Try cricket to learn
how a convert feels

The first and only time I've ever played cricket was a disaster. Everything seemed weird: the bat was flat on one side with a narrow handle; there was no home plate, only three stakes ("wickets") pounded into the ground; the familiar diamond of first, second, and third - all three were missing.

I didn't have to worry about where to run. As I cocked to swing, my bat hit the wicket, an automatic out. I felt out of place, frustrated, and tense. I felt that I could do nothing good. It was horrible. I was only a liability to my team.

When the young man was preparing to battle the giant, the king offered him his own armor. "I can't wear this," David said. "I'm not used to it." He felt the same way trying to wear Saul's armor as I felt playing cricket: awkward, uneasy, weird.

Being a new Christian is a strange game with unknown, seemingly nonsensical rules. The songs are unfamiliar. Everyone turns to the passage in three seconds, while you search and search, finally giving up. Even some of the preacher's terms - propitiation, licentiousness, Ebenezer - may be gibberish. Former playing fields are now out of bounds. Former friends are now on the opposite team. It can make you tense and frustrated.

What can we do to make our new Christians feel like they're part of the team? We can explain things to them. We can show them how it's done. We can teach them how to use their Bible and concordance. We can take them with us to demonstrate how a Christian faces different situations. We can convince them that their fumbling around is no problem to us. We can pray with them and for them.

If I practiced a lot and if my teammates were tolerant and willing to instruct and encourage, I could learn cricket. The same things are necessary to become skilled at the Christian walk. Babes in Christ, welcome! Keep working at it. We'll hang in there with you. You're all winners!

—Steve Singleton
DeeperStudy.com

Want to go deeper?

The Greek noun nēpios ("infant, baby") is the word Paul employs to describe the Corinthian Christians (1 Cor. 3: 1). He goes on to call them "fleshy" (3:1) and even "fleshly" or "carnal" (3:3), using sarkinos and sarkikos, respectively. Infantile, composed of flesh (like the term "physical" psuchikos in 2:14), and dominated by flesh--three terms Paul uses to emphasize their spiritual immaturity, in contrast to the terms "mature" (teleios) and "spiritual" (pneumatikos) that occur in the context (2:6, 13, 15; 3:1).

Peter also takes up this same metaphor in 1 Peter 2:2-3, though instead of nēpios he uses a different word for infant, brephē, adding the description, "newborn." Peter's point is not critical like Paul's, but encouraging the babes in Christ to drink in the "milk" of the Word, so that by it they can grow up in their salvation. In the next verse he alludes to Ps. 34:8, "Taste and see that the LORD is good." The image is that when an infant at the breast tastes how good mother's milk is, it has an unquenchable thirst for more.

As good as spiritual milk is, however, the time must come in every believer's life to gain enough maturity so that milk no longer satisfies. Solid food must become the new diet. If you refuse and continue to demand the milk, something is wrong with you. Your spiritual progress is interrupted, your normal growth is stunted, and your life in Christ may even be ebbing away (Heb. 5:11 - 6:8).

Those of us more matuire in the faith should carefully watch the progress of the spiritual babies. We want them to be healthy as babies, to drink in the milk of the word, and to grow to maturity. Our job is to watch out for them, to feed them, to protect them from harm, and to pick them up and patch them up when they fall down. No infant should die of neglect, because an adult wasn't paying attention.

Recommended for online reading:

venning_schoolRalph Venning. Learning in Christ's School (1999).

In this unigue account of growth in grace, 'babes', 'little children', 'young men' and 'fathers' are the four stages through which the learners in Christ's school pass before they enter the 'academy of heaven'. While supporting and comforting beginners in the school of grace, Venning encourages all Christians to make further progress towards 'the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ' (Eph. 4:13).

Recommended for online reading:

George Harpur. "Discourse X: Psalm 2:7," 137-151 in his Christ in the Psalms: An Exposition of the 2nd, 45th, and 110th Psalms (1862)..