Becoming a Man

In the middle of a passage on the excellency of love in his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul says:

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

If you consider the context of this statement, you'll find that a big point Paul makes is that we must consider our motives, and not just our actions when it comes to spiritual maturity. One practical way to gauge your own maturity is to ask yourself why you do the good things you do. Do you act out of love for God and man or for other reasons?

One thing that I've sometimes struggled with during my Christian life is how to follow my conscience without being prideful and without condemning others- how to be in the world without being of the world. There are multiple aspects of being of the world. Obviously, there's being of the world by living in sin outwardly; but then there's also the sin of pride, a sin that is more inward.

Paul says love does not brag and love is not arrogant. In other words, a spiritually mature, loving man does not go into the world and think, "look at how much better I am than all of you!" Children think this way. After all, what man thinks highly of himself for being able to walk when he sees a baby crawling? What kind of teacher takes pride in thinking about how scholarly she is when she sees students struggling to learn new material?

In my heart, I used to look down on people who touched alcohol because I didn't want to touch it. Granted, no one should drink unlawfully. But when people drink legally and without getting drunk, the matter becomes gray, rather than black and white. In fact, Jesus was called a gluttonous man, a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He was more concerned about saving men than saving his reputation.

How do we make since out of all of this? Well, let's get one thing straight- Jesus did not sin. You will not find a bible passage that involves Jesus getting drunk, pigging out, or cheating people out of their money. Nor will you find a passage in which Jesus did anything just for the heck of it, like have a glass of wine by himself at the end of a long day just because he felt like having one- not that there's anything sinful about having one drink "just because," but that's just the way Jesus lived. That's because Jesus had so much love for mankind. Everything he did was out of love for us.

When Jesus drank, he drank to win the hearts of men. When he went for a walk, he did it to teach men. When he rested and prayed for strength, he rested and prayed for strength so he could serve others. He came to earth in the form of a man and he lived a righteous life to redeem mankind. He never bragged about being without sin to sinners; he did ask sinners to "go and sin no more," but he did it out of love, not out of arrogance or selfish ambition. The life that Jesus lived was that of a spiritually mature man.