On Completion & Growing Up

God’s intention was to make known to them just what rich glory this mystery contains, out there among the nations. And this is the key: the king, living within you as the hope of glory! He is the one we are proclaiming. We are instructing everybody and teaching everybody in every kind of wisdom, so that we can present everybody grown up, complete, in the king. That’s what I am working for, struggling with all his energy which is powerfully at work within me (Colossians 1:27-29, KNT).

There are times in life when profound completion happens and we really, truly, grow up.

Recently, I completed (I mean, actually, totally finished) my first book Nothing but the Blood: The Gospel According to Dexter. Writing this book was not just hard because writing books is hard; it was especially hard because of the season of life in which I wrote it. Intense growing pains. Wrenching transition. It began with the untimely death of a woman who was like a sister to me, and it continued with conflict and opposition surrounding our 3-year-old church plant (which has since entered a season of replanting after the conflict). It also included the birth of our second little girl, Pippa, and all the change that brings to family dynamics, routines, and rhythms. Oh, and it entailed moving, twice, the latter of which occurred a week and a half ago into our very own fixer-upper complete with all kinds of projects and tasks.

But in the life of faith, the outward changes often serve as signposts of spiritual shiftings. This is what Paul is explaining to the Colossian church – it’s all about growing up spiritually into a kind of completion. Not that we ever fully arrive at some pristine spiritual maturity before the resurrection and renewal on the last day; but perhaps Paul is hinting at a kind of tangible spiritual life stage that is something like finally entering adulthood. It’s a completion in the same way that marrying, having children, and settling down in a direction for your life is a completion. Development never stops – but it does crest the ascent in events like these.

At any rate, Paul and his apostolic collaborators aim to “present” the Colossian community complete, grown up, in the king.

Underlying this explanation, I think, are all of Paul’s covenantal themes and thoughts: the old covenant of tribal law was a babysitter for, well, babies. The new covenant of Israel’s Messiah for the whole world is here to make us grown-ups. Likewise, the church – the new people of God, defined by faith and not tribal markers – are a growing-up kind of people in a particular sense. That is, the spiritual core of the human condition – the heart, the spirit, the light within us (Jn. 1), the imago Dei, our true self – is barely tapped by human beings before they enter the Messiah-people and begin the process of becoming truly human in him. As Wright has said, this is a different kind of virtue, one that entails becoming human in a way most people never imagine. It is unique to the church of Jesus. Completion does not exist outside of it.

That is not to say that many churches exemplify this reality all that well. Which brings me back to the conflict of this last season. It had a purpose, given by God – it was meant to grow us up. It was meant to bring us to completion. This does not mainly have to do with outward church success – but it does have to do with the people of God ascending to that new height. It does have to do with each of us, and us together, finally knowing ourselves as we are in the King, not being tossed with the waves of identity like sailors stranded on a dinghy. 

Stable. Rooted. Steadfast.

Anchored. 

Complete.

Grown up.

One may actually have this experience spiritually, and a community may even have it together (by and large), though it is not universal in the churches, sadly. It takes time. It takes workers struggling with all the energy that God works within them. It is the path of much resistance. But it’s worth everything.

Lord, let it be that this is occurring, even now, in my life, and in the lives of those you’ve entrusted to me in your church.