From Spiritual Childhood to Maturity in Faith

"Everybody who becomes a Christian and who enters into this Christian Life comes into it as a babe. He starts as a child. Now it doesn't matter at all how great an intellect the man may have. He may be a great intellect, he may be a great man in a profession or in business or in anything you like, and he may be a man there of exceptional ability and understanding. All right, I say that nevertheless when he comes into this Christian Life, he comes as a babe. He's a spiritual babe, and he's got to be regarded as such, and he's got to regard himself as such." [00:11:02]

"In the church, all divisions and distinctions are abolished. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, Barbarian, Asian, Bond nor free, but not only that, there is neither great nor small. All these divisions and distinctions, I say, become quite irrelevant. We all enter the same way, and we all start as newborn babes, every single one of us, and we've got to realize that. Then, of course, having started with that, we go on to the second thing, which is this: as the Apostle goes on to show here, we not only must realize that we are children to begin with, but that there are certain peculiar characteristics of children and certain particular and peculiar tendencies in children." [00:13:23]

"The child is unstable. He uses the most picturesque phrase here: tossed to and fro, which means tossed like waves. Now, it doesn't mean that we are tossed about by waves so much as that we are like waves themselves, tossed to and fro as waves are constantly in motion and are tossed about. Indeed, we might translate it like this, if you like, pitching about. And there is in the word that the Apostle used, and he only uses it in this one place, it's the only place it's found in the whole of scripture, there is a sense conveyed of violence, a violent pitching about of waves." [00:16:44]

"One of the most prominent characteristics of the child is, of course, as a result of this, fickleness. Fickleness and changeableness. A child is remarkably like the sea, isn't he? How quickly a child can change from smiling to crying. Is there anything more characteristic of a child? You see it on its face at once. There it is, the child, and it can't help it, of course, because it's a child. It's fickle and it's changeable." [00:18:26]

"The child lacks self-control. That's why we have to control them. They're the victims of impulses and moods. They know nothing about self-discipline. They're not able to master themselves and to control themselves. They can't control, to use an expression used in The Book of Proverbs, they can't control their own spirits. That word in Proverbs says that the man who can control his own spirit is a greater man than a man who can capture and conquer a city, and it's absolutely true." [00:20:32]

"The typical characteristic of childhood is a lack of self-control, an inability to control one's reactions and to control one's responses to the things that happen to us. You'll agree that it's a characteristic of this childish state. Then another one is, and it follows from the previous ones, of course, the child always reacts excessively and violently to things that happen. The child acts as a whole, and it acts with a certain violence always and excessiveness." [00:21:28]

"The child is in a kind of perpetual state of turmoil and of mental agitation. Transfer all this to the adult who's just become a Christian, always agitated, always in trouble, and you see them talking together in little groups and expressing it violently, these violent reactions and these violent views. Look at a little crowd of children. There they are, they're terribly troubled. Some little trifle has taken place, and they get into a huddle together and they talk, and they're violent in their reactions, agitated in a state of turmoil." [00:24:09]

"The child is like this chiefly, firstly, because of its ignorance. It is indeed due to nothing but lack of knowledge. The difficulty about the child is that it hasn't got a standard, and it hasn't a standard because it lacks knowledge. And if you haven't got a standard, you can't test, and if you can't test, and because you haven't this knowledge, it means that you're lacking in judgment when you are confronted by a number of teachings. How do you tell which is right? Well, there's only one answer: it's knowledge alone that enables us to do that." [00:29:07]

"Not only is he ignorant, but unfortunately he has an innate tendency to dislike being taught. He dislikes discipline. I think you'll agree that this is true. Look back into your own experience, your own experience of your own past and your experience of children at the present time. It is characteristic of childhood that he doesn't like discipline, and he doesn't like being taught, and especially doesn't like being taught slowly. The child always wants to get on, doesn't it?" [00:30:37]

"The child always likes entertainment and excitement. Cast your minds back to your own childhood. I think you'll all agree that what I'm going to say is absolutely true. It was certainly true of me. The child tends to have a kind of secret antagonism in an odd sort of way, perhaps even to its own parents if their parents are worthy of the name, because you see of the discipline. They're always there, and they're always enforcing these points and these principles." [00:33:48]

"The child is because of all these things peculiarly susceptible to showmanship. The child likes the showman instinctively, isn't that true? And the greater the showman, the more the child will like him. The child's got no discrimination, as I say, has got no means of assessing these matters. The bigger the show, the bigger the deceit in a sense, the more the child is likely to believe it, because you see, not having knowledge and not having a real ability to discriminate and to understand, he tends to be taken in by the spectacular." [00:37:43]

"The child has got to realize that he is a child, and he's got to realize that because he's a child, he's in a terribly dangerous position because of these other things. The Apostle puts them surely in the right and the inevitable order. May God forgive us for being so unstable, so fickle, so changeable, so ready to be imposed upon, so ready to react violently. God forgive us that we are so lacking in discipline and in a true understanding which leads to a true concern for God and the Lord Jesus Christ, the church, and the glory of his great and holy name." [00:39:13]