Childlike humility coupled with adult wisdom

I Corinthians 13:11 (NIV)

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

I Corinthians 14:20 (ESV)

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. 

Scripture sometimes can be confusing.  For example, these verses speak that you should grow up, not act like a child, but act like an adult.  Contrast this teaching with Matthew 18:3 where Jesus says that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Indeed, confusing on the surface.  Bible critics will use verses like these to accuse the Bible of being contradictory and, therefore, cannot be believed.  Of course, they are wrong. 

The best way to interpret a verse or passage of Scripture is to understand its context.  In I Cor 13 Paul implores the Corinthian church to love one another as God loves us, with this kind of agape (sacrificial) love being a more excellent way (see I Cor 12:31) of serving God and others in His church.  Paul is speaking of Christian action where such action is dictated by Christian thought.  You are to think as mature adult, not as a child.  Mature thinking breeds mature attitudes and mature attitudes result in mature actions.  You are to be adult in your faith and actions.  And, no, this kind of maturity is not what you might see or hear or read about an advertisement or promotion for pornographic literature or movies where it says or states “for mature adults only”.  No, people who enjoy this kind of trash are not mature adults; they are immature and evil who demonstrate infantile behavior.

To be adult in your faith and actions is to be mature in your thinking as I Cor 14:20 states.  It is an interesting phrase Paul uses, “Be infants in evil…..”  Are infants evil?  Of course not.  He is not talking about children, he is talking about the level or extent of evil developed in your mind.  Evil thinking in the mind of a follower of Christ should be minimal.  Evil cannot be completely eliminated, but it can be minimized, just like an infant is the minimal age of a human being.  Christians are to be innocent towards evil.      

While Christians are to be mature adults in their thinking and actions, they are to be like children in their relationship with Christ.  When Jesus said that we are to be “like these little children” in Matt 18:3, He clarifies this in the next verse by emphasizing the need to be humble.  Jesus described Himself as “gentle and humble in heart” (Matt 11:29) and His followers are to be like Him.  So, you, as a Christian, are to be mature in your thinking and resultant actions and also to be humble in your heart with childlike reverence for God and selfless attitudes and actions towards others.  Think about areas of your thought life where you are child-like and where you are mature.  How might you be an infant in evil and mature in your thinking?  Why might it be so hard for you to be an infant in evil and mature in thinking?