The short answer
In the Divine Principle, everything God made reaches maturity by passing through three ordered stages: formation, growth, and completion. Nothing arrives finished in an instant. A seed becomes a sprout and then a fruit-bearing tree; a child becomes a youth and then a mature adult; and a human being was created to grow through these same three stages before reaching the perfection God intended. The Exposition of the Divine Principle puts it plainly: everything “reaches perfection only by passing through three ordered stages of growth.” (Exposition of the Divine Principle)
This simple idea has large consequences. It means human life is a journey rather than a fixed condition, that immaturity is not the same as sin, and that God's ideal was always something we were meant to grow into rather than possess automatically. It also supplies one of the Divine Principle's most important insights into the Fall: Adam and Eve fell while they were still growing, before they had matured, which is precisely why they were vulnerable. This article explains the three stages, the span of time called the growing period, our own part in growth, how the growing period illuminates the Fall, and why the pattern of three appears again and again in Scripture.
The three stages, explained
The three stages describe a single continuous process of maturing, marked off into recognizable phases. The formation stage is the beginning — the point at which something first takes shape, small and undeveloped but truly alive and heading somewhere. The growth stage is the long middle, where development happens gradually and often invisibly, the way a young plant thickens and reaches upward before it ever bears fruit. The completion stage is maturity, when the being finally becomes what it was made to be and can fulfill its purpose — bearing fruit, giving life, and entering fully into relationship. Each stage builds on the one before, and none can be skipped.
What makes this more than a biological observation is that the Divine Principle sees the same pattern in the spiritual and relational life. A person's relationship with God is not meant to leap from nothing to full maturity overnight; it forms, it grows, and it comes to completion as love and trust deepen over time. Understanding this protects us from two errors: despair, when we mistake the slowness of growth for failure, and presumption, when we imagine we have arrived before we have matured. The three stages tell us that steady, ordered growth — not sudden perfection — is the normal shape of a healthy life in God.
The growing period and our part in it
The formation and growth stages together make up what the Divine Principle calls the growing period — the span of time during which a created being matures toward completion. For human beings, this is the season of life in which a person grows under God's love and truth toward spiritual maturity. During this period God supplies everything that makes growth possible: his love, his truth, and the life that sustains us. But the growing person is not merely passive. We are asked to respond — to believe, to obey, to cooperate with the love God is pouring out.
The Divine Principle calls this response the human portion of responsibility. God does the overwhelming greater part of the work of our growth, but he leaves a genuine, if smaller, part to us, because love that is forced is not love and maturity that is imposed is not maturity. This is why growth is described as a partnership rather than a transaction: God gives, and we grow only as we receive and respond. It also dignifies the ordinary struggles of the spiritual life. Every act of faith, obedience, and love during our growing period is not incidental; it is our real contribution to becoming the person God created us to be. This partnership sits close to the question of how God can be sovereign while we have free will.
Why the growing period explains the Fall
One of the most searching applications of the three stages is to the Fall of the first human beings. The Divine Principle teaches that Adam and Eve fell while they were still in the growing period, before they had reached completion. They were spiritually immature — still forming, not yet fully united with God — and it was precisely in that unfinished condition that they were vulnerable to temptation. Had they reached completion first, their union with God would have been secure and unshakable. The tragedy is that they never got that far.
This reframes the famous commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If Adam and Eve were meant to grow into perfect maturity, then the prohibition was not permanent but temporary — a protective guardrail meant to shield them during the dangerous years of immaturity, until they were strong enough to no longer need it. A loving parent forbids a small child things that the grown child will one day handle freely; the rule protects the child precisely because the child is not yet mature. Seen this way, the Fall was not the breaking of an arbitrary rule but a failure to complete the growing period God intended — a failure explored further in why God created us capable of sinning and what the real sin in the garden was.
The pattern of three across creation and Scripture
Once you see the three stages, you begin to notice the number three everywhere in the Bible, and the Divine Principle argues this is no coincidence. Because everything is designed to reach completion through formation, growth, and completion, the number three recurs as the natural rhythm of how God brings things to fulfillment. Jesus rose on the third day; Peter's denial and restoration came in threes; important events in Scripture are marked by threefold repetition. Rather than treating these as a mystical code, the Divine Principle sees them as reflections of the three-stage order woven into creation itself.
This is worth holding gently and thoughtfully. The point is not to turn Scripture into numerology or to force every detail into a pattern, but to recognize a genuine rhythm in how God works: he tends to bring things to their goal through a beginning, a developing middle, and a completed end. That rhythm shows up in a human life, in a relationship with God, and across the long course of history. It connects, too, with the observation that the ages of history seem to repeat — God working through recognizable stages to bring his purposes to completion. The pattern of three is, in the end, a signature of the God who finishes what he begins.
Why it matters for your own life
The three stages of growth are not merely a doctrine about the distant past; they describe the shape of your own walk with God right now. If maturity comes through a growing period, then spiritual life is meant to be patient and progressive. You are not expected to arrive complete, and the slowness you may feel in your faith is not evidence of failure — it may simply be the growth stage, the long invisible middle where roots go down before fruit appears. This is a deeply hopeful truth for anyone discouraged by how far they still have to go.
It also gives your daily choices real weight. If growth is a partnership in which God supplies the love and truth while we supply our response, then every act of faith, obedience, and love genuinely matters — it is your portion of responsibility being fulfilled. God is not waiting for you to be perfect before he works in you; he is growing you through formation and growth toward completion, and he means to finish the work. The same God who designed the seed to become the tree designed your life to reach its fullness in him. Understanding the three stages lets you cooperate with that growth instead of despairing of it, and it places your ordinary faithfulness within the larger story of God's plan of restoration.
Frequently asked questions
What are the three stages of growth?
They are the formation stage, the growth stage, and the completion stage. The Divine Principle teaches that every created thing reaches maturity by passing through this ordered course rather than arriving complete in an instant. A human being was designed to grow through all three stages and only then reach the perfection God intended.
What is the growing period?
It is the span of formation and growth during which a created being matures toward completion. For human beings it is the time between birth and spiritual maturity, during which a person grows under God's love and truth. The Divine Principle sees this period as the reason human life is a journey rather than a fixed state.
How do the three stages relate to the Fall?
Adam and Eve fell while still in the growing period, before reaching completion. Because they were immature, they were vulnerable to temptation and had not yet secured their union with God. This is why the commandment was temporary — a protection during immaturity. The Fall was a failure to complete the growing period God intended.
Do we have a part to play in our own growth?
Yes. During the growing period God supplies the love, truth, and life that make growth possible, but the person must respond — believing, obeying, and cooperating. This is called the human portion of responsibility. Growth is a partnership: God does the greater part, and we fulfill our smaller but real part by responding faithfully.
Why does the number three appear so often in the Bible?
The Divine Principle connects the recurring pattern of three — three days, threefold repetitions, three stages of key events — to the three-stage course of growth built into creation. Because everything reaches completion through formation, growth, and completion, three recurs as the natural rhythm of how God brings things to fulfillment.