And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-15
Today, Christ appoints pastors and teachers to catechise—that is, teach—the congregation that they may continually be built up in Christ. In Confirmation class and Bible studies, the goal is to build you up “to mature manhood,” into a mature faith, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” that is, standing boldly and firmly in Christ. For what purpose? “That we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.”
Children will believe anything they hear; that’s why it is so easy for them to enter the kingdom of God and why, therefore, we all must become like children if we wish to enter God’s kingdom (Matthew 18:3-4). Yet children’s gullibility isn’t always a good thing in this fallen world. They believe in silly things like fairies, werewolves, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other such things. These are, of course, absurd, but the children don’t know any better, which is why they need guidance. The stories they hear and the stories they watch are quite believable, and their parents enable them to believe in such fictitious things.
Similarly, adults are not exempt from delusion. The most popular doctrine they catch in the culture’s wind, human cunning, and crafty deception cause adults to believe absurd things like there are more than two genders (and that gender and sex are not the same thing), that homosexual relations are normal rather than an aberration from nature and God’s design, that marriage is not for the rest of your life, that promiscuity is commendable, that drunkenness is noble; and even matters of doctrine that Jesus is not God, that He isn’t risen from the dead, that the Bible is not the infallible and inerrant Word of God, that people turn into angels when they die, and so on.
Therefore, Christ has appointed the Apostles and Prophets and evangelists, whose writings we have in the Old and New Testaments, and today shepherds (pastors) and other teachers to teach His people the doctrines of Christ that they might mature in Him and not be easily swept away by the false doctrines of the world. Just as a child needs to be fed proper nourishment to grow into a strong adult and not be easily swept away by disease, so a Christian must be nourished with the bread of God’s Word to stand firm in the Body of Christ and not be easily swept away by worldly teachings that rot the soul. Only by this eating of God’s Word can they truly see how stale and how rotten the doctrines of the world are.
The Lutheran Column 