1 Corinthians 13:11-12: Growing Up in Christ
Short answer: Bible puberty is the awkward, necessary season when a believer stops being a spiritual child and starts growing into maturity. In 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 Paul describes that transition: childhood speech, feeling, and thinking give way to adult faith, and childish things are put away. This is not about rejecting childlike trust in God but about outgrowing childish instability, self-centeredness, and love that is easily offended. The passage sits at the climax of Paul's teaching on love, so maturity is measured by how we love, not by how much we know or how impressive our gifts appear. Spiritual growth is gradual, often clumsy, and sometimes embarrassing, like adolescence itself. Yet it is normal, expected, and possible because God is patient and continues His work in us. Understanding this passage helps believers stop panicking at their own slow progress and start cooperating with the Spirit's work.
What Paul Means by Childhood and Manhood
Paul writes, When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. This is 1 Corinthians 13:11, and it comes at the end of a chapter about love. The childhood he describes is not innocent faith but immature faith: speech, emotion, and reasoning all shaped by self. That is precisely the problem Paul has been addressing in Corinth, where believers competed over gifts and status.
The image is developmental, not moralistic. Paul is not shaming childhood; he is describing a stage that should give way to another stage. A child is not a failure for being a child. But a grown person who still thinks and speaks and loves like a child is missing something God intends. The same is true spiritually. There is a season for milk, but God does not intend us to live there forever.
Notice that Paul does not say he put away childish gifts or childish knowledge. He put away childish things, meaning the self-centered patterns that belonged to an earlier stage. The mature believer still speaks and feels and thinks, but those faculties are increasingly governed by love. Bible puberty, then, is the process by which love becomes the operating system of a person's life rather than an occasional good intention.
Why Maturity Is a Process, Not a Moment
Paul's language is past tense: I have put away childish things. Yet the same Paul elsewhere describes ongoing transformation and pressing on toward the goal. He is not claiming a single instant of perfection; he is describing a settled direction. Maturity in Scripture is both a decisive break with old patterns and a lifelong growth in grace. Both are true, and holding them together keeps us from two errors.
The first error is complacency, assuming that because we are saved, growth does not matter. The second is perfectionism, assuming that every stumble proves we are not really God's. The Bible presents maturity as a journey with real progress and real setbacks. Proverbs 22:6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. That proverb assumes formation over years, not a single lesson.
Luke 2:52 tells us that Jesus himself grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. If the sinless Son of God experienced human development, we should expect nothing less. Bible puberty is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you are alive and growing.
Childish Things Scripture Actually Tells Us to Put Away
What are the childish things? Paul does not list them here, but he does elsewhere. Ephesians 4:14-15 warns that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error. The childish thing here is instability, being shaped by whichever voice spoke last. Maturity means having enough rootedness in Christ that fads and manipulators cannot spin you around.
Another childish pattern is rivalry. In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul has just said that love does not envy and does not boast. The Corinthians' obsession with who had the better gift was childlike behavior in adult clothing. A third pattern is a love that is easily provoked and keeps records of wrongs. That is the emotional life of a toddler inside a grown body.
Putting these away is not about becoming cold or cynical. It is about becoming steady, humble, and kind. It is about a faith that can absorb disappointment without collapsing and can serve others without needing applause. These are the marks of a grown believer.
Luke's Portrait of Jesus as a Growing Boy
Luke 2:41-52 gives us the only biblical glimpse of Jesus between infancy and adulthood. His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. On one trip, the twelve-year-old Jesus stayed behind, and his parents found him in the temple among the teachers, listening and asking questions. His mother asked why he had treated them this way, and he answered that he must be in his Father's house.
This passage does two things at once. It anchors Jesus in the ordinary rhythms of a faithful family, and it shows him already aware of a unique calling. He returned home and was submissive to his parents, and he grew. Luke 2:52 says, The child Samuel grew on, and increased in favor both with Yahweh and also with men. Though that verse is about Samuel, Luke echoes its pattern for Jesus, showing that growth in favor is a biblical way to describe healthy development.
The lesson is that spiritual maturity does not skip the awkward middle. Jesus grew in wisdom, and so must we. There is no shortcut around the years of learning, listening, and being corrected. Bible puberty is a stage, and maturity as a man or woman of God is its intended destination.
Training a Child in the Way He Should Go
Proverbs 22:6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. This is a proverb, which means it describes the ordinary way God's world works rather than an ironclad guarantee about every individual. It encourages parents and mentors that faithful, patient formation matters more than they can see in the moment.
The word train carries the idea of shaping and starting a pattern, not merely giving information. Children learn far more from what we model than from what we announce. If a child watches an adult handle conflict with prayer and gentleness, that lesson sticks deeper than a lecture on patience. Bible puberty often begins long before a person can articulate it.
At the same time, this proverb is not a promise that every child of godly parents will walk with God, nor is a wandering adult proof that the parents failed. Faithful Christians differ on how tightly to press the promise, and Scripture gives examples in both directions. The call is to faithful training, with the outcome entrusted to God.
Remember Your Creator in Youth
Ecclesiastes 12:1 says, Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw near, when you will say, I have no pleasure in them. The Preacher's point is urgency, not gloom. Habits of remembering God are easiest to form early, and the longer they are delayed, the harder the ground becomes.
This is why Bible puberty matters so much. The teenage and young adult years are not a waiting room before real faith begins. They are a formative season when patterns of prayer, obedience, and love are set. A young person who learns to bring doubts, failures, and desires honestly before God is building a foundation that will hold under pressure later.
Older believers are not exempt. Growth is possible at any age, but Scripture consistently treats youth as a strategic window. To remember your Creator in youth is to plant early what you will need for decades. It is also a kindness to your future self, who will face days when pleasure is hard to find and God's faithfulness must be trusted rather than felt.
What Love Has to Do With Growing Up
1 Corinthians 13 is not a wedding poem dropped into a letter about church conflict; it is the answer to that conflict. Paul has spent chapters on gifts, divisions, lawsuits, and the Lord's Supper. Then he describes a more excellent way, and 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 arrives as the summary. Maturity is loving like God loves, and that love is patient, kind, humble, and enduring.
This means Bible puberty can be measured. Not by how much Bible you can quote, not by how many years you have attended, and not by how confidently you argue. It is measured by whether you are becoming more patient, less easily provoked, slower to keep score, and quicker to rejoice in the truth. Those are the marks Paul names in the surrounding verses.
This is also why growth is so uncomfortable. Learning to love means God will put you in situations that expose your childish patterns, often through people who annoy or wound you. That exposure is not rejection; it is training. The Spirit uses the ordinary friction of relationships to mature us into the likeness of Christ.
Holding Fast When Growth Feels Slow
Most believers experience seasons when growth seems invisible. You know more than you did, but you still react like a child under pressure. Paul's words do not condemn you in that moment. He describes a transition that was completed in his own life and is being completed in ours by God's grace. Progress in the Christian life is often visible only in hindsight.
Two practices help. First, stay in the means of grace: Scripture read and heard, prayer, and the fellowship of a local church. Maturity is not a solo project. Second, welcome correction. The young Jesus listened and asked questions. A teachable heart is one of the clearest signs that childishness is actually being put away rather than merely hidden.
Finally, be patient with others who are younger in the faith or slower to grow. If God is patient with you in the middle of Bible puberty, you can be patient with the person beside you. Maturity never mocks the awkward stage it once occupied. It remembers, and it helps.
Biblical fidelity check
1 Corinthians 13:11-12 establishes that childhood and adulthood are real, distinct stages and that the transition between them involves putting away childish things. It does not establish that maturity arrives instantly, that it is measured by spiritual gifts or knowledge, or that every emotional struggle is a sign of immaturity. It also does not define adults as people who no longer feel strongly or think deeply; Paul says he put away childish things, not human faculties.
A common misreading treats this verse as a mandate to become emotionally flat or relentlessly serious, as if all childlikeness were the enemy. But Jesus Himself welcomed children and warned against causing them to stumble, and He commended childlike faith. The childishness Paul rejects is self-centered instability and love that is easily offended, not wonder, honesty, or trust. Another misreading assumes maturity is automatic with age; Scripture far too often shows grown people acting like children. Growth is a gift of God worked through ordinary means, and it must be pursued.
Other passages that speak to 1 Corinthians 13:11-12
Paul's teaching on maturity belongs to the whole letter, and these studies trace that wider context. For the letter's opening themes of unity and identity, see 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord. The wilderness warnings that call believers away from childish presumption appear in 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom. The concern for order and self-giving love at the Lord's Supper is treated in 1 Corinthians 11: Order, Unity, and the Lord's Supper. And the gifts that Corinth prized so highly are set in their proper place in 1 Corinthians 12: One Body, Many Members in Christ. Read together, these chapters show that maturity is corporate as well as personal.
Frequently asked questions
Does 1 Corinthians 13:11-12 mean I should stop being childlike in my faith?
No. Jesus welcomed children and held them up as an example of humble trust. The childhood Paul describes is marked by instability, rivalry, and a love that is easily provoked. The childlike qualities Scripture commends, such as trust, dependence, and wonder, are not on the list. Bible puberty is about putting away self-centered childish patterns, not about becoming cynical, guarded, or emotionally numb. A mature believer can be both strong and tender, both wise and full of wonder at grace.
How do I know if I am growing spiritually?
The clearest test is love. Paul defines maturity in the verses around 1 Corinthians 13:11-12: patience, kindness, humility, restraint, and a refusal to keep score of wrongs. Ask whether you are becoming slower to anger and quicker to forgive, whether you can serve without applause, and whether you can hold convictions without contempt for those who differ. You will not see daily progress, but over months and years the direction should be visible, both to you and to the people who know you best.
What if I keep failing in the same areas year after year?
Persistent struggle is discouraging, but it does not by itself mean you are not growing. Scripture portrays maturity as a lifelong journey with real setbacks, and it calls us to confess sin, receive forgiveness, and keep walking. Bring the pattern honestly to God and to trusted believers rather than hiding it. Sometimes long-standing struggles require pastoral help, wise counsel, or medical care. Growth may be slow, but God is not impatient with His children, and He promises to complete what He began in them.
