‘Unto a perfect man’, or a complete or mature man. Imagine a child who grows up through infancy and youth and reaches adulthood, but there is a sad problem. There has not been equal development and that man or woman still thinks as a child, still has the emotions of a child, still has no adult self-control – outbursts, tantrums, emotions soaring all over the place. But there is an equivalent in the spiritual realm: one who is saved, is capable of grasping the doctrines of the faith, and even debating them, but still almost with the emotions of an unsaved person, their desires, their lack of reliability and maturity. There is something we do not take to the Lord in prayer, something we do not confess and work on. There are some very good gentlemen Christians, gentle folk Christians, but they never serve, never show zeal for the Lord. Oh, that our knowledge might be matched by love for God, for his word, for lost souls, for husband, for wife, for children.
I read of a Christian lady, a very famous Christian lady and she preaches, to men and women in churches, and she said one day that somebody told her, ‘Oh but you should not be doing that because look what the apostle Paul says here and here, and it is not God’s will for the ladies to be preaching.’ And she answered, ‘Well, I do not understand what the apostle meant but I know this: I must follow my Lord and follow where he leads me, and he leads me to preach.’ Well, you say to yourself, ‘How does he lead you? Does he not lead you in the word?’ Paul gives instructions, not once, not twice, but in three different places so clearly with the theological reasoning added. Isn’t that how the Lord leads? No, in her mind, he leads by feelings. What are our feelings? Well, our feelings are so often what we want, what we want to do. There are some very misguided Christians. Oh that there would be maturity, that knowing Christ would be matched by obedience to him, as he speaks so gently at times and clearly through his word.