The Childish Things Aren't Just Below Us -- They're Behind Us
Growing up isn't just climbing a ladder. It's stepping out of an age.
Think for a second about a thing you’ve put down.
Not lost. Not broken. Put down. The training wheels you outgrew. The car seat you finally lugged out of the back. The booster chair that ate up half the kitchen until one day it didn’t anymore. Most of us don’t grieve those things. We don’t even file them under “below me now.” They’re not anywhere. They belong to a person we used to be and aren’t going to be again.
I think that’s the picture Paul is reaching for in 1 Corinthians 13:11. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish things.
We usually read that line as a developmental observation. As if Paul’s saying: grown-ups outgrow childish things; quit being a kid. That reading isn’t wrong. But it’s only half the verse.
Paul isn’t only saying these things are below us. He’s saying they’re behind us.
The Age in the Wings
Look where 13:11 sits. Three verses earlier, Paul writes that prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, and even knowledge will fade (13:8). The flashy gifts the Corinthians were ranking each other by? They’ve got a sell-by date.
Then verse 10. When the perfect comes, the partial passes.
A quick word here, because most of us in our circles have heard 13:8–10 taught one way. The perfect is the completed New Testament. The partial gifts — tongues, prophecy, supernatural knowledge — pass when the canon closes. That’s the reading a lot of us grew up on, and the verse holds real weight there.
But it’s not the only weight the verse is carrying. Paul isn’t only marking when the miraculous gifts stopped. He’s also painting a picture — and the picture is the one he makes plain in verse 11.
That word perfect1 means to be complete. Whole. Brought to its end. Like a fruit that’s ripened. Like a person who’s grown all the way up.
And then verse 11. The kid. The training wheels. Paul puts them side by side: the partial age passing, and the child becoming an adult.
He’s making a point most of us miss when we only read this chapter at weddings or read 13:8–10 only as a clock on when the miraculous gifts stopped. The childish things he’s talking about aren’t simply immature. They belong to the age that’s ending.
We tend to think of growing up as climbing a ladder. I used to be down there, now I’m up here, hopefully someday I’ll be up higher. That’s the below picture. Paul isn’t drawing a ladder. He’s drawing a timeline. The gifts the Corinthians prized are the equipment of the in-between age. The age that’s already passing. They won't be needed where all this is headed. Love is.
So when Paul says he put them away, he’s not just bragging about emotional maturity. He’s saying: I read the calendar. I traded the toys for the tools that’ll still work on the other side.
A Word Paul Won’t Let Us Miss
Here’s a thread some readers don’t catch. Paul uses one of his favorite Greek words twice in this passage, and both uses serve the same function.
In 13:10, he says when the complete comes.
A chapter later, in 14:20, Paul writes one of the most direct verses in the letter: Brothers, don’t be childish in your thinking. But be infants in regard to evil and adult in your thinking.” The same word family. The “complete” of 13:10. The “mature” of 14:20.
Paul is splicing the two ideas together on purpose. Personal maturity now is of the same fabric as our spiritual completion later. Growing up today is rehearsing the age to come. Putting away the childish things isn’t just self-improvement. It’s living forward into who we already are in Christ — and who all of us together are about to become.
That’s a different kind of motivation than “come on, grow up.” It’s “come on, catch up to where this is all going.”
Stop Stockpiling the Toys
This is what the Corinthians missed. They were collecting baby toys and calling it spiritual treasure. Showy gifts, loud worship, spiritual one-upmanship. They thought stockpiling those things proved they were the advanced ones in the room.
Paul looks at the pile and says: those don’t go with you. They’re tools for now. The train they’re on is pulling into the station, and you can’t take them on the next leg.
You know what does go with you? Faith, hope, love. And the greatest of these is love (13:13). Carry-on items for the age that’s coming. So every act of love right now isn’t just a moral win. It’s a piece of luggage you’ve already packed for where this is headed.
The Question for the Week
So, we must ask: what am I still treating as essential equipment that the age won’t need?
What pile of stuff am I building up that, when the age to come arrives, I’m going to look at and think: I spent how much of my life on that?
Some of it’s obvious. The grudge. The score-keeping. The snippy word. The corner of my mind that keeps a file open on what people owe me.
Some of it’s more flattering, and that’s the harder pile to see. Some of the gifts and competencies we feel best about may, in the end, turn out to be tongues under a different name. Real for now. Not coming with us.
This Sunday I’m preaching from 1 Corinthians 13:11 — week four of our Maturity in the Body series. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish things. We’ll dig into what Paul’s actually asking us to put down, and why.
This is the question I want you sitting with as we head into the weekend.
The childish things aren’t just below us. They’re behind us. The age they belong to is winding down.
Are we?
Greek (τέλειον)