Childish Things

1 Corinthians 13 gets read at weddings, but verse 11 wasn't written for the reception. Right in the middle of his love-poem, Paul changes lanes: "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child." Three verbs, three layers — speech, mindset, and reckoning — and Paul says he put every one of them down when he grew up. This sermon walks each childish verb against its love-clause in the same chapter, with the bullseye on verse 11's verb for reasoning and verse 5's love does not keep account. It's the same Greek word, six verses apart. Childishness is the open ledger. Maturity is the decision to close it. And the put-down isn't a punishment — it's how a body of believers finally learns to love each other.