Growing Into Wholeness

          “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 ways.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)

          Paul now shifts the metaphor from partial knowledge to human growth. Childhood is marked by limitation: speech unformed, thoughts unsteady, reasoning incomplete. Yet these are not failures. They are stages. To speak as a child is to begin the journey of language. To think as a child is to begin the journey of wisdom. To reason as a child is to begin the journey of discernment. Childhood is not a defect. but a necessary prelude.

          “When I became a man…” Here Paul signals maturity, not as a sudden leap but as a transformation. Growth requires relinquishing what once sufficed. The toys of infancy cannot serve the tasks of adulthood. The patterns of immaturity must yield to the rhythms of maturity. This is not a rejection of childhood, but its fulfillment. What was once provisional is surrendered so that what is permanent may emerge.

          This is a call to spiritual maturation. Faith begins in simplicity, but it is meant to deepen. Love begins in small gestures, but it is meant to expand. Understanding begins in fragments, but it is meant to be gathered into wholeness. To give up childish ways is to embrace the path of becoming, becoming more patient, more steadfast, more attuned to the eternal. And in that becoming, love is again the measure. It is the sign of maturity, the fruit of growth, the evidence that the child has become whole in Christ.