1 Corinthians 13:11 - Homiletics

A child in time, a man in eternity.

"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." From all the writings of Paul you cannot select an extract more beautiful, significant, and valuable than this chapter. It touches that which is the root of the universe, the heart of God, and the fountain of all virtue and blessedness —love. The subject of the words under our notice is the Christian a child in time, a man in eternity.

I. This is the case in relation to SPEECH . "When I was a child, I spake as a child." Though the word "child" here properly denotes a babe, the apostle evidently uses it with no such limitation, for an infant neither speaks, thinks, nor understands. He denotes by it the human being in the first stages of intelligence and voluntary action. The speech of a child is often marked by incoherence and unintelligibility. It is irrelevant, disconnected, and broken. So is the speech of the sagest and most eloquent Christian here as compared with his language in eternity. The Christian's speech in eternity will be characterized:

1. By clearness. Our speech here, like that of children, is often unintelligible, mere jargon. The reason is that our conceptions are cloudy, half formed, and ill defined. Obscurity of language, either oral or written, is the result of confusion in thought. Clear speech requires a clear head. In heaven thoughts are clear and complete as balls of radiant crystal.

2. By reality. Our speech here, like that of children, is frequently nothing more than the vehicle of mental fantasies and conjecture. Words only embody and reveal the unsubstantial dreams of the mind. But speech in eternity is the organ of reality. Words there are things. They are truths made vocal.

3. By comprehensiveness. How meagre the vocabulary of a child! Our speech here, like that of children, is limited to a very small range of things. When it conveys truth, the truths are but very few; and they relate to a mere speck in the great universe of intelligence. Not so in heaven. The soul will range over the whole domain of facts, receive true impressions of all, and speak them out.

4. By sublimity. Our speech here, like that of children, is not of the most exalted and soul-inspiring character. The best only talk of the rudiments of truths which have become more or less theological platitudes. In heaven speech will be the vehicle of the most soul-inspiring and soul-unlifting realities. Every word will be electric, every sentence radiant and quickening as the sunbeam.

II. This is the case in relation to UNDERSTANDING . "I understood as a child." The Christian's understanding here is like that of a child in several respects.

1. In feebleness. The child's intellect, like his body, gets strength by nutriment and exercise. In the first stages it is very feeble. It is incapable of any great effort. It is thus with the Christian here. We say of such a man, "He has a great intellect." But in reality the greatest is very weak. How little the effort that the greatest intellect can make in search of knowledge! What a small amount of truth can the most vigorous hold within his grasp! In heaven the understanding will be strong, unencumbered by matter, unchecked by disease, unclouded by sin. It will grow young with age and strong with exercise,

2. In sensuousness. A child's understanding is under the control of the senses. It judges by appearances; it is taken up with the forms of things. Is it not so with the Christian. He is prone to "mind earthly things," "to judge after the flesh." The theology and the ritualism even of the most spiritual are coloured by sensuousness. The hell and heaven of Christendom are sensuous worlds.

3. In relativeness . The child judges of all things by their relation to himself. His father may be an author thrilling the intellect of his age, or a statesman directing the destinies of a nation, but the child knows nothing of him in those relations, As a father only he knows him. So with the understanding of a Christian, His conceptions of God are purely relative—Redeemer, Father, Master. Thus only is he regarded. Of what he is in himself, what he is in the universe, what he is in immensity, he understands nothing. In eternity we shall "see him as he is."

4. In servility. The child yields his understanding up to others, often allows it to be used as "clay in the hands of a potter." So it is often with Christians here. They are not generally independent in their inquiries. They put themselves in the hands of Churches and priests, and call them masters, Not so in heaven. Each with a full consciousness of his individuality will be independent in his investigations and conclusions.

III. This is the case in relation to REASONING . "I thought as a child." In the margin the word reasoned is put for "thought." The child reasons Logic is not mere art, it is an instinct in human nature. How does the child reason?

1. From an insufficiency of data. Having neither the power nor the opportunity of making an adequate observation and comparison, he draws his conclusions from passing impressions and unfounded conjectures. Thus it is often with the Christian here. His knowledge of the facts of God and the universe on which he reasons, is so limited that his conclusions are often inconclusive and puerile. The grave and. pompous discussions of our most learned theologues on the ways of God must appear to the ear of an angel as absurd as the prattle of children on the affairs of kingdoms does to us.

2. From the impulse of desire. In all cases the wish is the father to the thought. It is too often so with Christians here. Their likings control their logic. Not so in heaven. How sublime the difference between the Christian in time and the Christian in eternity! How vast the disparity between the speech, understanding, and reasoning of Saul, the little Jewish boy, and "Paul, the aged," the great theologian and sublime apostle! This is only a faint type of the difference between the Christian here and the Christian yonder.

CONCLUSION . This subject teaches:

1. The educational character of this life. The true view of this life is that it is a school for eternity. Here all souls are in a state of pupilage. Some are deriving the true advantages from the discipline, and some are not. Whilst thousands leave this school from year to year unimproved, incorrigible, utterly unfit for the services of eternity, worthless to God and the universe, others are being made "meet for the inheritance of the saints in light." Brother disciples, be reconciled to this state. School days are not always the most pleasant. There are restrictions, disciplines, and studies, more or less painful. Struggle on till you "put away childish things," all that is childish in speech and understanding and reasoning. We shall leave this school soon for the family mansion and the grand inheritance.

2. The organic unity of man through all the scenes and stages of his being. Though the man here talks and. judges and reasons very differently to what he did when a child, he is nevertheless the same being. He is but the child more fully developed. He is but the sapling grown into the tree. It is so with the Christian in the other world. He is the same being as he was here, he is but the child grown into the man, freed from "all childish things." Man in heaven is but the child matured. We shall never be greater than men. Whatever is brilliant and great for us in the future will be but the development of the germs that slumber in us now.

3. The necessity of modesty in the maintenance of our theological views. In the light of this subject, how preposterous it is for poor frail, fallible man to set himself up as an authority in theological matters, to assume the priest, the bishop, the pope! "I do not know," says Sir Isaac Newton, "what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself by now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."