“Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”
1 Corinthians 14:20 ESV

Paul spends the bulk of this chapter dealing with spiritual gifts and how they are to be properly handled, and that is the context for this verse. It’s about benefitting the whole body, rather than just building up yourself. It’s about glorifying God rather than making yourself look good. Speaking in tongues seems impressive because it is a marker that distinguishes an individual has tapped into the divine, and people can see that they are being used in that way. But a tongue with no interpretation is useless for building up the body. A tongue with no interpretation only builds up the heart (not even the mind) of the one who speaks it because they do not even know what they are saying. Better to prophesy, to speak the truth of God in a way to teach and give direction to the people directly, rather than to speak a mystery.

Tongues and prophecy are the he vehicle for this conversation, but there are other lessons for us to hear in the midst of them. “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

When it comes to our life in Christ, we are not to consider self first. We are not to lift up self first. We are not to seek out praise, to strive for the ‘top billing’ or to desire to be held in higher esteem than another person. Because when it comes to our life, lived daily in Christ, we will find that every aspect of our life is meant to give glory and honor and praise to Him. It is never about us. It is never meant to be about us. Our self-possessed culture tells us otherwise, but truth in Scripture tells us that this life is about glorifying God, about bringing others to Him and about dying to self in the process so that this may happen.

Living in Christ means letting Him lead. Letting Him lead means He gets the glory. When Christ is glorified, others are built up. And when others are built up, the bride of Christ thrives and continues to glorify Him. We were made to worship and the object of our worship is Christ, not self. We die to self because He died for us. We die to self because He loved us first. We die to self, seeking truth, wisdom and love because these things point others to the One who brings change and light and truth and order into the midst of our chaos and mess.

But we hold that back from happening when we demand to get our way in our time for our purposes. When we refuse to die to self, we are refusing to walk with Christ. When we refuse to die to self, we cannot carry our cross. And as long as it is about us, it can never be about Jesus. Better to suffer a wrong, better to live life in obscurity, better to never be recognized before men and walk faithfully for Christ than to make our lives about our pride for even a split second.

Humility and love walk hand in hand. Humility and the cross are inseparable. Humility and Christ are one in the same. If we are going to walk as Jesus walked, then we need to pick up our cross, lay down our pride and follow after Him. Out personal agendas will fail. They are temporary at best and they will fade away. But what is accomplished in Christ? Eternally significant and eternally purposeful. But when we make it about self rather than our Savior and His commission to us to GoLove, then it is only so much fluff and dust.

It’s time to grow up.