Focus: Verse # 11
King James Bible
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
New International Version
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 the ways of childhood behind me.
New Living Translation
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.
STUDY NOTES
I read this verse completely wrong, and when God sent it to me, the wrong interpretation was the exact message I needed.
I suffer from what I understand to be a relatively typical experience for a man leaving addiction. It is suggested that intellectual maturation pauses when one enters active addiction to many brain-chemistry-altering substances. I was 19. I often catch myself thinking like a 19-year-old. In a group setting, say, one of the 12-step meetings I attend, my mind interprets people my age as old folks. If a 25-year-old walks into the room, I feel relieved to see a contemporary among us. I have to remind myself that my peers are the "old" people. When I was using, this wasn't a problem. I entertained 20- and 30-somethings regularly. By providing free drugs, I gained access to those I felt comfortable with. I can hold a conversation with a 25-year-old dude who is high off his ass. I can relate.
Now that I am nearly 60 and living sober and clean, I lack the communication skills needed to connect with the very people who should form my support system. Starting a conversation frightens me because I struggle with what to say, largely because drugs used to be my primary topic. Based on the criteria described in this chapter, I have never truly experienced "love," and I suspect many others haven't either. Without a solid foundation to build upon, finding the kind of love Paul writes about feels out of reach. It seems like it is simply too late, and the options for finding a partner are sparse. While I can cultivate a relationship with God, who promises unconditional love, He also reminds us that we are not meant to navigate life in isolation. That remains the true purpose of marriage: genuine love, even though society today has watered it down to something short-lived.
I remain uncertain how a man can endure this life without a friendship rooted in genuine love, nor do I know who among my fellow human beings is truly capable of extending it. Yet I hold fast to a meaningful alternative: a love anchored in faith and hope. To me, that stands as the most unadulterated of all its forms.
It strikes me that Paul’s sharp critique might not be directed at an individual man's perspective on "love"—could his actual target be the church itself?
--BSB
Love
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs.
6 Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
11 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 set aside childish ways.
12 Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
Version Study & Takeaway
Debating semantic differences across translations seems unnecessary; the text remains as it is written. Instead, reading this full chapter raises a far more fundamental question for me: should Christians read the Bible on their own initiative? I find myself unsure of how to answer that anymore.
This chapter presents two vastly different core messages depending on how one approaches it. Read through an accessible, modern lens, it appears to instruct us to mature, love deeply, and place complete trust in those we love. However, when examined through deeper study, a very different lesson emerges: those to whom we entrust our spiritual care often handle that duty like children—acting without conscious intent, and remaining exempt from consequence.