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.
Maturity: The word teleios means complete, mature, fully developed, full grown, brought to its end, finished, wanting nothing necessary to completeness, in good working order. Maturity involves time, growth, and experience. Maturity comes from constant study and practice of the Scriptures. The goal of each saint should be maturity in spirituality. The worst position would be immaturity and carnality. If you’re not making time daily to spend in God’s Word and in prayer, you’re not growing, but you’re shrinking. The writer says you are mature if you’ve trained yourself through constant use of Scripture to distinguish sound from evil. The mark of spiritual maturity is not how much you understand, but how much you use. In the spiritual realm, the opposite of ignorance is not knowledge but obedience.
Move towards perfection
Illustration: The Dead Church
A new pastor arrived in a church, he spent the first four days making personal visits to each of the members, inviting them to come to his first service.
The following Sunday, the church was on but chairs were empty. The Pastor was disappointed and gave a newspaper ad, The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon, the notice stated. Please attend to pay your last respects! it is everyone’s duty to give it a decent Christian burial.
A large crowd turned out for the “funeral.” Out of interest. In front of the pulpit, a closed coffin, decorated with flowers was placed. After the pastor delivered the eulogy, he opened the coffin and invited his congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.
Filled with curiosity as to what would represent the corpse of a “dead church”, all the people lined up to look into the coffin. Each “mourner” peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look.
In the coffin, tilted at the correct angle, was a large mirror!
Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish historian, divided his students into three categories: beginners, those who were making progress, and those who were beginning to attain maturity. John wrote his letters addressing to little children, young men, and fathers. These are different stages of life, spiritual Life. In Spiritual life too, we have these stages.
Hebrews 6:1 tells us, “Let’s press on to maturity”. God intends for us to always pursue spiritual growth so that we may “be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29).The word “perfect” in the Book of Hebrews does not hold out the promise of moral perfection on earth.
Oswald Sanders: “God’s purpose is to produce disciples who reflect the perfect humanity of His Son, people who are able to react to the exigencies and trials of life in an adult and not in a childish manner—meeting adult situations with adult reactions. In short, God’s purpose is to produce people who fulfill their humanity and become what God designed for them.”
John Wesley took seriously Jesus's invitation to 'Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect' (Matthew 5:48). Wesley believed we could become perfect in love in this life. Perfect love is possible. He didn't mean we would be free from mistakes, temptation or failure. For Wesley, growing as a Christian is all about being filled with love, which happens by the grace of God.
Sanctifying grace is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit that changes us so that our lives are increasingly conformed to the mind of Christ. John Wesley called this lifelong process sanctification. Sanctifying grace draws us toward Christian perfection, which Wesley described as a heart "habitually filled with the love of God and neighbor" and as "having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked."
