Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. (1 Cor 14:20)
What a worthy goal for this new week!
In evil, be an infant. Inexperienced. Uninitiated. Don’t grow more adept at gossip or more comfortable with slander today. Don’t acquire more experience with enmity, strife, or jealousy this week. Don’t build the muscles of arrogance or rudeness. Don’t become more versed in fits of anger, rivalry, dissension, or division. Don’t feed irritability or resentment. Don’t live like an expert in sexual immorality, impurity, or sensuality. Don’t be accomplished in idolatry or skilled in drunkenness. Some, with minds set on earthly things, will broadcast their foolishness this week and boast (for a little while) as veterans of unrighteousness, glorying in their shame. “Their end is destruction.” (Phil 3:19).
In evil, be an infant. There are plenty of things in this fallen world you’ll be better off never experiencing.
But this doesn’t mean we ought to float through life naive, gullible, or absent-minded. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. Practice patience this week. Push yourself to treat others as more significant than yourself. Outdo others in showing honor. Rejoice with the truth. Bear. Believe. Hope. Endure. Grow in self-control. Treat purity as precious. Build the muscles of goodness and faithfulness. Exercise gentleness. Draw attention to the commendable, the lovely, and the excellent. Make peace. Pursue joy. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly, like Jesus, with God. The end of that path is life abundant.
Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. Childlike, not childish. That’s a God-defined goal worth pursuing this week.