listen as I read. Be still, my soul. The Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide. In every change, He, faithful, will remain. Be still, my soul. Thy best, thy heavenly friend, through thorny ways leads to a joyful end. The sanctification process is often the longest part of the Christian's journey. But as the song says, in every change, he, meaning Jesus, is faithful and will remain. So one day, just like Christian and Bunyan's book, our burden is going to fall off our backs. We are no longer going to be weighed down by sin. Figuratively speaking, we're going to cross the River Jordan into glory for all eternity. And that is that joyful end that that hymn speaks of. But it's also that joyful end that is what we mean this morning by our third phase of the Christian maturity curve. And that is restoration. This is salvation fully realized and complete. A couple of different texts to think of here. First, Philippians 1.6, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. And also 1 Corinthians 15.52, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. So now we come to this final leg of our journey. We've considered conversion, that point where a person believes on Christ for salvation. We've talked about transformation, that period of sanctification and growing in grace and maturing as a believer. And our last phase is restoration, which marks that point in our Christian life where we pass from this life into eternity and our transformation is then complete. Sin will no longer have any influence. It will not exist in this not yet part of the equation that the Christian has been living in. It's now gone. Our position of perfection and holiness is no longer something that we're looking forward to, but we now have realized it. Our faith will then be sight. John said this, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. 1 John 3.2. We long for that day when we cross this life into eternity with Christ. The vast majority of us will die, and that's how we will cross that river, so to speak. But there may be some, maybe some even listening to this message, who will not die, but rather see Christ coming in victory and be caught up in the air with Him. But either way, By death, by rapture, the transformation from our earthly existence will be complete. We will be instantly changed into our new perfect and sinless existence when we will be forever with the Lord. We will be as it was always intended for us to be, and that is holy worshipers of our Creator and King. Paul wrote in his letter to the Thessalonians, For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. Therefore, encourage one another, and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9-11. They are just encouraging words, are they not? See, God has not destined believers to wrath, but to eternal life. Our salvation will be fully realized in that moment when we depart this life. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.8, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So as we conclude this morning, This has been kind of a high overview, if you will, of the Christian's maturity curve. And my purpose was to pause in our series, The Believer's Spiritual Transformation, to bring these three lists that Paul gives us in Colossians chapter 3, to bring these lists together. The first two were kind of heavy because they were lists of sins that we needed to deal with and get out of our lives, as well as being warned that the wrath of God was coming against those sins. And then, of course, this third list that we're going to look at next week are of virtues or characteristics that we need to put on in place of those sins. But we need to remember that putting to death sin is a difficult process. As one commentator mentioned, quote, sin does not want to die, nor does it like the killing process. So we need to keep in mind that as we work through the remaining chapters of Colossians, that Paul's desire is to see believers grow into mature children of God. And this is why he transitioned from his doctrinal instruction into practical holiness. I don't want to oversimplify this. But it is not enough for us to have book learning. There has to be a point in time where we're applying the principles that we're learning into our lives, that we're utilizing this understanding in very useful and practical ways. If we don't, then we're going to become nothing more than theological snobs, feeling self-righteous because of all of our biblical knowledge. But we're not really seeking to apply it to our own hearts and lives. And we don't want to be that way. See, Paul knows very well what it takes to put to death sin, and how to put on Christ through the virtues that characterize him. If anyone knew the law, Paul did. And he knew that the law was useful, but it could not save. Because it's by grace we are saved. The believer's life from new birth to glory is all of grace. So this morning, we know that each of us are at different points along this Christian maturity curve. At the beginning, we know we don't bring anything to our salvation except our sin. And at the end, our final restoration will be instantaneous when we see Christ and we are in eternity with Him. But it's that middle phase that we're all on in different places along that middle phase. And Christ is working in us and accomplishing in us the things that need to be done to prepare us for glory, but it does require our active participation. Because it's here in this time where we're learning how to battle sin, how we're learning to forgive others, to grow in grace and learn to love as Christ loves. We know we don't do this perfectly, but we're striving every day to do it better through the power of the Holy Spirit. So next week we're going to pick up in verse 12 of chapter 3, and this is where Paul provides his third list. And there are virtues, the things that believers must put on. Because keep in mind, if you've taken off all those old clothes of sin, you're basically naked. So you got to put something on in its place. You don't want to put the old rags back on. You want to put on those holy garments that Christ provides. And so that's what we're going to begin to look at next week. Because these are things that are helping us mature in Christ. We also shouldn't compare ourselves one to another. We should only compare ourselves to Christ because we're all in different parts of this sanctification process. So we need to learn to encourage one another and help one another as we look to Christ. As I said before, the spiritual path that you travel has been ordained by God himself for you. and for me, uniquely, tailored just for you and just for me. And so knowing that God has tailored it for you, it should bring us great hope and great joy. Christ is traveling this road with us and sometimes he's not just traveling, he has picked you up and he's carrying you. But either way, Christ is with us. There's a song from a gospel group called The Crab Family called Through the Fire and I just want to read some of the lyrics to you as we close. So many times I've questioned certain circumstances or things I could not understand. Many times in trials weakness blurs my vision and my frustration gets out of hand. Have you ever felt frustrated in your Christian walk? If you're honest, you'll say yes. It's when I am reminded I've never been forsaken. I've never had to stand the test alone. As I look at all the victories, the Spirit rises up in me and through, it's through the fire, my weakness is made strong. And the chorus goes like this, he never promised that the cross would not get heavy and the hill would not be hard to climb. He never offered our victories without fighting, but he said help would always come in time. Just remember when you're standing in the valley of decision and the adversary says, give in, just hold on. Our Lord will show up and he will take you through the fire again. So if you're a believer this morning, you are on the Christian maturity curve. But you're not alone. Christ is with you. And though the road can often be rough and steep, Let me encourage you, keep putting one foot in front of the other. Because at one point, that last step in this life is going to be the first step in eternity. Keep plodding along. There's nothing wrong with plodding along. God is faithful. God is with you. And as Paul said to the Thessalonians, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. Let's pray.