Click The End Card Series

Theme: Click the END CARD

Text: 1 Corinthians 13:11

1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Click the End card to Childish behaviours

An End Card or End Screen is a CTA (Call to Action) in YouTube. It usually appears in the last 5-20 seconds of a video. It leads to click a product page. The product page summarises all the information about an app that is available for users before downloading it. Its purpose is to show how an app looks like and what it does. In other words, it provides a lot of technical details that help users to determine whether the app is a match to their need or not.

Here Paul talks about the life analogous to the spiritual childhood of this life and the spiritual manhood of the life to come. Ellicott comments to this verse: ‘the three words used refers to the gifts. “I spoke” refers to the “tongues.” “I understood” refers to the “prophecy.” and “I reasoned” refers to the “knowledge.”’

Click the end card means put away the childish ways, childish speech, childish affections, childish understanding, and childish behaviours. This statement of Paul has come at the end of explaining about the characteristics of love. It’s a call to put an end to those childish ways and behaviours. The childish thoughts are low and mean, and reasoning are very weak. Childish behaviours are dull in understanding (NRSV), “Too lazy” (CSB); “don’t seem to listen” (NLT); “sluggish in hearing” (NET); “sluggish in understanding” (Mounce); “too lazy to pay attention” (God’s Word).

‘1 Corinthians 13:4-8:“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.’

Now we can read that the Childish behaviour is impatient, unkind, envy, boasting, arrogant, rude, insisting own way, irritable, resentful, rejoicing in wrongdoing, rejoicing in lies, retaliation, not enduring in sufferings. Paul says, kindly put an end card to all these behaviours and move forward for a productive page.

Be a Matured Man

1 Corinthians 14:20: “… Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” 1 Corinthians 3:1-2:  “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready”.

Colossians 1:28-29: “We proclaim Christ, warning everybody and teaching everybody in all wisdom, that we may present everybody mature in Christ.” Maturity is open to everybody and nobody need fail to attain it.  Dr. Constable comments that there are four marks of spiritual immaturity as dullness toward the Word (Hebrews 5:11), inability to teach the Word to others (Hebrews 5:12), a diet of only elementary truths in the Word (Hebrews 5:12, 13), and lack of skill in applying the Word (Hebrews 5:14).

John Stott (Great preacher, Teacher, Pastor): “There is physical maturity, having a well-developed and healthy body. There is an intellectual maturity, having developed a consistent worldview. There is a psychological maturity, being able to establish relationships with people and bearing responsibilities. But above all, there is a spiritual maturity.” To be in Christ means to be united with Christ, as the vine is in the branches or as the limbs are in the body. To be in Christ is to be organically united to Jesus Christ.

Oswald Sanders (Bible Teachers in Auckland): ‘Christian maturity is not an aging process. Maturity is an attitude of life. Spiritual maturity is not the mere possession of spiritual gifts. The spiritual gifts are valuable, and need to be exercised in love and only as they result in the unity and up building of the church.’ Maturity isn’t about age, not about appearance, not about academic, nor achievements in missions.but it’s a spiritual development in behavioural attitude.

In Ephesians 4:13, Paul says “all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature person, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” However, the spiritual maturity is not just an individual goal but the goal for the entire body of Christ. It’s a community development.

Stephen Rankin, in his book Aiming at Maturity, defines “a spiritually mature Christian [as] one whose whole character—dispositions, words, and actions—emulates the character of Jesus Christ himself.” The comparison for maturity is not with others but with Christ alone.