Paul constantly urges believers to grow up.

grow upIn 1 Cor 14:20, he says, ‘Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults’ (see also Eph 4:11-16). We are not to be gullible or ignorant about evil (2 Cor 2:10-11, Heb 5:11), but we do not necessarily have to experience every kind of evil personally to be spiritually wise. Paul wants us to shun evil and to grow up in how we think.

When we looked at the topic of growing up in God, we looked at different characteristics of maturity and immaturity. Eleanor Roosevelt defined a mature person as one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably.’ Certainly, the Corinthians, with their over-emphasis on the unusual gift of speaking in tongues, were not acting in mature ways

Maturity means that we allow the fruit of the Spirit to be manifest in our lives, showing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in all we do. It means accepting the responsibility of our actions without making excuses or blaming others and learning to accept ourselves as God sees us and working with others without looking down on them or feeling inferior to them. Having ‘adult thinking’ means we can see beyond our immediate needs (and wants!) and evaluate things with calm and poise, letting God search us and know our innermost thoughts and feelings (Ps 139:23-24). Paul urges us to let our thinking be transformed as our minds are renewed by God (Rom 12:2). This is not easy. We have a lifetime of wrong thinking to correct and for many of us, our wrong thinking has led us into evil and a whole host of consequences which are difficult to unravel. We can be encouraged, however, because God brings out the best in us and is working to develop ‘well-formed maturity’ in us. It’s clear from Paul’s command in 1 Cor 14:20 that we are not simply at the whim of our thoughts. We are not, as Christians, duty-bound to follow the path of childish thinking; we are free to trample down the overgrown maize fields and think in new ways as we follow God’s ways and allow His Spirit to transform us.